by Eric Richard

This is the third part in a series on my experiences joining a CSA. For background, you can see the first article.

Another requirement of the CSA (this varies from CSA to CSA) is that you put in 4 hours of work on the farm per adult.

My wife and I worked the farm this weekend and last weekend to put in our hours. We explicitly choose to do this early in the season because we didn’t want to be working out in the 90 degree heat and humidity of the summer.

We also choose to work morning shifts, both times working from 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM.

I think both of these decisions were pretty good. While today was sunny and slightly hot, it wasn’t too bad. And last weekend was cool and rainy. Both my wife and I agreed that we’d much rather be working in a nice rain than out in the scorching heat.

Last weekend we were assigned to weed the raspberry bushes. So, for two hours, we, along with a group of about six other workers, hand weeded rows of the bushes.

There was something very satisfying about being able to see the direct results of the weeding — bushes that had previously been pretty smothered by weeds were now much more open and had room to breathe, get sunlight, and expand their roots.

We also started to learn about how to use your different senses to do different types of weeding. For the raspberry bushes, it was almost purely tactical — we’d reach into the bushes and just feel around for anything that wasn’t prickly and rip it out. I think that we could have done much of this job blindfolded since it was so much about touch. I am guessing that for other weeding jobs — where you don’t have the distinct difference between the weeds and what you want to keep — you would go about things completely differently.

One downside of using the tactical approach is that the backs of my hands got completely scratched up. It looked kinda like I had been in a pretty serious fight with a cat with dozens and dozens of scratches. It didn’t hurt at all and, a week later, is totally healed over.

Of course, we could have worn glooves — they even offered us gloves — but I think that would have totally changed how we did the weeding.

This week, we did two hours performing weeding of a very different type. We weeded cauliflower, tomatoes, and basil.

For all of these tasks, we used an “oscillating stirrup hoe“. For the cauliflower, we had to use a combination of the hoe and hand weeding. But, for the tomatoes and the basil, we could do everything standing up and with the tool.

It was very different than the raspberries since this was nearly all visual weeding. It was also much faster doing this type of weeding. We probably covered five to ten times more ground today than we did last week.

Both my wife and I thought that our parents would be quite amused by the idea that we just spent four hours weeding. There was probably a time in each of our lives when our parents wished that we would have agreed to fifteen minutes of weeding, let alone four hours.

So, we’re now done with our mandatory work. It’s possible that we might go and do more work during the season just to help out.

When we were picking from the CSAs, I think we looked on the work requirement as a real negative. Had other CSAs had the same pick up times as Lindentree but not had a work requirement, we might have gone with them.

But, in retrospect, I am not sure that this should have been nearly as large a factor in the decision. I’m certainly not saying that I want to quit my job and become a farmer. But a few hours here and there wasn’t so bad.

Now, with our work behind us, we get to focus on the real fun — getting the food. I’ll have a post tomorrow on the first distribution (though Liz has already provided a view into that since her distribution was before ours.)

P.S., Josh, we forgot to take pictures today. If we do work the farm again, we’ll try to get some then.