There's Nothing Mow Satisfying

The farm has really been busting my balls. I feel defeated every time I'm there, even when things are going well. This is in part because my labor does not translate into enough compensation. The delicious, home-grown food is not enough to overcome this glaring problem with the farm.

The strawberry field is overrun with weeds now too. Mostly grass. I hate grass. I really, really hate grass. And I have neither the time nor the inclination to put eighty hours of hand weeding into the field when in three more weeks, I'll have to do it again.

I have decided, with great regret, that I must use petro-chemical sprays to control my strawberry field's weed problem.

In about two weeks I'm going to spray Poast, a grass killer. That's about 60% of the weed population and the hardest to deal with. The rest I'll continue to kill by hand.

And while I have been frustrated, overwhelmed, and dissatisfied with the farm since the end of strawberry season, I did smile for the first time today while working. Because today, I mowed down the strawberry field.

I raised the mower deck to its highest setting and went up and down all twenty rows (I'll get the everbearing rows tomorrow after I harvest them). I did cut up a few lengths of drip-tape irrigation but it'll be easy to fix. I don't think I hit any of the strawberry crowns, which would have killed the plants. The mowing was a success. And more than that, it was cathartic. My weed problem didn't vanish, but it's gone for at least two weeks now, and when it comes back the grass will die, and the rest will quickly follow.

The largest obstacle now is how to narrow and clean up the rows themselves. They're too thick with strawberry plants. The Southeast corner is a veritable ocean of strawberries.