A Return to Labor...

Family, Friends, Strangers, and Pioneers,

Happy Labor Day! This is going to be a long post, because many things are going on at the moment. I just came back from checking on the farm, and I have some things to catch you up on... First of all, over the last week or two, a number of things have either succumbed to squash vine borers or just run out of steam and needed to be pulled. This includes most of the zucchini, all of cucumbers, and most of the green beans.
Fear not, the tomatoes continue to grow and ripen at breakneck speed. The plants are even making new flowers. I know in the interest of ripening the tomatoes already on the vines that I should remove these flowers stat. But the bottom line is that I don't have the heart to do it, and the plants are already making more tomatoes than three humans could possibly eat in one summer. Here are a few yellow ones I picked this morning, alongside the last cucumber of the season.
About those yellow tomatoes... When I picked the first, gigantic one, I was so excited. And then I took a bite and almost cried. It tasted terrible, and I professed my hatred of yellow tomatoes to my closest friends, but not you people of the internets, because I had put so much energy into growing the things and Worrying my Farmer Worries about whether or not they were growing appropriately. Well, luckily I tried another one a few days later, and I am happy to report that it tasted DELICIOUS! This one was of the traditional size, instead of the first ginormous one, and this one was definitely ripe--I might have cut into the first one a little too early. In any event, I am proud to say that I love yellow tomatoes, and am once again delighted with the Bounty.

Also on the farm, the flowers have sensed they're running out of time and sped things up. Now I'm not generally a fan of flowers, and certainly not posting pictures of them, but I'm a little bit enamored by them this fall...

So here's the sunflower of Green Thumb Sunday fame, but close up:
Some kind of vining flower seed N is growing that we almost mistook for a weed until we figured out what was going on:
The garlic chives flowering away:

Now, we're at the sad part of this post. September has arrived (somewhat unbelievably), and the time has come for me to return to my real career as a graduate student. I never really left it, but I added this farmer gig on top, and as is no surprise to anyone who knows me well, I'm not very good at doing two things I love at once. So this Farmer schtick is getting downgraded to a part-time job, which luckily dovetails nicely with the fact that the farm requires almost no maintenance at the moment. And the Grad Student schtick is going back to it's all consuming ways. I have a giant paper to write, and then several hours of on-the-spot questioning to prepare for this fall, all in the service of showing the powers that be that I am a competent human being. And I'll be collecting my dissertation data. This weekend, I prepared my office for that task, and like the green-ish farmer that I am, I even recycled a little motivation.

What does that mean for you people of the internets? Well, this blog is going to be updated a lot less frequently. But I'm still going to air all my farming adventures, mistakes, and hijinx to the masses. I mean, threat of frost will soon loom over the farm around every turn, and you know I'm going to post all my antics of attempting to cover those wild tomato plants and all of my fretting about whether they are surviving as they should. Oh, and I don't think I mentioned it but I planted lettuce seeds (!!) a week-ish ago to try my hand at a "fall crop" even though I'm not sure if Minnesota can handle it. People, you know I will be fretting about that too. But daily posts are a thing of the summer, not the fall. And you know how I like routine...

So until the next time the farm (or the farmer) does something remarkable, take care of yourselves, and each other.

When you don't have a sign off, I find it's best to use Jerry Springer's. ;)


Farm Vitals
Yesterday's high: 86F
Yesterday's low: 67F
Warnings: Last day of hot weather, possibly for the rest of the year, today.
Mood of the farm: Worried about all the plants the farmer is pulling...
Reason to consider a new career: Well, I'm a grad student. And I love it. So I'm sticking with that.