There is little to mark the coming of the New Year at Old Plank Farm. It arrives quietly, as do most days in December and January. A blanket of snow hides the vegetable fields right now, adding to the stillness that surrounds me here. When I walk, or preferably ski, through the blanketed fields it feels like being on an empty stage in a large and dark auditorium, where the performers have left but their energy still remains. This was especially true when I skied up the snow-covered pathway that only months ago was the setting for our tomato patch, the busiest part of our farm.
The five beds of last season’s tomato patch were split by a path wide enough to bring our tractor and harvest wagon through. There were three beds west of the path and two beds east of the path that I skied down. Along each bed were reminders of summer: wooden tomato stakes, trellis twine and dead tomato vines poking out of the snow. This is one part of the field that we didn't clean up last fall. It is easy work to do in the spring, so we left it for next year and focused on building our new seeding greenhouse instead.
Each tomato bed was 600 feet long. It's not a very long way to go when traveling on skis, but it is a journey that takes many hours when traveling by cherry tomato pints, moving from one plant to the next. At the height of the season the fruit ripens so fast that by the time we get to the end of a bed there is already fruit back at the beginning that is ready to pick. Tomato picking, and especially cherry tomato picking, are among the most labor-intensive chores on our farm, and so this is where the largest crew convened the most often. It is center stage in our field, although it's precise location changes from year to year as we rotate the crops.
As I skied along the snowy tomato path I pictured the bright green plants, red ripe fruits, and the people who worked among them. First I thought of Martin, crouched among the plants as clearly as if it was a hot July day. He was usually wearing a brightly colored long-sleeve shirt and khaki pants and hustling through his row filling tomato containers. He is a fast picker, and an even faster talker. Chinese is his first language, but English is a close second. I love listening to Martin's stories because they are usually about cooking and eating delicious food, a favorite topic and pastime among our crew. We have a rule here that there is to be no talking about food before 9am, which someone invariably breaks each morning. The excuses are always the same: we were talking about breakfast food which doesn’t count, or we don't know what time it is, or it's 9 o clock somewhere. Talking about food always makes me hungry, but at least sometimes there is something close by to snack on the rest of the morning, like cherry tomatoes. There was nothing to eat under the snow, but homemade tomato soup awaited me after skiing. Tomato soup and chili are staples right now.
Further up the row I imagined Mirianne and Kristin working opposite each other as they moved along, tomato containers in hand and lively discussion in mind. Mirianne often wore plaid flannel shirts, worn-out pants and a large straw hat, nearly identical to my usual attire. Kristin often wore overalls and a plaid shirt. I ski in my winter overalls, and occasionally the September mornings are cold enough that I wear them in the field while picking the last of the summer fruit. In summer--at their peak--it is easiest to pick one side of a tomato plant at a time, and leave the other side to another picker. The plants are so large and bushy that it's impossible to reach around them, which is why we often work in pairs. It's also a nice chance to partner up and solve the problems of the world, which I always imagined Mirianne and Kristin were doing as they plucked the fruit off the vines hour after hour.
While Mirianne and Kristin seemed bent toward deep and intelligent conversation, my usual picking buddy--Oscar--and I were more inclined to compete, argue, annoy or challenge each other as endlessly as the endless tomato harvest. When we were occasionally more agreeable or simply bored with our usual chatter, we'd collaborate making up pointless poems and songs. "Row, row row your butt gently down the row" lilted through my head as I skied past the long-dead tomato plants that we would row through as we picked. I did not interrupt the quiet winter stage by singing aloud as I would do while harvesting. Summer sounds in a winter scene contrast as sharply as a red tomato would in a winter snow.
Moving along, I imagined Mirianne’s son, "Sunshine," who is our champion cherry tomato picker. He’d sit alongside the plants on the main path, picking and eating and taking care to tightly close each container as he finished filling it. His movements were deliberate and careful when he snapped each container closed. He seemed to take pride in doing a good job. Sunshine is 30 years old now, but he has a mental disability leaving him with the intellectual capabilities of a 4-6 year old. He can’t tie shoes, cook, or pronounce words very well, but he has incredible patience and the sunniest spirit I’ve ever met. And he loves to pick the tomatoes, a skill more special than the ability to tie shoes. Several weeks after the last harvest was finished Sunshine continued to ask about picking the tomatoes each day. One day he saw some empty pint containers in the corner of the packing shed and his face lit up and he asked about when we were going to pick the tomatoes. It’s hard to explain the harvest timeline, or any timeline, to a man who salutes us after lunch each afternoon by saying “Bye! See you next year!” As I skied I began looking forward to when next year’s crop will be ready for harvest and Sunshine can once again get back to living his best life, which is the way his mom and sister often described his work on the farm.
Many other dedicated workers live in my memory of the busy harvest mornings of 2020. Sabrina, June, Tanya, Beth, Cindy, and Joy were also on my mind as I skied along in silence and solitude. Those cherry tomatoes certainly don’t pick themselves.
Meanwhile, Angelica bounces in and out of the summer scene in the tomato patch. While she spent many hours picking tomatoes like me and everyone else, she also was most often the one to haul the harvest back to the packing shed. As our CSA manager, she’d juggle all the responsibilities of a harvest morning along with the daily grind of picking. She is now in her 7th season here at Old Plank Farm and our CSA program couldn’t be in better hands. It is my responsibility to grow our crops and it is her responsibility to get them harvested, packed and distributed to all our members each week. The tracks her harvest tractor made back and forth out of the tomato patch are the same that I followed on my skis, hugging the south side of the field and heading back in along the path through the woods.
I look forward to when our fields come alive again with plants and people. With the new year officially here, it seems our new season is just around the corner. I hope it is a fruitful one for this farm, its workers, and you! Happy 2021!
