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October 20, 2009 "Making Beds"
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    Greetings Friends of the Farm,

    Sunday mornings we strip the sheets off the bed, and before settling down for breakfast and the newspaper, I’ve put the bed clothes and bath towels in the washing machine. After the dishes are done, the “linens” hit the outdoor clothes line to soak up some vitamin D and purification, courtesy of the morning sun.

    Most Sundays over the past year, we’ve had perpetual sunshine, but the long-term winter forecast is for more rain than normal. This has me worried, as there is nothing more satisfying than slipping between slightly starchy white sheets at night. A luxury that cannot be achieved via a clothes dryer. Same for the towels: I like them scratchy, so when I hang them out, I don’t shake them. Shaking makes them soft as velvet and a velvet towel run over a body wet from a shower is kind of an icky thing in my opinion. I like the “defoliating” effect of a sundried, not shaken, towel. Maybe this is the bath-purist equivalent of a stirred not shaken martini?

    Before Sunday night, Larry and I redress the bed with the sunny linens. I’m glad for the help, as I never can figure out which way the bottom sheet goes; whichever way I start to pull it over the corners is invariably wrong Two persons make the guess easier, although some times there’s a bit of wrangling over it....

    This past Sunday, Larry and I partnered up on making farm beds for planting. Because of the wet weather forecast, we are once again raising our beds, rather than using summer’s flat ground for the crops. If we’re going to have floods, we want the water to be in the footpaths between the beds, not pooling around the plants.

    This type of bed making requires three different pieces of tractor equipment. A mower for re-cutting the re-sprouted cover crops, hiller discs for picking up the soil in the footpaths and piling it on top of the beds, and last, the tiller to mix in amendments and smooth the bed for planting.

    Since this has been a rather complicated process for years, Larry finally deemed it necessary to have two tractors on this rather small farm, rather than just one. For the record, there are four tractors at the Gause farm. Four! I know, you men think this is totally reasonable, and actually so do I.

    Here’s the rationale: Changing equipment is a time-consuming, often dangerous job, one that I refuse to do. I’ve seen too many old (male) farmers with sections of their fingers missing, to take that risk, even if I were strong enough to get the bolts and bars, pins and clamps, etc., in and out. I’d also have to have the tractor manual in front of me to remember what goes where. The result of not doing that is that I have to wait until Larry comes home from Gause to change from one piece to another. Time lost.

    So Larry found this great (used) tractor at a great price (of course, of course) and drove it to the farm from Landford’s Equipment Company, which thank goodness is close to the farm. He puppy dogged me with it. Said it would turn my compost twice as fast as our “little tractor.”  He headed straight for the compost pile, got off the tractor, and pointed at me to climb up on it and try it out, since this tractor acquisition was for me, after all. (Sure.) Maybe it was my birthday present to make up for many many years without one, but don’t worry, I’m not really that sort of girl. Trinkets and doo-dads are not for me. I’d rather save up for a tractor.


    Oh my, the present was so tall that it has a step--not to embarrass any man, but some of them are as short as I, so maybe they too would appreciate such a feature-- and it had these....jaws...attached to the front-end bucket. Dangerous, big black metal jaws, that with a secret handshake on the front-end loader stick, wrench open yawningly or clamp down with a big clang, which shocked me the first time I clanked them down.

    The gear shift was another departure from my little tractor with its cute foot pedals for forward and backward (a feature which I realize makes the little tractor the strange one.) I would have to shift from forward to backward, clutch engaged. Of course the seat was rammed back for a man, so I had to perch on the front of it which made reaching the gear shift a stretch. First thing I did was nearly climb on top of the eight-foot high compost pile. My foot kept stomping around automatically feeling for the little one’s back-up pedal, as the jaws went straight up grabbing the sky, until I realized that I had to push the clutch in and shift gears to back down, or die.

    While there was, not only Larry looking on (and not yelling), but also two of his men. They may have been smirking, or horrified, but I was a bit too tense to notice, and even if Larry wanted to “direct” me, I wouldn’t have heard him for the mighty roar of a Jaws fiercely determined to mount the compost mountain. It was so primordial. Woman and Beast...on a mountain of steaming compost. Whew.

    I soon, however, figured out a use for the jaws. I could chomp into the heavy compost off the top of the pile, loosening it up so that the pile could be turned more easily. Larry later commented that even he (even he!) hadn’t thought of that. Of course it might have been judged an accidental discovery on my part as I tried to back down off the pile, but it wasn’t. I was too freaked out to display any bits of mechanical genius at that point. I discovered the trick on my next attempt at moving the mountain. (Women, after all, are known to be good drivers, right? Well, unless they are on their cell phones.)

    Over the weeks, I have become more at ease with the beast and find Jaws to be a real help in my farming. When we are composting a bed, Jaws carries a big load of compost and “the little one” a smaller load. A tractor at each end of the 200-foot bed means less walking carrying heavy buckets of compost to dump out on the beds. And Jaws doesn’t wobble when making beds. It takes no nonsense from hard pans or formerly curving beds. If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll straighten you out.

    So Sunday, the soil was finally dry enough to work. I mowed down cover crops using the little one and Larry came afterwards with the manly Jaws, throwing up the footpaths with two big (masculine) discs mounted behind the back wheels (which are huge of course).  Before he left for the Gause farm, he replaced Jaws’ discs with the tiller. And lost no fingers.

    And this morning, I fertilized and amended two beds and then Jaws and I tickle-tilled them into soft flat surfaces for planting. Then I drew trenches in the soil and into the trenches I sprinkled parsnip, scorzonera, and snow pea seeds. Tootie J. Tootums, head hen, accompanied me, but she took no interest in the seeds. She found nothing to like about the parsnip seeds, which to her look like communion wafers for dolls, but she rearranged them a bit to make me happy. And she ignored the scorzonera seeds as they looked just like debris. Finally I raked soil over the seeds and debris and tamped it all down. 

    It’s supposed to rain in a couple of days. That will be great for the seeds, as both parsnip and scorzonera require moist soil and two or three weeks to arise. So, we’ll need some frequent gentle rains and lots of patience.

    But, next Sunday, we’ll also want sunshine....laundry day again.

    Carol Ann


Fort Knox on the left; the Fun Run on the right. Everyone's eating right now. Well, actually, everyone is eating all the time.....After next week, they will be on "Developer" feed instead of "Chick" feed....And Adelaide?
I can't tell which one is she! There is no chick here with her head on backwards anymore!

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