Bugs and bumpy landings

The first few weeks of my time on Cottingham Farm involved a lot of drama over the Colorado Potato Beetle (CPB), which clearly loves potatoes, but also has a fondness for tomatoes.  Cottingham is primarily a tomato/potato farm, so in hindsight, when Cleo pointed the bugs out to me, she was positively way too calm in my opinion.  At that time, there were few.  And then, almost all at once, there were many.   CPB’s don’t multiply.  They explode. The organic farming official regulations require that we hand pick the bugs off the plant before resorting to any approved spraying.

I was weirdly obsessed about eradicating the beetles.  I took it very seriously and examined every plant to find and destroy every bug or egg.  I found the whole endeavor physically exhausting and wondered to myself why on earth I insisted on being so dedicated to the cause.  Even my co-worker Miguel, after working on it for a few hours, turned to me and said, “this is boring” in his rudimentary English, and found an excuse to wonder off to another more important task.  Not me.  I was undeterred.   I used to love picking blackberries when I was younger.  Actually, I still like it, but when I was younger, I would disappear for hours and hours to the farthest reaches of the family farm to find every possible blackberry.  Somehow, this search and destroy mission lit up those same neurons that loved the blackberry hunt.  So, oddly, I was comfortable taking the lead and I made it my cause.

Later, at a dinner party, I was asked about my farm work.  As I recounted my recent days devoted to picking the CPBs off the potatoes, we all came to the same conclusion:  Organic Farming is hard, if not unrealistic.  Who can afford that kind of labor?  And, it is true.  Studies have shown that organic farming is much more labor intensive, and therefore expensive, than traditional commercial farming. This is ironic (and sometimes infuriating) because commercial farmers are well subsidized--even as their practices erode the land, pollute the waterways, and grow food that is inferior both in taste and nutritional value.

Beyond the bugs, life on the farm has presented other battles.  The summer rains, when they finally came, came in torrents leaving the aisles between the tomato plants filled with water (and tadpoles) giving rise to man eating mosquitos that attacked with such vengeance that one day, I opted to wear my raincoat in the 90 degree heat to avoid their ½ inch stingers.  A couple weeks later, when the heat index hit 130 degrees, I stayed home.  The realities of farming were hitting me.

At just about that same time, the tomatoes began to turn from green to yellow, red and purple, depending on the heirloom variety, and I finally had my first taste.  I have always loved tomatoes and usually will serve them with balsamic vinegar, basil and fresh mozzarella cheese.  But these tomatoes were not in the same league as the tomatoes that I’ve had before.  These tomatoes transcended all of that and wanted to be consumed with utmost simplicity:  sea salt and basil. 

On other fronts, I found my reentry to Maryland to be bumpy at best.  In my mind, the summer was to be transitional:  I would continue to work on the farm, but I would also reconnect with family and friends in Baltimore.  I underestimated the difficulty in integrating the peaceful existence free of responsibility that traveling enabled as I waded into the reality of dividing my time between Baltimore and the eastern shore.  All the while, my left arm, which had been troubling me, was finally diagnosed:  frozen shoulder.  Farming suddenly became even more challenging as I lost the use of that arm and my tentative plans for continuing farming for the next year were suddenly thrown up for discussion.  As I watched Jenna, the 32 year old farm manager, work 3 times faster than me and handle large machinery with ease, I began to awaken to my own physical reality:  I am a young 47, but I’m still 47. 

And while I enjoy the eastern shore and the endless joys that it brings:   Turtles crossing the road in the early AM;  Frogs hopping across the road after a rainstorm; Deer everywhere, including a handsome buck with at least 6 points who comes around in the evenings; Bunnies everywhere (there were 6 and now perhaps many fewer); A young fox and raccoon eating fruit from my trees at sunset; The regular sighting of a great blue heron fishing from my landlord's pier;  The occasional sighting of a bald eagle; Picking blackberries off the bushes from behind my house for my yogurt shake; and the occasional summer storm yielding double rainbows galore, I feel the stirrings of a new adventure calling. 

What? That is the question.