first year would be a struggle). All we had to do was water and feed it and let it do its thing. It would be our meager income for the coming months till we got the farm up and running. My dad sweet-talked his way into the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market in San Francisco, and getting a stall at the Saturday market here in town was a breeze. Then he started working on local and not-so-local restaurants, promising fresh produce deliveries twice a week. We were the first farm from out here to do that and a lot of chefs were eager to give it a try.
When Javier and my dad finished my darkroom, they moved on to a farm stand on the roadside next to the farm’s gate. It’s sort of like a grown-up version of a lemonade stand. These farm stands are everywhere out here and they work on the honor system. You take what you want and leave the money in a coffee can. Even the Buddhist monastery up the road has one. They sell perfect fragrant ambrosia melons and an odd assortment of exotic Asian produce.
Now, being a city girl, I assumed that the coffee can would disappear in a hot minute, but it didn’t. In fact, I’ve never heard of anyone’s coffee can disappearing. It’s like the coffee cans are considered sacred. Stealing one would be like taking one of those collection boxes next to the candles in a church. You would surely get hit by a bolt of lightning on your way out. Besides, here in farm country people don’t like to mess with one another’s livelihoods.
Somehow (because no one else would do it), it became my job to stock the farm stand and collect the money every day. Whatever we were selling had to be weighed out into little green baskets that held roughly a pound, or else I would have to bunch lavender and rosemary into neat bouquets with a rubber band, which left a scent on my fingers that would last for days. Then I would post the prices on a little chalkboard.
I often pointed out to my dad that, before we moved here, I didn’t have a job, nor did I want one, and suddenly I seemed to be working ten hours a day on something that I had absolutely no interest in. He was always quick to respond with the fact that the alternative was school. I’d wrapped up ninth grade at my city school early after my dad spoke with my teachers and arranged for me to take all my exams before we left. It didn’t hurt that my grades were already good. My grades have somehow always been good. I even skipped sixth grade (a curse back then; I still looked like a little girl among all the developing “young women”). If I’d known that my dad was arranging for all this so that he’d have slave labor, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited about finishing school early. School was never this hard. At night, my dad and I fell into bed exhausted. I’d never been so tired in my life, and a day on a farm starts alarmingly early, so something as luxurious as sleeping in is out of the question. My pale Irish skin had developed little freckles everywhere even with goo-gobs of sunscreen, and I was covered in scrapes and cuts and bruises.
Steve and Miguel got to work putting in raised beds with drip irrigation. We would be growing all things green in these: baby spinach, arugula, pepper cress, and mache. After they finished that, they cleaned out the greenhouse, chased away the pigeons, and replaced the broken glass panes. This is where we would start the seeds for the baby greens and most of the other plants and then transplant them to the raised beds and the regular garden. My dad and Steve also planted a few marijuana plants in there for their “private use” and tended them like they were premature newborns in an incubator.
It took me a solid week to clean out the ancient barn. I hauled out enough crap to make a giant bonfire. You could probably see it from space. I was stung by two bees on two separate days and then I cut my knuckle open on a glass window. Who knew there was so much blood in a knuckle? I lost about a gallon of it before
When Javier and my dad finished my darkroom, they moved on to a farm stand on the roadside next to the farm’s gate. It’s sort of like a grown-up version of a lemonade stand. These farm stands are everywhere out here and they work on the honor system. You take what you want and leave the money in a coffee can. Even the Buddhist monastery up the road has one. They sell perfect fragrant ambrosia melons and an odd assortment of exotic Asian produce.
Now, being a city girl, I assumed that the coffee can would disappear in a hot minute, but it didn’t. In fact, I’ve never heard of anyone’s coffee can disappearing. It’s like the coffee cans are considered sacred. Stealing one would be like taking one of those collection boxes next to the candles in a church. You would surely get hit by a bolt of lightning on your way out. Besides, here in farm country people don’t like to mess with one another’s livelihoods.
Somehow (because no one else would do it), it became my job to stock the farm stand and collect the money every day. Whatever we were selling had to be weighed out into little green baskets that held roughly a pound, or else I would have to bunch lavender and rosemary into neat bouquets with a rubber band, which left a scent on my fingers that would last for days. Then I would post the prices on a little chalkboard.
I often pointed out to my dad that, before we moved here, I didn’t have a job, nor did I want one, and suddenly I seemed to be working ten hours a day on something that I had absolutely no interest in. He was always quick to respond with the fact that the alternative was school. I’d wrapped up ninth grade at my city school early after my dad spoke with my teachers and arranged for me to take all my exams before we left. It didn’t hurt that my grades were already good. My grades have somehow always been good. I even skipped sixth grade (a curse back then; I still looked like a little girl among all the developing “young women”). If I’d known that my dad was arranging for all this so that he’d have slave labor, I probably wouldn’t have been so excited about finishing school early. School was never this hard. At night, my dad and I fell into bed exhausted. I’d never been so tired in my life, and a day on a farm starts alarmingly early, so something as luxurious as sleeping in is out of the question. My pale Irish skin had developed little freckles everywhere even with goo-gobs of sunscreen, and I was covered in scrapes and cuts and bruises.
Steve and Miguel got to work putting in raised beds with drip irrigation. We would be growing all things green in these: baby spinach, arugula, pepper cress, and mache. After they finished that, they cleaned out the greenhouse, chased away the pigeons, and replaced the broken glass panes. This is where we would start the seeds for the baby greens and most of the other plants and then transplant them to the raised beds and the regular garden. My dad and Steve also planted a few marijuana plants in there for their “private use” and tended them like they were premature newborns in an incubator.
It took me a solid week to clean out the ancient barn. I hauled out enough crap to make a giant bonfire. You could probably see it from space. I was stung by two bees on two separate days and then I cut my knuckle open on a glass window. Who knew there was so much blood in a knuckle? I lost about a gallon of it before
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