Stuck In Spring

Farm News

The fruits of spring’s spectacular bloom of our apricot trees are visible – literally. They are tiny, but recognizable green apricots. The flowers that attracted the pollinating insects are still hanging on, but barely. They are beat up and drying, but like parents, they are happy to be upstaged by the little ones. From the branches of the rusty, red apricot bark, true leaves are beginning to emerge. Soon those leaves will shade out the branches and provide much needed protection to the apricot gems.

The spring vegetable patch is beautiful. The early morning rays of sunshine make the colors sparkle. Chards, kales, fennel, bok choy, radishes are all in their unique patches covering the field like a quilt. Next to them, the patch of sweet pea flowers stands tall, painting the field with a different brush. It is so easy to pass every day and see the subtle changes from day to day without seeing it in its entirety. I stop and soak it in. For context, I think about the golden, yellow hills and the miserable summer heat that is on its way, I rationalize to myself that appreciating this a little more today will make one day in the summer easier. 

On a different note, I got properly stuck the other day. You would think that after all of these years, I would be experienced enough to avoid this comical mishap, but that seems not to be the case. I left a field onto a county road and turned toward the farm office when I meant to turn toward town. Thinking I was clever enough to save a few minutes by avoiding turning around, I looked around and noted that there was no traffic or law enforcement in sight, put the truck in reverse with the intent to back into the field from which I came. I missed the road and backed up directly into the drainage ditch on the side of the road. Putting the truck in four-wheel drive didn’t help. I was stuck, stuck. 

Standing on the side of the road, I surveyed the damage and clearly needed something to pull me out. With no tractors in sight, I thought through the people I could call and ranked them based on who would give me the hardest time for my bone-headed move and picked the person on the bottom of the list – Ricardo. Before he arrived, someone on his way home from work in a diesel pickup asked if I needed a hand. We chained the front of my truck to the back of his, and in no time, I was out. Let’s keep this between us, and keep the farm team on a need-to-know basis!

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