May 7th, 2005

Almost a month since I wrote. Sigh. Been working. Really hard. Now I understand better why most people mow off their “perfectly fertile land” and raise grass instead of sweet corn. It’s a lot of work. I doubt I’ll be waxing poetic in today’s entry so bear with me.

-planted 3 pounds of sweet corn (For you amateurs that’s 13 - 250’ rows. Wait a minute. We’re amateurs too. Sorry.)

- planted 15 hills of cantaloupe (Yes really. It will bring about $2 each and the seed cost a whopping 20 cents. Plus it will freeze well cut up if we can‘t sell or give it away.)

All of the plating thus far as been done with the aid of a hoe, a rake, and a piece of PVC pipe fashioned with some duct tape to make a pseudo-seeder. At least that’s what we call it. I can tell you that by the end of that 13th row we were surely spending our crop cash on a tractor and seeder. A real one.

The tightening is being felt in earnest now. We are barely making it from paycheck to paycheck and that’s without the phone. We’ll have it back on eventually but due to a miscalculation brought on by fatigue I forgot to pay the bill. Did you know that in Missouri (and elsewhere too I would think) one can order only the basic phone service without long distance for a measly $13 and some change a month? I feel like an idiot for having paid more than $75 a month for all of my adult life on a phone bill. We calculated that even with buying phone cards for long distance we will save about $500 a year.

Savings aside, I’m having a bit of trouble dealing with this “all-work and no play” thing. It can’t be helped really since we have to get things planted NOW before it rains but I am planning a real vacation when we’re done. Well. . . we’ll probably camp out or something but I am bringing a book. To read. Non-reference material. And some lemonade.