After we had a black cat cross our path and then found a nail in our car tire, we finally made it to Amy’s Farm (an hour and a half late…oops!). The drive to Ontario went smoothly (shout out to our iPhone GPS!) and only took about an hour thanks to Kimberly’s assertive driving – Kimberly, Kristy’s twin, came along to be our camera-woman (although she didn’t end up taking many pictures because she got put to work, too). We passed by hundreds of cows, which is probably an understatement...and let us just tell you that the smell was not something that we’d like to remember (a combination of smelly feet and week-old, rotting trash) which explains why we didn’t dare to roll down the car windows despite the overwhelming heat and humidity (thank god for air conditioners). We turned down the lane where Amy’s Farm was, according to the GPS, and accidentally passed by it…several times…so much for being there on time! Finally, after several U-turns, we made it and were greeted by Farmer Randy as well as several swarms of flies that seemed to follow us wherever we went (we showered the night before, we promise!). We started our work day by quickly eating our brown-paper-bag sack lunches (flashback to kindergarten..good times), and then explored the farm and even got to take some pictures with a cute miniature horse named Crystal (that definitely liked Kristy more than it liked me…….ugh). Quickly after, Farmer Randy, with his adorable cowboy hat :) , set us off to work – weeding…our favorite (but don’t tell our moms or else they’ll make us do this at home)! We were assigned to weed three different plant beds – rows of dinosaur kale, spinach and tomatoes that were being suffocated by stinging nettle. Farmer Randy gave us each a pair of gloves to protect our hands, but still warned us that the stinging nettle was called “stinging” nettle for a reason. “Leaf” it to Kristy to get stung while pulling her first weed (“Holy mother of Jesus, this hurts!” – she compared the pain to a bee sting on steroids). The pain eventually subsided, even though our bad luck did not. The plant beds were full of creepy crawlers (spiders, ladybugs, rolly pollies, pincher bugs, beetles, ..and the list unfortunately goes on), and of course a giant grasshopper decided to fly right onto my face (“HOLY FRICKAMOLY GUACAMOLE”). Good thing I like bugs, not. We continued weeding though, and eventually finished two hours later (I don't know if that's because we were particularly slow or just because there were hundreds of weeds), without any other trauma - thank goodness. Although it was hot (around 95 degrees) and we were sweating more than we ever thought possible, we enjoyed getting to see this aspect of farming – although we’ve both weeded in our gardens at home, we’ve never had to weed on such a large scale (this garden was about a half acre). Next, we took a water break (Farmer Randy reminded us several times how important staying hydrated, wearing a hat, and constantly lathering on sunscreen is) and then went off to work again, this time digging holes (remember the movie “Holes?”), planting watermelon, cauliflower and two types of cucumbers, and helping set up drip irrigation. In essence, we transplanted different plants into pre-dug holes, having to bring wheelbarrows full of dirt down each row to fill the holes in preparation for the plants that were soon to follow – these wheelbarrows were heavy to say the least, and we all embarrassingly struggled...a lot (wheelbarrow-ing is harder than it looks folks). Because we were not the best gardeners, Farmer Miguel, another Amy’s Farm employee, had to take over at times and speed us up. His accent was thick and he was hard to understand at times, but what easily came across was how much he enjoyed his job – his adorable smile was seriously infectious. After filling the holes with just enough to dirt to bury the seedlings’ roots, we dug little openings in the soil to drop each plant in and then recovered them with soil (basically the typical planting routine, except repeating the steps about a hundred times since there were so many holes to fill). We also had to re-label various flags that served as labels indicating the types of plants (“Cuc Marketmore,” “Cuc Corinto,” and “W.M” stood for the two different types of cucumbers, and watermelon, respectively). Then, we finished the day by working on the drip irrigation – depending on where we planted each seedling, we would use a special tool to puncture the water pipe and then fix on a tiny nozzle so that just enough water would drip out to nourish the plant (this was my favorite part…probably because it was the least physical). By the time we were done with that, we’d already been at the farm for 5 hours and we all agreed that it was time to go home. A couple burnt scalps and a few farmer’s tans later, we happily drove off and celebrated our hard work with a giant pizookie at BJ’s. Can’t wait to return bright and early tomorrow morning (hopefully we’ll get to work with some of the animals – including several cows, sheep, pigs, roosters, horses, and even a cute little kitty hehe).
~Jill
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