Day 105, August 31, 2010

One-hundred-and-five days. That's nearly four months. What did I do? I found a farm. I borrowed some land, planted plants, and sowed seeds. At times, it rained. We also had weeks of dry sunshine. I remember, in the beginning, watering my tomato seedlings with gallons of bottled spring water, just to keep them sturdy. I met real farmers, came to admire many, and harvested, enjoyed eating, and sold crops to restaurants, Innes and spas. And now, with the beans and cucumbers fading, the pumpkins maturing, and autumn stirring, I have decided to continue this blog. Yes, I should have started farming years ago, but there is a reason I have followed the path I have taken, and perhaps it is why I see so much of a future on the land.

From this point forward, Some Country for Old Ben will be a discussion of my dreams, concepts and thoughts born out of the time I have spent as a guest of George and Anne Brown at Wychwood Farm. The dialogue will be both emotional and practical. It will invite debate and action on my belief that a farm can become a working agricultural community. It can become a place to raise a family, or retire. A place to work, and grow the prominence of Connecticut-grown agricultural products... a place to flourish and a concept to be replicated as often as possible.

Over the past few weeks, I have discussed my initial vision with professionals in Real Estate, Planning and Zoning, Land Use Law, Clergy, and several others. The people I have spoken with are unanimous in their enthusiasm and have offered to help where possible. Although there is likely several years of hard work even before we clear our first road, including finding and optioning a candidate farm, I believe this concept is feasible... simply because it makes so much sense. Simply because it has the potential to help people who deserve to be helped. Simply because it takes us back to a time and place where neighbors were valued over privacy.

I know that there are lots of interesting, intelligent people who have been following this blog. I invite each and every one of you to spread the word about the blog, its important new direction, and about my need to have feedback about this farm community concept. In return, I promise to provide a lively forum, as well as real time discussion of the efforts going into it.

Please show your support by becoming more visible, sharing your interest, experiences, and passion.

Day 101, August 27, 2010

The most promising prospects for the future of our communities mostly lie fallow. They rest before their forgotten fields, peeling, rotting hollow shells. These once-prominent farm homes are often the step children of bitter disputes between ambitious developers and local zoning boards. Eventually, these farms fall, one-by-one, and often like children of thoughtless, irrational divorce, the results are long-lasting and difficult to cure.

Quite often, the only ones able to pay for intact farms are big developers with big box tenants. It seems that every time a new Stop & Shop opens on virgin land, another one down the road simply closes, becomes a Home Depot or Lowes. The new stores get bigger, and yet the cost of groceries never seems to go down with these ostensibly new efficiencies. I believe that store development is a predatory practice which weakens the entire market over time.

It's been the same way with housing. We have become a land of sub divisions and cul de sacs....

Everyone wants land and privacy, and the result is miles and miles of roads and utilities, and expenses to municipalities... All in the name of two acre zoning, and higher taxes. Each and every family must now tame the wilderness around them. They wonder why there are bears in their beds, and bucks on their blossoms, and why they must drive everywhere... in a vehicle sufficient to transport their woodland beasts to a distant park.

It seems that the places we best remember living and playing in as kids are the traditional neighborhoods. These are simple villages or towns. Places like Noank or Mystic Connecticut, or Upper Montclair, New Jersey. There are narrower streets with single and two family homes, with neighbors living closer together. There are parks and places of worship, and stores in scale with the community. When we were children, octogenarians lived next door to starter families. Today, these are the most desirable communities, but as the authors of Suburban Nation point out in their treatise on new urbanism, it is mostly illegal to build the communities that seem to make the most sense to an enduring quality of life. Our present system of zoning encourages, unintentionally, it would seem, the consumption of vast amounts of land for relatively small, select, groups of homeowners.

Four months in the field, on a farm, have brought back challenge, peace and quiet, and reflection to my life. Soon, my crops will return to the ground, but I hope to take from my experience a purpose and a passion to preserve farms, bring awareness to their value. I believe that there are forces in motion that respect and reward a local way of life. Yet, if the answers were all apparent, then everyone would be doing it. There are options to traditional development, and it is our responsibility as a region to serve a common good.

We still need supermarkets, and Walmart is not going away. Nor should it! Yet with the decline in property values to more realistic levels, and with the unfortunate, but necessary diminishment of our immediate expectations, it may be possible to change the term, "Highest and Best Use" to simply "Best Use." And who better to put valuable property to use for, than the needs of an entire community?

In the end, we have engaged in an experiment in whiz-kid thinking since the end of World War II. This experiment has led to a consumption society, where our value as humans has been measured by the size of our homes, and the depth of our soft drinks. We drink "Tanks" of Iced Coffee, and the only way to afford the Suburban and the Food Service Gas Grill in the back of a raised ranch is to convince more of us to buy one, too.

There is something about a farm and a living community that is exciting. There's something appealing about being able to count on our neighbors, or simply walking, breathing... and living again.

Day 95, August 21, 2010

This garden is full. There is not an inch to spare. The tomatoes are so heavy with fruit, the support strings that I tied to the stakes have snapped. The only way to check the romas and cherries for ripe fruit is to lift matted sections of vine from the ground. I often find large red masses, and the dirty tomatoes are fine with a quick rinse.

