One of Those Moments

A lovely morning at Rootdown, taken from the northern most of end of the farm.

I had one of those moments today. One of those, “Ah, yes! This is why I farm,” moments. One of those moments where my gratitude for having found this work washes over me. One of those moments where I am exactly where I want to be.

It happened unexpectedly, when I was hand weeding salad mix with Aurélie. We were weeding and chatting; the sun was out, the wind was up, both cooling us down and blowing the cursed mosquitoes and blackflies of the morning away. We were hypothesising on a curious sort of death that was happening in the salad mix, where a bunch of the weeds, and a little bit of the seeded crops were withering and dying – was it sun burn? Was it damping off due to too much water? Was it some kind of beneficial insect that mostly targeted the weeds (how great would that be!?)? 

And as we discussed and wondered, as we weeded, as the sun warmed me and the wind cooled me down, I suddenly realised how perfect the moment was, and how I wanted to keep doing this forever. Not that I wanted to hand weed salad mix forever, but that, if it is within my power, I wanted to keep farming for the rest of the time I’ve got. That I wanted to keep trying to figure out how and why plants grow, that I wanted to keep working outside with the sun and the wind and the rain and, yes, I suppose I can even accept the bugs when I must. I realised in that moment, and with startling clarity, how I want to keep learning the complex art of farming for many, many more years to come.

And while I am not a religious person, in that moment I felt truly blessed. And I still do.

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Egads! The Bugs!

Harvesting with bug nets and full sleeve coverage to keep the mosquitoes at bay.

The theme of the latter part of last week was definitely bugs, with the mosquitoes getting worse each day, until Friday. The early part of the week was moist and cool, with warmer temperatures on Thursday and Friday – perfect mosquito breeding weather. Friday was incredible, and to this Vancouver Island gal, was almost beyond belief. However, in my defence, Sarah said she has never seen the mosquitoes so bad in Pemberton, ever.

I’d never actually worn a bug net before last Thursday. Now, I am a convert. Amazing inventions that they are, the bug nets made it possible to work in what would have been otherwise, rather intolerable conditions. In fact on Friday I only took it off to eat lunch, and that was because we took refuge in Sarah’s kitchen. The only thing exposed at all during Friday was my hands, and I even ended up with a smattering of bites on the backs of my hands. Oh well, with the hot, dry spell that has arrived (low to mid 30’s for the week to come – gulp) the mosquitoes shouldn’t be too bad for too much longer.

Aurélie is a big fan of the bug net too.

On another note, I really enjoyed the pigs last week, and am looking forward to another week of getting to know them a bit. They are quite far away from where any vegetables are being grown this year, and so we don’t really get to see them all that much unless we go out on a pig-specific mission, or it is one of our mornings on chores. Here are a couple more pictures from my first morning on chores with the pigs:

The pigs venturing out for their first breakfast.

It took several minutes for the other pigs to catch on to the fact that their was another trough. Which worked out for this little pig, one of three smaller, younger ones.