Day 57, July 14, 2010

This garden has taken on a life of its own. In doing so, it has chosen to take life from some of its plants.

Excited about the popularity of Roma tomatoes, I decide to inspect them closer, attracted by a reddish hue inside one of the vines. As I get closer, I notice that most of the fruit is miniature, that the bottoms of the tomatoes are not a nice plum shape. They're squared off.

My heart sinks.

Instinctively, I strip all 36 plants of their bad fruit. I fear blight as I notice the sky thickening and an eagle atop the blue silo. This garden has flourished through the dry spell. It is massive and in need of management, and there is a clear threat to my most lucrative crop: tomatoes. After I strip as many of the bad roma tomatoes as I can, I carry them away from the garden. As I stare at the back side of the eagle, I expect it to swoop down and carry away the seven foot black rat snake that frequents the area around my garden and the barn. The snake is the only creature I can imagine that would be worth the eagle's time.

As the eagle swoops low and soars away, I turn my attention to the problem at hand, and call the local University of Connecticut agricultural extension office. I am given to a master gardener associate.

"Sounds like end rot," the master gardener tells me.

"What should I do?" I ask.

"Get rid of the bad tomatoes."

We talk awhile, and he tells me he will mail more information. I research at home, and realize that end rot, or blossom rot, is not a blight. It is more a function of dry soil, and calcium deficiency. As we say goodbye, the rain starts to fall. I am sweaty and filthy. The rain feels great; I imagine the plants will love it more than I do.

I tie a few plants as the water streams from my straw brim. Shambling through the garden, pulling a few weeds, I wonder if my pumpkin jungle will yield healthy pumpkins.

I am seeing a few pumpkins forming: swollen creamy-green lumps between stems and blossoms. I cannot enter the patch to peer for pumpkins the way I can check for cucumbers and tomatoes. Pumpkin yield will be much a surprise as they begin to color. As August yields tired leaves that die on their vines, the pumpkin patch should open up for inspection. Hopefully there will be pumpkins to pick in the patch.

Whenever I spend a few hours at the farm, I feel productive, tired, and often exasperated. I leave with a respect for the generations of experience that farmers pass on to one another. I am starting to understand the gut instincts of a farmer, the life and death decisions that are made every day. The science and the biology that are ingrained in people who grow plants and animals is humbling.