I have to admit that I have been very busy taking care of my customers, basically harvesting, delivering and eating my share. Weeding has been ignored. Today, however, I intend to weed whack the borders and weed the cucumber and flower patches. The cucumber area is, I believe, a premonition of autumn. O.K., there are still yellow flowers, and the cukes, bless their evil seed, are quite robust. At the same time, the patches, especially with the weeds removed, are thinning, and the leaves and vines are whitening, and becoming thin and brittle. Except for the edges, where new growth pushes forward. Onward, and into the Jalapeno garden.

Sometimes I am temped to just end the cucumber patches. I fantasize standing in the middle of the pickling cukes, ripping up each hill, swinging the three plants in lasso fashion up, up and over the ten-foot sunflowers. On the other hand, I love all life, even invasive vegetables. Although many of the cucumbers are swelling to seed, and flying over the wall, I am committed to caring for them, and getting as many as possible to customers or friends. All this, in spite of the fact that cukes are now fetching between thirty five and fifty cents per pound. Erg!

On the other hand, the tomatillos look like a festive Cinco de Mayo party, each fruit with its own protective lantern. The bees are drunk and seemingly unsteady from the thousands of blossoms in our tomatillo hedge. I wonder if there is mescal in the pollen, the bees so love these plants.

We'd like to harvest the tomatillos, and we have a Mexican restaurant who will take them, but they are slow to ripen. I want to make a batch of salsa with some of the tomatillos, but I am still afraid of this fruit. Debbie said to cook them under the broiler, but I also hear of some cutting them up raw and adding to a salsa. Eventually, I'll figure it out. If not this season, perhaps next.

I have to admit, this is a very beautiful time of the season. I worked my butt off today, and my hands feel a little rougher and I am tired. In my garden weeds are more than little patches of chickweed. Within weeks, entire saplings can grow as fast as sunflowers, and often as tall if left unattended. Sadly, I have been unable to identify most of the weeds that grow at Wychwood Farm, but I know they gotta go!

Perhaps, however, the most invasive species in my garden, are the plants I have planted. For example, the pumpkins continue to stretch their vines, marching over whatever gets in their way. Today I decide to take a walk through the corn rows, and as I pass by each one, I can see where the pumpkins have toppled entire corn stalks in their alien invasion.

Amazing, it is, how the early view of our grandest visions is so much clearer than August 21st with sweat in your eyes.

Day 94, August 20, 2010

There it is! It appears to me to be fluorescent orange, like a maritime safety marker. A welcome apparition glinting in a sea of fading green.

Black-green stem tight to the vine, an umbilical cord, of sorts. This baby's been growing outside, on mother earth, all summer. She's been basking in rain and haze. Thriving in dousings and dry spells. Giant leaves are still guarding her from the late August sun, and I cannot wait to cut the cord.

It's a symbolic harvest. Honestly , it's all about wanting to be the first in Noank to put out a pumpkin.

I cut the pumpkin free. It's unceremonious, but it feels good to this hunter- gatherer to be gathering a new crop in the garden. We tried our first cantaloupe yesterday, and today I will leave our second for Farmer Brown and his wife. Nevertheless, I am certain that I'll be bitching about harvesting pumpkins, before long.

For the first time, I am able to see evidence of her brothers and sisters in the pumpkin patch. Most of the young pumpkins are military green, growing rapidly. I believe that as the leaves become brittle, the gourds grow faster. There are a variety of sizes, and since I am growing "Jack-o-lantern" and "Howell" cultivers, there will be a

wonderful variety of sizes and shapes. I have a feeling we're about to have a pumpkin boom, as the entire patch is about 1/8 of an acre. The vines have run into, and trampled some of the cosmos and bean plants, and on the other side, they have infiltrated the corn rows.

My red-handled garden shears cut through the stem easily. It's a wet stem, looks like a unique fiber. It'll dry quickly, and like human cord, it should eventually fall off. I inspect the pumkin, and it looks pretty good for being field-grown. No pesticides. No fertilizer. A 30-pounder... A Great Pumpkin in August? Good Grief!

Day 92, August 18, 2010

BUSTED!

When I first found this brilliant garden slug sucking on one of my prized Beefsteaks, I assumed that the tomato meal had changed the slug's color. In reality, it appears that I met up with a European import. It is called The Red Slug (Arion rufus). This tomato thief grows to four inches (10 cm), but can reach a length of seven inches (18 cm). I love finding unusual surprises in the garden, knew they'd appear, planted enough for unexpected guests, friends, and customers alike.

Notice how Big Red stretches as he attempts to flee, during an impromptu photo session. In truth, this wannabe sprinter actually learned to fly when I tossed the slimy ginger slug, and the embattled Beefsteak, into a swampy beck at the edge of the field.

Didn't get much time in the garden today. It was pretty much a matter of picking beefsteak and Brandywine tomatoes. Kind of nice having customers who will take all the tomatoes we can grow. Wish it were the case with the cukes.

