I feel no need to go to the gym. I walk my daily 10,000 steps by moving full trays of seedlings around, I perform plenty of bicep reps from packing and unpacking goods for the farmers market, and this week I unloaded two thousand pounds of gypsum. I walked it 50 pound bag by 50 pound bag, up down the field.
As a small farmer sometimes the quickest way to get something done is the simplest. The results from my soil test recommended that I add 50 pounds of gypsum per 1000 square feet. I was trying to figure out a clever way to spread the fine white powder of gypsum but every idea seemed too complicated and would further delay having my field ready to plant.
Luckily my brain circled back to a basic tool, me. So I eyed the field and divided the space by the number of bags. Then took out my pruners, cut a hole in one bag picked it up and walked at the appropriate pace to evenly spread the bag on its dedicated row, then I repeated this 39 more times. I had it all done in about 2 hours. My neighbor came over the next day to lightly till it in. Finally the field is ready for planting, which I’m hoping to start on Saturday.
I understand completely. We are mixing compost into our very sandy soils. 45 tons of compost. mostly by hand. That’s a two year plan and we almost finished after this second year. And this week (well, for the past two weeks) we’ve been planting trees. 200 baby trees. Most of them will disappear into the forest, providing the diversity that we’re losing because of the ash and beech blights. At the end of the day, it’s worth it, to know that we’re doing what we can. I don’t need a gym, but I could use a massage.