Working on the farm has something in common with the myth about Sisyphus. Especially when you have to weed. You start pulling small weeds in one bed and you are moving to another one. And there are bigger weeds there, some even called smart weeds. For me they are not smarter than a hoe though. But they are stubborn – not wanted; they come back, grow fast, strong and in big quantities.

On the other hand, Sisyphus had only one rock. Maybe big, maybe rough on the edges, but one, easy to control uphill, almost to the top of the mountain. Weeds are more like an avalanche of rocks. I think they actually like to be pulled out, so more can grow back. Cut one head and two will come up.

So I was pulling weeds, crawling in the hot sandy soil, like a lizard without a tail, and suddenly a tractor with a round-up tank passed by on the road. And I thought about this funny coincidence: two ways of approaching the same mountain. But me never getting to the top of course. And I found my useless, never-ending, nonsense job of pulling weeds with my hands, pretty meaningful.

In a bigger picture.

Kelly and Pawel,

I shall be coming to DelaBlu Farm on the 28th. Can’t wait!

Ezra

In March we started it from seed, which is a rare thing to do, but very excitining!

Now it was time to transplant it to the ground. We made a special trench for it and when it will grow a little bit, we will fill the trench with more soil.

A hail storm just passing by on the east of our field on Wednesday
June 17.

It was close, but it didn’t reach us.

By the end of the day we had tornado warning, and later tornado watches for couple of days.

My favorite way to eat spinach is to saute it in butter.
The best match for that would be mashed potatoes on the side.

This year we have a beautiful lettuce mix, very good for fresh, healthy salads. We also planted some Black Seeded Simpson, a bright green leaf lettuce, visible from far, far away while walking towards the field. We took it to the farmers market today for the first time, on June 20.

Garden of Eden was organic, but probably not certified organic.
The Tree of Knowledge between good and evil was spray free.
Can you imagine what kind of fruit it would bare if it wasn’t? Also, the livestock, which was created on the fifth day, was, as far as I am concerned, pasture raised, hormone free.
Food was locally grown in Eden township, and business was family owned.
Every fruit had seed in it too.

I have been told that America was a Garden of Eden.

We are publishing pictures of our crops, to keep you updated on what we grow and what does it look like when harvested.

Check our link Crop Gallery 2009.

If nothing else is ready in the garden, radishes are ready. You can harvest them when the globes stick out of the dirt a little bit. The ancient tradition of eating radishes is to slice them on bread with butter and add some salt. Or even pepper.

There are many things you can bring from a city to a farm: books, better quality beer, fancy shoes, electricity, an iPod, an epidemic or old buttons. What is hard to bring from the city is a good physical condition.

My whole life before farming was spent in a sitting position: as a pupil at school, as a believer in church, as a student at lectures, as a literature major at libraries, at home reading, in buses and trams commuting, at work as a desk-job holder, and after all, and as a result, in clinic waiting rooms.

This is not a song about bad city life. It was just my case: not enough motion. Now I am moving most of my day. Now I sit with pleasure, while looking at the field, in the shade, having a break. It is not a pastoral though. I am trying to catch my breath. My body is forgetting about soreness from yesterday’s work, because there is enough soreness from today’s work. My shirt is sticking to my back and my hair to my hat and forehead, while flies and gnats are swimming in my sweat.

It is not an idyll; I don’t even own a single sheep, like those shepherds in the romanticized rural paintings…I might get some in the future, though.