When I am at the garden, I normally take time to smell the roses, so to speak. I like to check out the pumpkins, the cantaloupes and other more-fun-than-cucumber/green bean patches. I'm really tired of the cucumbers, and I'm sick of the green beans.

On the other hand, just the other day, Debbie made a delicious three bean salad, and she used our green beans in the recipe. It was a simple salad, blended in a whole grain dijon vinaigrette. It was simple, all right, and simplicity, I believe, is the essence of indulgence.

Check it out. One can make it, I believe, by following the above photo.

Day 91, August 17, 2010

Wedged between the doors of his unmarked Crown Victoria, radar snout to his forehead, the trooper looks like a comical alligator in what appears, in blurry vision, to be grey and green. He's stalking me in the weeds along Route 2 just outside of Colchester.

But I have Brandywine, Beeefsteak and Roma tomatoes in my truck, so I'm driving carefully and well within the requirements required of me this humid, sultry Tuesday. The snack delivery to Sysco went easily, so I'm ahead of schedule.

I'll stop at the Spa and Inn at Norwich, then make a couple of deliveries at Foxwoods. After that, it's an hour at the farm, meet up with Deb, and it's off to The Ocean House in Watch Hill, Rhode Island.

In Watch Hill, Corvettes have been supplanted by Ferrari's, but my crusty box truck feels right at home among the other trucks and vans at the $140 million Inn's service entrance. The hotel is magnificent, and several hundred yards out and down in the distance, cloth cabanas flutter in the rarified August air. I suspect that the Inn's multi-star service extends to the breakers rolling up on the beach.

Eventually, we find Forager, Pam Stone's office at the end of a long hallway. The layout feels busy, complex, and very professional. We can tell that Pam is busy, and in spite of the

fact that she offers us a tour of the upstairs, we know that it would be impolite to accept her offer.

Pam joins us at the tailgate of my truck and decides that we should bring in the Brandywines, Beefsteaks and Roma Tomatoes. "Do you have Mystic Chips?" she asks

"Right here," I answer, grabbing a bag from a case I luckily have in the truck.

"Great," she adds. Debbie laughs because she knows I pulled that one out of my hat.

Inside the kitchen, the Inn's Executive Chef joins us. There must be fifteen or twenty food professionals at various stations, stirring, mixing, decorating and simmering. Chef grabs a Roma, and in a blur, the fruit is sliced in two. He inspects it, sprinkles kosher salt on it, and eats it.

"Beautiful, he declares, comparing the Roma to the same cultiver from another farm they deal with. I smile, still contending in my mind that my tomatoes need no salt, but I know many love salt on tomatoes, so what do I know?

Chef looks at the collection of Brandywines, decides he doesn't want them. I grab a "split," taking a risk, and offer it to the tall, bespectacled chef. "Please try this. I dare you." He takes it, smiling and wields his razor-sharp knife. In seconds, six sections of the tomato lay before us. He sprinkles salt, offers a slice to Pam, and declares, "These are wonderful!"

By the end of the meeting, they have taken most of our tomatoes, and Pam asks me to call for an end-of-the-week order. I feel certain that they'll use the Mystic Chips, but I have learned never to count on an order until it is is hand.

On the way out of Watch Hill, we grab an iced coffee at The Cooked Goose. Chef Andrew Nathan is there to greet us. It's fun to reacquaint with an old customer and friend. On the way out Andrew places a small order for cherry tomatoes and green beans.

We stop at the farm to grab Debbie's car, pick tomatoes and beans for a half hour. It feels a little sad at the farm. Plants are thinning out, and the sun is setting earlier and earlier. At the same time, I feel energized, knowing that this experience is opening new opportunities, and each day, a strategy for the future becomes more and more apparent.

Copyright 2010, Ben Greenfield, All Rights Reserved

Day 88, August 14, 2010

It starts out with a tired but happy camper.

It's Elizabeth's homecoming from a week at a little woodland camp about ten miles from the farm. Right now she's napping in the back seat. There's a cool breeze blowing, and I need to pick twenty pounds of green beans for Dog Watch Cafe in Stonington. I leave the car windows wide open. We're parked next to the barn and the path to the garden is a tomato toss from the car. Either Eminem or Lady Ga Ga, or some synthesized post-pubescent pop radio lullaby serenades my slumbering ten-year-old daughter as Deb and I prepare for the drudgery of bean picking.

Ten minutes later Elizabeth emerges from the car. She looks taller than I remember her, ambling down the path to the garden. She's thinking about the birthday party this afternoon, and picking beans doesn't seem to suit her sensibilities. Regardless, she joins us, a quiet cheerfulness, almost awkward and foreign to her life. As though she is visiting her immigrant father, whom she rarely sees. A Walker Evans Life photo shoot, of sorts.

In spite of her misgivings, Elizabeth picks beans, and by the time the crate is full, she's fully involved. In fact, she is smiling.

"Que hija hermosa! Gracias." "What a beautiful daughter! Thank you," I say.

"Dad, I don't speak Spanish," she says.

"You will, sweetie... you will," I say with a hug and a sinister chuckle.

