Tuesday, January 26, 2010

farming again in 2010

Crusty fingers and three grain silos.

Yesterday I got lost in Marana. I turned off at Exit 240 and put-putted back and forth down empty roads (now well-familiar), searching for a small 10-acre farm rumored to have a smattering of young, post-graduates and three excitable dogs who don't know the difference between walking paths and vegetable rows. At long last - a half hour late - I drove past these three silos (a beacon from a much larger farming operation down the road) and was greeted by a four-month puppy and a team of twenty-something's eating grapefruit in mud-caked boots and canvas pants.

I harvested a crate full of two kinds of arugula by snipping them with cutters and picking out interwoven grass strands and occasional clumps of dirt. I washed brassicas, chard and long peacock feathers of mustard greens and froze my fingers. I pulled mallow weeds from a carrot and flower bed and when I left, I looked something like Scarecrow from Oz, my fleece jacket spiky with tufts of hay that we padded and poked in between sprouting garlic bulbs.

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