As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working at the farm I worked at in high school. This job consists mostly of weeding. The farm I work at has several beautiful flower beds and gardens that I weed throughout the summer, but the one I always have to come back to, even when I first worked there 5 years ago, is the lower arbor. The arbor consists of 4 flower beds, two small, two large. I'm much better with pictures than describing it, so here's a basic layout to help you understand:
xxxxxx xxxxxxx
xxxxxx xxxxxxx
x x
x x
x x
x x
I feel like it's self explanatory, but just in case not, the Xs represent the four flower beds, the space between them is the walkway. This whole area is covered by an arbor with roses and grape vines growing through it. It's quite beautiful, actually. The only problem is that once these flower beds are left alone for awhile, grass and horse tail along with other various weeds take over, making it a several day job to get the whole thing weeded. The past several work days (they're kind of spread out, depending on my schedule and the schedule of the people I work for, along with the weather) I've been slowly working away at getting it weeded. The two small flower beds are easy; there's some clumps of horse tail, but these beds are much more frequently weeded as they're constantly in the shade and much smaller, therefore much easier to weed. I finished those in less than a day, then went on to various other tasks around the farm. It's the two big ones that are a little more scary. Field grass completely takes over these two arbors, which are still full of flowers (mostly irises) underneath the jungle. These beds are hard to weed for several reasons, which I won't go into. But mostly because it's majority field grass, which is extremely difficult to pull out completely and there is little shade covering these flower beds. Finally today, after working in these flower beds for numerous hours this summer, I'm at a point where I can confidently say the end is in sight. There's maybe an hour worth, if that, left that hasn't been touched at all, and then maybe 2 hours of going through and getting anything that has grown since I first started, several weeks ago. This is a big moment for me. Never, in my 3 summers of working there, have I completed finished the lower arbor. That's a testament to how difficult it is, my poor weeding skills, and how much time was spent doing other tasks around the farm. This is a project I've poured blood, sweat, and tears into-well at least the blood (from getting stabbed by a rose bush a few too many times) and sweat (cause you know, it's hot and stuff), but I'll probably shed tears of joy after finishing it tomorrow.
But all this to say, as a continuation of sorts of my last post, I really do love farm work. I believe it gives a sense of accomplishment not found anywhere else. Is it hard work? Yes, but how many worthwhile things aren't? Is it difficult to make myself go do it? Extremely. I mean, wouldn't you rather relax in your nice cool house, or enjoy the warm weather at the beach or hiking, than work in the 80˚+ weather? No? Well I guess I'm alone here... But farm work, especially weeding, gives me time to think about life, and other profound stuff like that, unlike any other job I've had. Like I mentioned before, it gives me a certain sense of accomplishment I have yet to find elsewhere. And it gives me the opportunity to delude myself into thinking I'm getting a tan, while it's really just layers of dirt.
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