Afterwards, we pick up a gift certificate, a card, and some peppermint horse treats at The Paddock (http://www.thepaddockinc.com/). Elizabeth's friend is an avid

equestrian. The countdown to the birthday pool party begins. We drop her off at the birthday girl's house. I think, what a great homecoming.

Before we can return to The Farm, we must deliver the green beans to Dog Watch Cafe in Stonington. We arrive in the tony borough, dusty and smudgy crop carriers. I feel the contrast with the tightly woven plaid Egyptian cotton set. I no longer feel in contention for the Lily Pulitzer prize. Besides, my writing has years to go before I deserve such an honor.

Nevertheless, I like the contrasts. The friends I see in the street are the same, my customers work as hard, if not harder, than I do. I realize that I have nothing to prove... but much to accomplish. On my own terms. I like farming.

Chef Jim receives the green beans, but he explains that the beans from the last order kept turning brown. I can not imagine what the problem could be.

"How are you preparing them?" I ask.

"We blanch them, then they go into an ice water bath."

"Jim. I have no idea what could be wrong. There are no additives or pesticides..."

"Let's try them again..." he suggests, and he gives me his business card. "Call me next week."

Driving to the farm, I explain to Debbie about Jim's comment about the browning green beans.

"Baking soda."

"Huh?"

"Baking soda. Add it to the cooking water, and it will help preserve the greenness." Deb finds a web article on her IPhone to support her assertion. It discusses chlorophyll and minerals and adds a cautionary statement about the use of baking soda, but all in all, it makes sense. Since I now have Jim's phone number, I call him, passing on the suggestion.

"Thanks, Ben."

Later, I find interesting comments from a blog by Kathy Maister's Startcooking.com. It appears that lots of people experience the discoloration of green vegetables, but Debbie's obscure, modern homemaker reference to baking soda is amazing. (http://startcooking.com/blog/195/A-Guide-to-Green-Beans)

The day is slipping away, perhaps as rapidly as the power of the shifting sun in this transitional season. Pumpkin and cucumber leaves are becoming brittle, and the other day Rick Whittle, at Whittle's Farm, told me he just planted a new crop of cucumbers. "There's enough days left," he tells me. I'm thinking that they'll never get the yield we got with the first planting, but then again, what do I know. Im just in the novitiate stage before joining this temple of green.

Debbie is hoping to take us to Providence to see one of the final Waterfire events of the season. http://www.waterfire.org/. I'm fine with it, but as we weed and harvest, and talk and inspect, and well, you know, the day runs out. The birds and the bees fly away.

The curtain is closing on this busy, beautiful day.

"Let's make something with the Brandywine sauce."

"Yeah?" I'm thinking meatballs.

"Let's buy a bag of shrimp and some shells."

"I like spaghetti."

"Ben. You need a shell-type pasta for shrimp."

"O.K."

It goes something like that. On our way home, we stop at a Stop & Shop and buy the pasta, shrimp, and a bunch of other stuff. On the way out, a shopping cart kid starts telling us how frustrated he gets when people leave shopping carts at the multiplex

three hundred yards away.

"Hey," I tell him. "You might not appreciate this right now, but the exercise you're getting will serve you well. I consider you lucky."

"Maybe," he responds... "But rude people sure suck."

We chat in the dimming light, the cobalt sky above. Then we say our goodbyes, and as we get into the car, Debbie grabs a red zinnia she'd picked earlier at the garden. She takes it from a large kitchen bouquet resting on the back seat. "Here, this is for you." she plucks the stem, and places it in a button hole on his polo. "A boutonniere because you are the nicest carriage attendant I've ever met."

"Thanks." The boy smiles an awkward smile. "Only time I've ever gotten one of these is at homecoming."

Somehow, every day, the farm becomes a metaphor for a day well lived.

Copyright 2010, Ben Greenfield,

All Rights Reserved

day 87, August 13, 2010

It is 1:30 and somehow I've ended up at home after a busy morning. I've decided to make a marinara sauce using some of my split Brandywine tomatoes, using a post from What's For Dinner Across State Lines. What's For Dinner Across State Lines: Marinara Sauce with Brandywine Tomatoes:

Since I'm sharing Gina and Robbyn's post, I'll borrow their colorful shot of split tomatoes on a bake sheet! Honestly, I had already started steaming the tomatoes to release the skins before I got to the spot in their recipe suggesting the use of a baking sheet. Guess I'll make two batches, and I'll report back if this man's tin tongue perceives a perceptible difference.

All in all, I've had a really satisfying day, feeling like the king of blog queens. To wit, I woke up to a wonderful compliment from journalist/author Jennifer Skiff with a simple four-word compliment: "I love your Blog." Jennifer has published God Stories, Inspiring Encounters with the Divine (http://www.Godstories.com), and is compiling and editing her second collection, entitled, The Divinity of Dogs, a collection of Spiritually Enlightening Canine Interventions. I'm not sure late black lab, Chelsea, ever led an intervention on my behalf, but she had wonderful eye contact, could carry a rolled up newspaper and drop it on a

doorstep. Her spirit still shines in my heart. Her memory gives me strength and a smile. Guess that's why I plan to submit a story; hope you will, too!

