How can you keep them down on the farm?

Much bustle here on the farm today, as we get ready for the big fund-raising plant sale this weekend, at the Barn just past the main entrance to UC Santa Cruz. After making many, many wheelbarrow trips back and forth from greenhouse to truck, I drifted off down the slope with a bucket to thin the extra fruit off the apple trees. A wet and meditative job, deciding which of the five or six baby apples in a given cluster will live to become fodder for this fall's pies, and which ones will hit the bucket, destined for compost.

My plant sale job, you may be SHOCKED to learn, is cooking breakfast and lunch for my fellow farmies (yes, we're called that for real--they've even made a great army-green t-shirt with F*A*R*M*Y across the front) as they work the sale. So I'll be on duty from 5:30am (to get breakfast toted down by 7am) to about 2pm, and then....up to the city!!!

I actually didn't get into San Francisco during the couple of days between arriving on the west coast and heading down to tentland, so I'm very, very excited. And even more excited to sleep inside where it's warm, and have a bath! And eat MEAT, instead of kale n' beans n' beets. And maybe even a hot tub at Osento, and ice cream from the new Bi-Rite Ice Creamery. Two days of city glam, without farm boots or flannel! Except, of course, my fabulous psychedelic-pink flannel pajamas, courtesy of Queen Christina.