'it's not the long days, it's the short nights in-between...'

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grady is fond of saying just that when customers comment on our visible fatigue at the saturday markets in arcata, our weary bodies shuffling produce onto tables and rearranging the bountiful displays.

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and it's so true! it's not while i'm snapping asian long beans off their vines that i get weary, nor while i'm snipping zapotec pleated heirloom tomatoes off plants; it's not while i'm cutting squash out from amongst a sea of prickly leaves that i want to curl up and sleep, nor while i'm harvesting long stems of genovese basil and forming them into little $2 bouquets; it's saturday mornings, around 5:30 am when my alarm goes off, that i feel the burn.

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this weekend, we were in the truck and out the gate by 6:00 am...grady driving, cameron in the passenger seat, and me nestled between them with a basket of market signage on my lap, the bed of the truck filled to the brim with produce that we'd spent until 11:00 pm the night before harvesting and packing. we were all barely awake, mumbling and grunting...a qualified conversation at that hour.

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by the time got onto 299 west in willow creek, we were waking up. i've talked about that highway and how gorgeous it is heading east from redding, but heading west it's just as beautiful. especially early in the morning before the sun rises over the peaks along the trinity. a purple ceiling; a forest green carpet; a blue ribbon of winding water tying it together...

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we got to the coast by 7:15 and started the immense task of unloading the buckets and bins and baskets and tables and umbrellas and cement blocks and wood blocks and tablecloths and signs that we need each week to set up our booth. the amount of produce that we brought was mind-boggling. we harvested over 1200 pounds of tomatoes, 250 pounds of squash and 450 pounds of cucumbers to bring...not to mention various eggplants, asian long beans, storage onions, herbs, garlic, and shallots! we tastefully arranged as much as we could on the tables, highlighting the abundance of the farm at this time of the season.

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more to come, but later...i must go transplant brassicas in the back field...!