Another gardening blogger from California wrote to compliment "the beautiful and humorous voice" of my blog, and to advise me to fill out my profile a bit more. Good advice, it seems. Her blog, The Gardeners Anonymous Blog is colorful, eclectic and useful. http://www.chigiy.com/the_gardeners_anonymous_b/2010/08/sierra-azul-sculpture-garden.html . Chigiy has another blog, as well, Doggie Heaven Hotel, sure to resonate with the canine clique, especially because her experiences are amusing and honest. (http://www.doggieheavenhotel.com/) Hopefully, Chigiy will check out Jennifer's Divinity of Dogs site... I'd love to be a match maker!

Finally, Debbie's sister wrote to compliment the blog, and then we spoke about an idea she has for surplus tomatoes. I love it when everyone gets involved.

Copyright 2010, Ben Greenfield, All Rights Reserved

Day 86, August 12, 2010

As I schlep my wares to and from the area's better eateries, I'm starting to understand the diverse nature of the chefs I've been meeting. The way they go about their work is not unlike a painter or a photographer.

Consider, if you will, the selection of tomatoes. Chef Dan at the Spa at Norwich Inn (http://www.thespaatnorwichinn.com/) does not like to use Brandywine Tomatoes with rough tops. He's looking for a more perfect tomato, like, for example, my Beefsteak. On the other hand, The chefs at The Ocean House (http://www.oceanhouseri.com/index-alt.php), whom I have yet to meet, have welcomed my Brandywines... at least the first twenty pounds. "We'll take the splits, and we'll use them for soups and sauces, " says Pam Stone, Food Forager. And so it goes with cuisine: painters and chefs are artists, and no two artists see exactly the same way.

Regardless of what one chef may decree, I know that the Brandywine tomatoes coming from the farm, are perfect beyond description, and yet their tops are rough. I normally slice this portion off, and the balance of the tomato is pure summer sublime. I find that some chefs also do this, and some don't. What I have learned is that it is important to be versatile, and to have more than one solution in hand. Listen. Be helpful.

What I have also learned is that although I am selling pathetically small dollar amounts of product to these establishments, I am developing a good rapport with my customers, and it all feels suspiciously like my earliest days with Mystic Chips. I guess that it all depends on what I choose to do once the garden has died down, and there are no cucumbers and bush beans to wrestle with.

Part of listening is followup. When Chef Dan mentions the cosmetic aspect of the brandywine tomatoes, I visit Malerba's Farm and speak with one of their growers. I learn that uneven watering can cause cracking. Although they don't refer specifically to the top of the tomato, it makes sense, and for the second half of the

season I am going to try to water more consistently.

So, here I am, my days are full, working the remains of my company, trying to grow it where I can. Every spare hour is dedicated to growing my garden, peddling produce and building a new base of customers. Seems if I have something good to sell, they'll buy.

Life is funny that way!

P.S. I received the nicest comment from http://www.gardenersanonymous.com/ yesterday. I return the compliment by recommending her gardening blog, thank you Chigiy!

Copyright 2010, Ben Greenfield, All Rights Reserved

day 83, August 9, 2010

As a fledgling farmer, I'm starting to feel oddly self-conscious about who I am becoming. Ever since I first sunk a shovel into this earthbound incarnation, I have noticed a change in my appearance. The tidy J. Crew shorts, vacation and regatta T's I wore last summer are now faded, frayed and shabby... with the shmutzy stains of the blood of beetles, cukes and tomatoes. There is soil and chlorophyll goop embedded in the skin covering my fingers. Debbie insists I need a manicure.

Although I am still passionate about my mission, I wonder if I've been on a three-month acid trip. The field has started to talk to me. Of course, there are the hawks and their bottle rocket whistles. Then there are the yellow finches feeding on thistles, bathing in the dusty,diffused afternoon sunlight, chattily chirping. These are the sounds that lull me into the land. Once there I enjoy a deeper dialogue with my garden.

Like a good friend, this garden is a great listener.

This afternoon, I was crawling through the cucumbers, picking and piling them until I couldn't stand it. There are skeletal remains of turkey parts in the field. Farmer Brown raises the tasty gobblers for Thanksgiving. The seasonal production creates a wonderful mulch. I have found the mummified remains of many turkey feet and heads during the course of my farming apprenticeship. Debbie calls the feet "mojos." I usually toss them to the side, and over the wall when I can.

Sometimes this field tells to me to be careful. It warns me not to go beyond the wall, that giant stone wall that separates this small field from a woodland swamp. The entrance to the swamp is a tangled wall of bittersweet and giant weeds whose broad leaves mimic our friendly sunflowers.

I meant to ask the field where all of the toads have gone. Might they have been eaten by our resident black rat snake, all of seven feet in june? How big is that snake now, and could it come to me in the barn basement, as a giant serpent, as I attempt to turn on the water? We talkin' Garden of Eden?

The field warns me that there is terror in the pumpkin patch. This impenetrable system has revealed only one gourd, a big one which started coloring today. Where are all of the other pumpkins, and why do the looming vines and their creepy tendrils choose to crush my gentle cosmos? Why, in this peaceful environment, must they crowd my corn and convert two rows of bush beans into has beens?

