Thursdays

Brain still fuzzy from my 3am alarm, I strain to add decimals as customers shove vegetable upon vegetable in my face before stashing them away into the recesses of their various bulging market satchels.

From behind the stall, time passes quickly as I watch each customer carefully-- taking pleasure in picking out the shy shoppers from the brazen ones, the chatty from the quiet, the slow from the speedy. I get better at classifying them at first glance as I spend more time behind the table:

1) The easiest to identify are the herds of moms who come, strollers and all, to browse the freshest organic veggies to feed to their munchkins.

2) Then, the old ladies who like to spend fifteen minutes ensuring they have the best bunch in the pile.

3) Also easy to pick out are the tourists, who poke around speaking in foreign languages to their American friends who are busy stocking up for dinner.

4) Relatively easy to identify are the chefs' minions who always come prepared with notebooks and large crates, tasting every vegetable before committing to large orders.

5) A completely different breed of their own, and by far the trickiest to locate, are the high-end chefs themselves. They come in all shapes and sizes, and are often disguised as the most inconspicuous of shoppers. Some of the friendlier ones choose to come behind the stall to chat while others sort quickly through the table, picking out only the best. Like chameleons, they can be spotted wearing almost anything: from dressy button-up shirts and black pants, to top-of-the-line sports gear, to ratty sweatpants with heaving hairy bellies and Birkenstock sandals.

My favorites, however, span all sorts of these so-called "categories". It's the ones that I get to know over the weeks -- each Thursday talking about a different vegetable that needs to be cooked or another grandchild that learned how to walk -- that I end up appreciating the most.

The most regular customer is Lan, the fiery Thai divorcee who loves hanging out at our stall for hours on end, picking through the produce for eternities. Rain or shine, she comes and talks up a storm, going on about her children or her latest dinner and usually complaining loudly that the best men are always gay. Her sharp bob bounces around as she sorts through the veggies and loudly bosses the other customers around, rattling off recipes if anybody asks about a particular vegetable. She squints at each piece of cabbage or squash or at every bushel of beets through her glasses, scrunching up her nose and tilting her chin forward slightly so that she can see every vein and crevice. When she's satisfied with an item, she absent-mindedly holds it in your face (no matter if you're deep in conversation with another customer) until you finally place it in the special pile behind the table that she has come to establish for herself.

But despite her often exasperating behavior, I secretly look forward to her splashy arrival every week. Sometimes bringing some of her delicious food for us to try, she always barges through with a completely confident air, never failing to take away a large amount of produce with her as she scurries away for the week.

Take me home, country roads

Alice through the looking glass

After they've been warmed by the sun all day, you can walk through the trees and actually smell the almonds. The orchard is bursting with soft white flowers and the bees work busily at each tree, sending the sweet aroma of pollen into the warm air.

At first glance the orchard stands still, a lovely and breath-taking bunch of trees. But the longer you stand, the more the trees begin to shake the frame of the postcard photograph they seem to occupy. A quiet breeze rustles the flowers and the bees tremble as the branches sway gently. The whole orchard suddenly comes to life in front of your eyes.

Caution: kids at play

Ribbit

Because of the slow-moving pace of work I have started running after work, just from one side of the farm to the other to keep some sort of basic fitness. The run starts on the gravel driveway towards 16 and then branches off to the right where you first pass a row of juniper trees and then later a pool of brown water in a ditch by the side of the path. It's only shortly after the rustle of the doves fluttering from the trees that you begin to hear the chorus of croaking. Never letting themselves be seen, I always imagine loads of toads crouching in the reeds, only quieting down when I jog noisily by.

For weeks Antonio and I have been arguing over whether they are frogs or toads. But I didn't actually get to see one of them until yesterday when Antonio came and got me from the kitchen as I was washing eggs. He took me out to his pickup and showed me two toads huddling by an old tarp in the back. Or at least I'm pretty sure they're toads. But just to be safe I've temporarily named one of them Frog and the other Toad.

spring forward

If the abundance of baby lambs hadn't been enough of a clue, the amount of gnats I almost swallowed on my run today are certainly a heads up that spring is finally rearing its beautiful head. With rains in recent history the farm is at what I imagine to be the height of its idyllic stage. A warm dose of sun bathes us as we work these days and a sweet breeze keeps us at the perfect temperature for most of the day. Babies are everywhere and plants are fat with green juice. Human lunch time is always brimming with people, kids, dogs. Even lamb lunch time has now turned into a huge event, neighbors send their kids over and all 14 (!) bummer lambs are taken care of individually, royally. Work has dwindled and I am finding myself with more time to be with the animals. Some days I wish there was more work but my coworkers tell me if I stay until April I will soon be swallowing my words.

clear signs

you know you live on a farm when....you get a new computer and two minutes after you open it, a tick crawls across the screen.

compost

The day would have been entirely care-free had it not been for the sobering fact that there were quite a few deaths. The sun was shining high and bright and lunchtime was brimming with visitors to the farm. But while they were all ogling at the cute baby animals, Antonio and I were busy digging graves (which are, by the way, a lot harder to dig than it would seem).

With quite a few lamb deaths under my belt I have to admit I have become more desensitized to the idea of death. And along the way, I've become all too well acquainted with the compost pile: I now know the softest places to dig, the smelliest places to avoid, the easiest side to climb. But even with this knowledge, I still haven't gotten good at remembering the previous graves. This unfortunate amnesic habit turns grave-digging into a morbid version of the Milton Bradley Co game Battleship. You just have to take a lucky guess and hope your shovel wont run into anyone that's already down there.

In the end, however, despite the loss of a baby goat and a ewe, everyone's sun-induced happiness was too contagious to ignore. By the end of the day we were all smiles again and Greg and I chuckled as we watched Antonio leave work, skipping and singing down the driveway.