Just so you don't think it's all fun and games...

Someone asked me the other day if any of the farm work was really difficult. I told her my nemesis was black plastic.

Black plastic, like anything, has pros and cons. Pros are added heat in a cold climate or north facing slope, and absolute weed control. Cons are the obvious connection to petroleum, and the dread of laying it by hand.

Here at Caretaker Farm, we lay black plastic on the strawberry, cucumber, summer squash, winter squash, eggplant, bell pepper, and melon beds. That turns out to be approximately 5600 bed feet of black plastic. And that doesn't include the extra 2800 feet to be laid in the pathways in between the beds. Fortunately for us, Don rigged up the Kubota to lay 2800 of it, which brings us back to about 5600 feet by hand.

We started with the strawberries, four beds, 200 feet each. The first couple beds went fine: you got your rollers, your hoers, and your throwers. Two people roll out the plastic one-third of the way down the bed and pull to tighten it, then two other people, kneeling, throw on handfuls of soil onto the sides of the bed to secure the plastic down. Sometimes it's necessary for the rollers of the black plastic to go ahead of the throwers and hoe up some soil in order to loosen it just enough to make it throwable. Not so bad, except that another con of black plastic turns out to be that we always lay it in the rain, which is not entirely helpful for morale when your boots get stuck in the muck, or when your $15 ebay rain pants have a leak in the left knee. I have been told I am patient person. It's not true. In the middle of the strawberry beds, trying to throw heavy, clay mud onto the sides of the bed and after pulling myself out of the muck one too many times, I fell apart faster than a cheap toy. Rachel and Patrick can fill you in on the details, but it wasn't pretty.

So one of my goals for the season became "not to fall apart like a cheap toy." Just to make sure I got plenty of practice in this area, I volunteered myself to finish the very last of the black plasticking, a mere 800 feet on the edge of the growing winter squash beds up in the River Field. Solo. After lunch. The perfect challenge, and it was even a sunny day.

The first 200' passed quickly enough. I was stapling down both sides (no soil-throwing), artfully lifting the vines out of the way of the black plastic steamroller so the roll was nearly one smooth motion. And then the staples ran out and the hoeing began. 200 feet of it (slightly more aerobic than the stapling) finished the first row and gave me a false sense of completion.

And then I started in on the Big Rocks (Jack-o-lanterns), aptly named. The sun was becoming my worst enemy, and I wondered at my sanity for having volunteered to do this alone. What kind of a rockstar did I think I was? Clearly I had not taken the time to assess the monstrous amount of growing that the pumpkin plants (despite the pesky cucumber beetle) had done, or I certainly would have kept my mouth shut. The leaves were bigger than my head and the vines were as thick as my leg. No artful pushing here. And no smooth steamroller ride - the soil was so clumpy and uneven that I ended up cursing as much as pushing. And it was getting late - if I was halfway through, I wasn't going to make it back to the house by 6:00, and we had planned a rare apprentice-night-out to catch some free bluegrass on the lawn, deaprting as close to 6:00 as possible. But leaving the black plastic project unfinished was not an option. More cursing and pushing and lifting and hoeing...

And then the light changed when I stood up to hoe, and I realized how stunning the mountains were in the late afternoon sunlight of long shadows. And I remembered part of why I wanted to go into farming in the first place, to be outside all day, to take note of the sun and the bumblebees. And then I looked at my watch and started cursing again.

But I made it. With 10 minutes to spare. Black plastic: check. I've never been so elated in my life.