This field, this sharecropper's paradise is shrouded in deep mystery. Perhaps the turkey compost is the cause of the tomato blossom end rot... too much nitrogen in the soil. Hmmm... Maybe the reason for my whimsical ruminations.

The field tells me, repeatedly, that I am here for a reason. It is up to me, of course, to figure it all out. In my daydreams, every split tomato can be an alien embryo, and sometimes when I cannot stand another end-rot tomato, I throw it to the ground. As it smashes, I fully expect to hear the hiss of poisonous gas. While I'm at it, maybe encounter a giant tomato worm. As I prepare to do battle, or run like hell, a giant wasp chooses this ugly worm, with its toxic horn, as an incubator.

I have come to believe that this garden is paradise. It is a heavenly shelter, beyond biblical proportion. Like life incarnate, this task is worth the ardor, the travail, the constant heartache.

Seems there's a magical measure of fantasy in this plot. If truth be the antithesis of fantasy, then let this be fantastic.

Acid test? Far out!

Day 81, August 7, 2010

Friday dawns calmer and brighter, but it is a day of contrasts. Early morning doctor's appointment in New Haven. Dash back to Noank in the hope that I can find a few extra hours on the farm before taking Elizabeth to New London for her dental appointment.

Sad fact. There will be no time at the farm until Elizabeth's teeth are clean and she's been deposited at her friend's house by three-o-clock. It's sleepover season!

As I approach Wychwood Farm, it is close to four-o-clock. The sky is blackening. Large drops of rain begin to fall as a dry front approaches. Screw the rain! I'm determined to make it into the field, and something tells me that this is not lasting rain. Correct! All the same, I want to run home. I am alone in a field that could use at least four pickers. The Bush Beans are large and ready-to-pick. The cucumber patch is ridiculously overgrown and in need of harvesting and weeding. There is general grooming and weeding to do, and beautiful tomatoes ripen daily.

Window into Ben? He's pensive. Reflective. Hates his cucumber patch because they just keep coming. Can't sell them all fast enough. The spiky leaves and spines do not like, and therefore mock, Ben's hands and forearms. When the day is done, and the cukes have been handled more than sanity warrants, folks are paying less than a half-a-dollar a pound.

Window into the moment? There's about 150 pounds of cukes I'd love to give away. Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center? Do they take fresh produce? Any picklers among their clientele? All I can do is leave a message for Vicky Anderson on a sunny Saturday, and hope she calls back before I donate them to the dumpster.

The bush beans.... there are so many of them, and the forager from The Ocean House needs to return my call. Anxiety? I don't have a nice walk-in chiller, just a couple of crummy refrigerators, so it makes sense for me to pick to order.

Customers? Prospects? I remember, weeks ago, when the cukes were first

blossoms, Walter at Water Street Cafe telling me that he can take lots of cukes. He tells me about the fabulous soups and salads he makes. Yet, when I greet him, flat on his denim back, on wet terra cotta tile, at 7:30 early this morning, he's sawing pvc pipe under his clogged two-bay sink. He growls at me, and I feel like a common nuisance. Therefore, while I'm in nuisance mode I remind him that he wants to take all my cukes and tomatoes. My friend of twenty years sends me packing, my timing lacking.

Noah's, on the other hand, is busy with smartly-dressed breakfast folk, fresh from matching, air-conditioned suvs. The manager on duty is prettier, and at the moment, more cheerful than Walter. She recounts a college writing course she'd taken with my oldest son, Sam.

A smile. A lead. Call back after three. I agree!

On my way back to the car, I check with Theresa at Theresa's and she wants to sell some of my produce at her deli. She's talking tomatoes, but I'm thinking she needs some of those damn cukes, a few jalapenos, and a good slug of beans! We shall see.

Finally, Milagro! Tiny, wonderful, busy Authentic Mexican restaurant across from Water Street Cafe. Closed. This is the building where Walter got his start, so many years ago. This is the spot where a talented chef and wife partner introduced their magical fare to the borough nearly thirty years ago. It's a lucky location for any new-comer, as has been the case for Milagro and owner-chef, Martine.

You see, a garden takes so much physical energy, and the stimulant that creates exigency is simply demand... from customers, friends, whomever. I feel sad and annoyed when I sense that food is about to be wasted. On the other hand, I get a thrill out of selling seven dollars worth of peppers and cukes, feel like a boy on a paper route. I have decided that I have always been a peddler. There's a beautiful simplicity in sourcing or creating a product and taking it out to waiting customers. There's even a thrill in rejection, in regrouping and going at it again... or simply going to the next waiting prospect.

Alone at the farm, hopeful at my new produce prospects in Stonington Borough, I approach the field with renewed purpose and a four stroke weed whacker. It's a little past nine, Debbie's working until noon, and her mom and dad are coming by to pick cukes for a personal pickling project. I decide to clean the field up, make a path around the corn patch. For over an hour, the weed whacker growls and whips the weeds into green confetti. Harvesting and weeding in the cucumber patch continues to annoy me, and after an hour, I decide to go home for lunch and a break from my agricultural agony.

