Day 21

Asparagus, you so good!

If I tried to sum up the day in one word it would be asparagus. Erica and I harvested this morning and it was serious because it had grown over the weekend. I think it made 65 bunches (our normal is from 1-20). Some of our asparagus has been around since the farm so about 5 years and the rest was planted when Cory got here about 3 years ago. It takes about 3 years for them to establish, and establish they did, all over the place. When you harvest asparagus you cut at the crown and cover it back up with dirt to grow again.  I also processed them by bunching them together which begins by sizing them up (as seen above) and making sure each bunch is a pound each.
Everyone's allergies were bothering them today, but I think mine were the worst, good job allergies, always gotta be on top. I went to get tissue from the bathroom and a salamander was on top of the tp and I almost grabbed him. I made some sort of surprised noise and it had a minor freak out then we stared at each other. We both agreed that wouldn't happen again.
Erica and I also checked on the irrigation for the orchard...quite the adventure. It reminded me of Indiana Jones Temple of Doom when Willie tries to find the lever to free Indy and short stuff from the spikes while bugs were crawling on her. No? Well, here's a picture of where my hand went today:

Let's back up. The water here comes from the well, except the lower fields where it comes from the lake and is filtered and gravity fed.  The water to the pipes turns on and off by turning the handles in these scary ant minefield like holes. The next one Erica checked had a black widow. I feel like we were just farm hazed.
After lunch we pinted strawberries then weeded a bit before we split up. Erica harvested for restaurants, while Daniel, Jason and I moved irrigation in Jeff Cook Field and planted corn. They had finished planting the potatoes earlier (I think there's potatoes in every field now!), and the corn planting went in without a hitch.