“I’ve got blisters on my fingers” Ringo Starr said once after recording “Helter Skelter”, my favourite song of the Beatles. What a coincidence when I am saying that after picking and squishing beetles, cucumber beetles.

In growing vegetables organically it is not that easy with pests. In the conventional way there are many conventional weapons against insects that let farmers sleep tight. For us there is not a lot of that good stuff which “Kills’em all”, to use my other favorite band’s album title.

Beneficial insects could help, for example lady bugs. Although I have seen 3 lady bugs this spring so far, maybe even the same one 3 times.

So I am becoming a master of squishing the bugs, and I am getting more blisters from it, and in general, from farming. But when you think of people who get or used to get blisters on their fingers, beside Ringo, there are or were Kobe Bryant, Roger Federer, Brett Favre, Fryderyk Chopin, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway (if using typewriter). I am among the coolest then.