When I return, I walk the field, picking tomatoes, considering each for its beauty and perfection, and leaving them in a shallow box at the edge of the patch. Soon, Debbie arrives with her mom and dad. Meet May and Dick. They both seem a little overwhelmed at the scope of our endeavor, but I assure them that every good, successful, venture I have undertaken has seemed insane at the outset. Seemingly satisfied by my disingenuous excuse for an obvious breach in my career, they set out to the cucumber patch. My little hollow of horrors.

May and Dick are each 75. Watching them in the cucumber patch has made this project worth every hour. May has done this before. She finds a cucumber, calls to Dick who stands, wiping his brow, at the edge. "Here's one," she calls. She mixes her tosses like a major league pitcher. After 54 years of marriage, one would wonder what sort of emotion is behind each toss.

"Here, I got it," Dick cries, and the large slicing cucumber finds its way into his palm.

May is waiting, with two more. One she tosses to me, which I grab in mid-air, and the other goes to Dick.

"Ow!" This one finds Dick's chest and bounces awkwardly to the ground.

"Hey, don't bruise them!" Debbie laughs.

After cucumbers, they take some tomatoes, and May picks a beautiful kitchen bouquet of zinnias, snapdragons and cosmos. Once they are gone, Deb picks green beans until she can pick no more. I speak to the chef at Noah's, walking through the field, convincing him, hopefully, that we are not prima donna farmers. I am told to call next week! So, in the end, we clean up, walk around the field, play in the corn rows and come home. Later that evening, we throw away a prodigious amount of cucumbers. Sadly, they were suitable only for compost, hogs, or chickens. I do not yet have such a network. We stop at Milagro for a drink, but it is too busy for us, but it was nice to meet Martine, to see his appreciation for tomatillos and jalapeno peppers.

Day 79, August 5, 2010

It's 8:20. Everyone in the house should be up, but no one really is. I let our feral cat, Lilly Hinckley, in and I can feel the heavy, saturated August air. The sky rumbles ten miles away. It feels, and sounds, like a distant Shakespearean premonition. A dark and dangerous day dawns.

"You working today," I ask Jay.

"What time is it?" he whispers into his pillow as thunder crashes into our house. Rafters and joists rattle. Big drops of rain start to pour

in a cinematic blur.

"About 8:20. You going to take the van? Looks snotty outside," I explain to my sailing instructor son. I use my most embarrassing nautical lingo. Jay expects nothing less from me.

"I'll take the Whaler... likelihood of getting zapped is practically nil." Savoring his hubris, I'm wondering whether on-water safety is part of the curriculum that Jay teaches at Masons Island.

Jay leaves, seemingly washed from our front step, down Front Street fifty yards, and dropped into his eleven-foot Boston Whaler. In the meantime, incredulous at Jay's actuarial threat assessment prowess, I retreat to my computer. A massive lightening strike triggers a utility circuit and the lights go out, along with my computer. As the power returns seconds later, I hear a moaning siren.

As the siren grows louder, it feels like it is coming from inside the house. It's a troubling sound, and I want to find a logical explanation. The dryer vent? A utility alarm in one of the boxes on the poles outside? I step out, draping one of Elizabeth's coats over my head. The rain feels good on my feet,but the siren spooks me. It is everywhere, like light, and I think of Cormac McCarthy's book, "The Road." Yes, it's a pre-apocalyptic feeling.

As much as I am thrilled at the rain, what it does for my crops at the farm, there's a deep lump in my throat, and a feeling of being totally powerless to locate the siren. The prospect of a sudden hot flash of light, and nuclear oblivion, is all too real. Especially with this phantom soundtrack blaring and scaring.

In the end, as the morning plays out, I learn that Jay decided against the stormy river crossing.

"Really? What changed your mind?"

"I guess I got scared when a boat on a mooring, about a hundred feet away got struck by lightning." Jay says he closed his eyes because he wasn't sure if he was being electrocuted. "Driving through the storm was fun, until I got a flat tire."

Deb's sister, Sue, calls, just as the storm is ending. She wants to know if there had been any tornado activity in our area. Apparently our civil servants had activated the early warning alarms, and the reverse 911 call came in after the storm had blown over. In hind sight, it all makes sense, but the terror of the alarms will live with me, can never leave.

It's hard to tell how much rain we got at the farm. Hours later, I can feel the wetness of the ripe cherry tomatoes. I harvested a bunch of tomatoes today, and delivered the lot to Frankie at The Universal in Noank. The field is so oppressively wet and hot that it is tough to work. The bees are all about, and I guess the corn has reached a pubescent stage. From each gangly stalk, ears are developing, each with an awkward shock of golden silk.

Everything in the garden is growing at breakneck speed. Our cantaloupes are big and round, solid and sound. Although I cannot tell how many pumpkins are in the large field, I know we have a few very large green ones.

It has been a strange day. Yet, in a way, it is equally pleasurable to follow the development of a garden, from seed to harvest. I hope we never experience the sirens that lead to blinding white nuclear light. If we do, I think I'd like to be somewhere in the garden, far from warning.

I'd rather be tending to a life incapable of such mischief.

