It is a marathon, not a sprint

One of the things I like about farming is that there is a lot of hard physical labor. I know that sounds funny, but I have always been happiest when I get to work hard physically as well as mentally. I have never really liked sitting at a desk all day. I am more the type who enjoyed playing football in high school, and who decided to be an art major in college at least in part so that I could spend my evenings welding huge metal sculptures or banging lumps of clay, rather than sitting in a library behind a stack of books.

Having said all that, we are now getting to the point in the season when growers start getting tired. The farmer I worked for last summer, who can work harder and longer than anyone I have ever known, used to talk about the aches and pains catching up to him at this time of year. One of the other farmers at market yesterday was unusally cranky and he looked tired. Another farm hand talked about how her boss was getting burned out and was starting to look forward to the end of the season.

For me, the thing that is hard is that nothing gets time to heal. Since early April I have been working more or less every day. Some days, like the three days a week I work my day job, are lighter than others. On those days I usually only work a few hours in the morning and few hours in the evening. Even then, that means I work a good 4-6 hours on my "off" days. And the other four days a week, it can be 12-14 hours days.

So when I tweaked my knee last week, or cut my hand a while ago, or banged my toe the other day, or strained my wrist early in the season, it is not like I get three or four days to let whatever ails me straighten itself out.

Take the cut on my hand for example -- I banged my knuckle pretty good fixing our set of disc harrows. It started to bleed pretty bad and probably could have used one stitch. But I was up in the field and had stuff to do. As a result, I simply wrapped it in a rag and worked for a few hours. When I got back to the house, it didn't look so good. So I spent some time getting it all cleaned out and bandaged up nicely.

First thing the next morning I was loading water and seedlings into the truck to transplant out some lettuce and turnips before it got too hot. In doing so, I got my hand wet. It then occurred to me that I was about to spend two hours handling wet seedlings in muddy soil, and that my nice bandage job probably wouldn't last the morning. I tried wearing a work glove, but that quickly proved futile. So every night for about a week or so I had to carefully clean and re-bandage this cut. It eventually healed, but it took longer than it might have otherwise, and it slowed me down a little in the interim because I was always trying to keep it minimally clean as I worked.

When you add the cut on the hand, to the tweaked knee, and to the strained wrist, and to the this and the that, at this time of year I am starting to feel a little worn out. I noticed it yesterday when I was working up in the field after market -- I was simply moving a lot more slowly than I was in May.

Fortunately, I will get to catch up on my rest and heal up after the baby gets here.