Day 18, June 5, 2010

The day begins with a deluge. The sky is clear behind the storm. Deb and I want to accomplish as much as possible, and so we load the lawn mower into my car and head out to the farm. On the way, Thompson Lumber Mill calls. My 117 tomato stakes are ready. They're open till noon; We simply need to get to Hopkinton, Rhode Island in time. We unload the lawnmower at Wychwood.

Farmer Brown and Ann stop to chat. We talk about the Sunday column in The Day, the farm stand, and soil quality. Farmer Brown thinks I might be wise to send in soil samples to University of Connecticut. He believes it's best to know the soil you're working with. Of course, I'm looking at a field filled with thriving plants... but I will follow through on his advice.

Once we get to the saw mill, we find a bundle of 120 freshly-milled five-foot tomato stakes. Each is sharpened to a sharp point and strapped into what looks like a horizontal Malaysian man trap. Once we get the bundle opened, Debbie starts loading them into my car. The owner of the saw mill is impressed at how I have been able to get Deb to do "the heavy lifting." He tells me how he had a woman working a machine, and that her firewood splitting skills were nearly twice that of the average man.

Inside the office I pay for the stakes, which cost seventy three cents apiece. That's roughly one-third the cost of what Home Depot charges for an inferior version. Often, I believe, the little guy... the local guy... can do a better job, and save you money. In fact, the flats of plants I bought in Norwich, at Malerba's, came with a commercial quantity discount. Eleven dollars per flat! Compare this to Home Depot at roughly $27.00 per flat. A flat of plants, for the uninitiated, is eight trays of either four or six plants.

We arrive back at the farm at around 1:30. I drive about a hundred stakes and clear out the ancient hay that Farmer Brown said we could take for mulch. It has been composting, outside the new barn, for a few years. I shovel it up in heavy soggy, blackened mats and place it among the tomato plants. I think it will keep the weeds down. They're becoming annoying.

Debbie spends most of the afternoon clearing weeds, planting sunflower seeds and snapdragons.

"Do the snaps work?" I ask her, squeezing one of the blossoms. I liked playing with snapdragons when I was a kid. In fact, they were my favorite flower.

"Hmmm." Deb responds. "I wonder if kids even know about snapdragons any more." she wonders.

There's something sad about a world where kids don't play snapdragons. I think about it as I trim overgrowth along our garden path with my old red lawnmower.

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