Farming is all about patience, attentiveness and care. The harvests come quick & abundant. Our hands & knees move at a rapid speed through 300 ft high tunnels of fruiting tomato plants, trellised to the ceiling. Nearby, pepper plants are heavy with juicy green shishitos; zucchini plants grown over the pathways with bees pollinating their furry yellow flowers in a nectar-craving frenzy. Farm trucks loaded with hundreds of pounds of tomatillos, nearly a thousand bunches of carrots, or twenty tubs of cucumbers.
Yet sometimes I have to go out to one of the fields after work and enjoy a slower harvest to bring home with us. Striking a balance between the fast pace of production farming and the slower enjoyment of subsistence gardening is so important to me. Those Sunday afternoons in the shishito pepper greenhouse let me return to that meditative feeling of growing plants just for fun.
Toad update: Toad’s new family has sent this photo to show how Toad is doing in his new home. Within two weeks he has managed to become the Wing-man to the Top Rooster. (That is the Top Roo just behind him.) Give Toad another month or so and who knows… there might be a “coop” and a new pecking order! Talk about something to crow about!
