the day they turned up their snouts

today began at 6 by hitting the pepper field and doing more weeding. sadly, many of the plants have died because of all the weeds, so we are trying to rescue whichever ones managed to survive. so yes: more clipping newspaper and tucking it around the plant. but i've gotten used to this activity and have actually come to enjoy it, so it wasn't too bad. also, this morning was pretty chilly - around 60 degrees - so i had to wear a sweatshirt! hard to believe, but true; and it felt really good.

we weeded for awhile. a good 2 1/2 hours. at some point early in the morning, i heard a helicopter nearby and i looked up for it. it was really loud, and the sound is pronounced because in general there's not much noise on the farm other than the occasional angry goat grunting at at one of her pasture-mates. i noticed the helicopter was flying directly over us onto the neighboring field - a conventional farm. it didn't take long to realize that it was flying around spraying pesticides. prior to this, i had only seen images of these pesticide helicopters in movies or magazines, but never in person. i have to admit it was a little intimidating. this went on for well over an hour, and the helicopter often came over onto our side of the fence. we didn't feel anything, so i don't it was spraying our field, but i would have to imagine that there's got to be some that crosses over at least once in awhile. it was upsetting and i'm planning to ask farmer john about it.

but what else was interesting was the juxtaposition of what emily and i were doing (pulling each weed by hand, individually, and paying close care to make sure the plants were well-wrapped for the future), and the cold, distant weed removal of spraying (the helicopter just swooped around about 100 feet from the ground). we were both engaged in the same activity, but were using such drastically different methods. call me sentimental, but i really do believe the care that our farm puts into its plants really makes a difference in the quality of what grows.

after this, we were instructed to go pick and clean onions, and to that i say: woohoo! this was the highlight of the day for me. picking these onions is amazing because i'm just so used to seeing them in the grocery store, perfectly cleaned and prepped for our consumption. whoever thinks of what they look like when they're growing? but oh wow. they grow underground, but the way you know they're ready is that they begin to kind of rise up above the soil, so you see part of the onion popping out. they're beautiful. the other day, i tried to pick one just to see what it would look like, and it was this tremendous bulb that had the freshest onion fragrance from several feet away. when i chopped off the green stem, actual juice began to drip out of the onion. DRIP! when was the last time you saw an onion actually drip with moisture? it was amazing, and made me see a true difference between fresh produce and what we buy in the supermarket. there's just absolutely no comparison.

so today we were to pick two rows of onions, about 80 feet in total. pick them out of the ground, trim the root end and cut off the stem, clean off the dirt, then store them in coffee bags for a few days so the skins dry out. i had a blast. it was fun interacting with all these juicy onions. everytime i pulled one out of the ground it felt like i was discovering something.

after lunch, we moved onto garlic. we had picked a bunch of it last week, so today we cleaned it, just like we did the onions. this was not nearly as exciting as picking the garlic, but it got us out of the sun (yes, it was hot now) for awhile. afterwards, we went into the shed to plant winter squash. we found a bunch of fun varieties that we had never heard of before, so growing them should be interesting. i wish i was going to be around for the harvest!

when all was said and done, we had a bunch of the stems of the onions to get rid of, so ivan took them to the pigs, as we normally do all the trash. usually they snort and grunt and then eat everything with reckless abandon, but apparently they sniffed the stems and then walked away. can you believe it? we were all shocked!

so, apparently pigs have distinguishing palates after all.

(or, perhaps, the stems just weren't rotten and slimy enough...that's my vote!)