Several times in the past week or so I found myself on the back porch taking in our less than a fifth of an acre by 6:30 a.m. light. I’m sure anyone who has ever worked a real farm would think this a late start, noting that the sun had already been up almost an hour by then. But that was the time, and that’s where I was more than once.
The reasons for being up and out were probably the same as those on any farm, though: a whole lot to do in a day. Sure, I don’t have acres to the horizon to manage, nor any animals bigger than a chicken to keep. However, my days are occupied by non-farm work — which is how a fraction of an acre crop can call for early rising.
Weekday or weekend, not too much is going on in our neighborhood this early. For a while the mornings are quiet. The chickens are up, clucking, and I’ve been mulching and fertilizing in their company, disrupting them once with a cage cleaning. I planted all the replacements I’d grown (see “The replacements” posted on April 25), putting them to good use where their predecessors had been chewed beyond recovery. I refilled and re-seeded the newly empty pots with replacements for the replacements (just in case). I also reigned in grape vines that had gotten all akimbo.
Neglected weeding dominated more than one morning.
It’s not just caught up but ahead I’ve been trying to get, if such a thing is possible. Classes are heading towards finals, which calls for a burst of grading, but also signals the end of the semester is near. Soon my attention can turn to my own learning and to making our edibles edible. There’s also a feverish nesting to this tidying, as we’re a week overdue in the birth of our first, a girl.
Soon a baby, and the plants will need to be able to take better care of themselves for a while.