Day 77, August 3, 2010

Debbie is likely among the millions of uninsured Americans. Professionally, she's a Dental Hygienist (Think, "Have you been flossing?"). She lost her job after breaking her arm in a skiing accident. It was then she learned that the job security and benefits she'd enjoyed for twenty years had vanished along with most of our 401K's and home equity values.

Lately, she has been feeling a tingling sensation in her right hand, After a bout of self-diagnosis, she has determined that she might have some form of carpal tunnel syndrome. She says that the tingling goes away after a while.

"Think it might be work-related?"

"No, it would have happened years ago, and my work is not repetitive in that way."

"Think it might be the farm?"

"Maybe the weeding."

"You think so? After only two months? After only one or two days a week?"

"I don't know.... Oh, look! Yoga for carpal tunnel syndrome!!"

She shows a picture, on her IPhone, of a brunette yogini in reverse namaste, my least favorite pose.

"Try it, Deb," I cheer, and she obliges. "You can do it better than I can," I admit. Looks like we both have short tendons, which makes certain poses more awkward than others.

"Aw, come on.... I can do anything you can do better." Deb laughs.

"No, Anything you can do, I can do better!" I smile, waiting for the band to strike up from "Annie Get Your Gun."

Next, she tries Eagle arms, and I'm starting to miss yoga, and its reputation as a panacea, a logical tonic for all of life's ills. In fact, shortly after I met Deb, I convinced her to try yoga, and she tried it... says she liked it.

So, when Debbie gets home, I think we need to send in the information that the miserable health insurance company requested. We have both found that attempting to purchase health insurance as healthy, middle-aged adults, outside of a group plan, is an essentially impossible task.

Perhaps Debbie's right about trying Chiropractic or other alternative treatments. Maybe, if nothing, this will distract her from the present sensations and symptoms. Maybe she'll survive a virus or pinched shoulder nerve while she hopes... and waits... for conventional health insurance, and the subsequent ability to consult with a traditional medicine man or woman. This could be a trip to the Land of Oz, we only recently took for granted.

Perhaps we can grow herbs, or maybe pumpkins big enough to use as Pilates props. We could clean up the garden paths and hold vegetable harvesting, weeding, and meditative yoga classes. "Get Grounded at a Real Health Club! The Farmer Ben Method!"

Ah, who am I kidding? It's probably already being done!

Day 76, August 2, 2010

She appears as a funky, whimsical horticultural ocean liner. Upside down on a Brandywine leaf, she's dead in the water. For a garden pest, she's a behemoth, unsinkable, I'd say. Carrying over one hundred passengers, dressed in cocoons, she is the Titanic, and this cruise is over. Death stalls this caterpillar, like so many others I have seen in the garden. In fact, I have yet to see a plain green horned tomato worm without its parasitic entourage. They are all playing host to the wasps. I leave this poor, dying worm alone, waiting the wasps to hatch and do it all over again.

Speaking of ill-fated voyages, Debbie and I have planned on a mere, "three hour tour," in the garden on a gorgeous Sunday. Unfortunately, we become lost in a sea of unruly, and prolific tomato plants. Because there is so much fruit on the vines, we need to weed, locate each trailing vine, tie it as best we can and then use the stake as a center upon which to lift the fruit off of the ground. Of our hundred fifty tomato plants, we likely pruned and tie about forty. Our three hours turn into eight.

We spend another hour weeding and harvesting cucumbers. The cukes never seem to stop bearing. Debbie is upset because some of them have a little etching on the skin.

"Come on, we're not using pesticide."

"Your point?" she asks.

"Well, I think they're in great shape for field specimens."

"Your point?"

"People peel cucumbers. Our customers don't expect perfect waxed plastic!"

We harvest in silence for a few minutes, and then I find a cucumber that's in pretty bad shape.

"Josh?" I call to Debbie."

"Yes, Brent," she calls back. We joke a lot about Planet Green's latest reality show, "The Fabulous Beekman Boys," featuring ex-drag queen, Josh and his partner, Brent: doctor turned farmer.

"I cannot save this cucumber."

"Oh, don't cry, Brent," she says. "Farmer John will save it." Last week, Farmer John was seen crying, "She's my favorite goat," after he did a digital breech delivery on one of his star-power goats. Brent and Josh tend to cry uncontrollably when they have to witness the slaughter of, say, their hogs, "Porky and Bess."

Honestly, I would find it difficult to raise livestock for slaughter. Not sure how to be that kind of farmer.

As we're about to leave, I call to Deb, "Hey, look, Deb... the corn is growing antennas." Like kids in the park, we run over to the corn patch, and as I later learn, the corn is growing tassels. Tracy Deluca writes in Ehow.com that:

"A corn tassel is the male flower of the corn plant. The tassel is a group of stemmy flowers that grow at the apex, or top, of the corn stalk. These tassels are shades of yellow, green and purple. Each corn plant will grow this tassel on top after the major growing of the plant is complete and when it is time for the ears of corn to begin growing."

Tiring day. After we load the cucumbers and tomatoes into the car, we drive to Buttonwood Farm, ten mile up on Route 201 . There we enjoy an ice cream cone watching fifty head of beef cattle devour a sunflower field.