Planted

This is a warm spring. Over the few days of the weekend the tomato plants in the greenhouse have taken over the walkways. Nothing can wait to be planted, but it’s risky business. As soon as we feel safe, the frosts will come a final time and ruin any hard work we are eager to do. But we have been planting mustard greens and choi. Bed by bed, the fields are filling up. They stand for our success like stripes on a military uniform, and we wear them proudly.

This week, we had a three-man planting team on the four seat transplanter. With four rows of plants per bed, it was tough work. Not to mention, a valve broke on the water tank and was spewing all over once the tractor got to the field. There was nothing to plug it, so we lost half the water before a new valve was found. Then, it rained. That shouldn’t be the normal kind of planting day through the season, but who can say?

I remember worse years, where hail cracked windshields and storms we weren't supposed to get came right over us without warning. That panicky feeling isn't something I'll forget easily. The June before of 2004 brought a storm to my family's house just five miles down the road from Windflower. The winds were near to ninety miles an hour. The hail that fell was two inches in diameter and sounded like machine gun bullets coming through my bedroom windows. It was terrifying. That was before I came to Windflower.

It was one year later that I found an ad in the tiny local newspaper for a vegetable farm worker. There was no phone number and i remember feeling bummed because I needed a job while my husband was away at boot camp. The next week, the ad was still there and the phone number had appeared. I had lunch with the Blomgrens a few days later and joined the crew of four. We had around two hundred shareholders.