From photoblogging

This is the demandingdest barn cat I have ever met, trying to climb up my shirt for more petting. It's a good thing I'm fond of cats. :-)

There was a bunch of us at the farm on Tuesday: when I got there, a high school science teacher (L.) was harvesting chard, two older men were pulling shade cloth over one of the hoop-style greenhouses, and the farmer herself was about to race to the store for more rope to tie the cloth down. The farmer's son (S.) and a high school kid (E.) went with me to the field and cut free the last of the butterheads, which had bolted two days earlier. I spent the next hour or so in the barn washing, trimming, and packing the lot, along with the other orders the others continued to harvest: red beets, golden beets, kale, and oak leaf lettuce. After I'd put away the last of the reds, I joined L. in pulling up more goldens, and then Tally set us to work transplanting three types of lettuce seedlings into a newly tilled and drip-tape-lined bed. There was a cloudburst while we were out there, and we worked straight through it.

One of the men is an entomologist, so S. raced around collecting beetles for him, and later he became engrossed with L. in a discussion of invasive species.

For lunch, there was salad, pesto, and bread, along with a chickpea salad and shredded beets (seasoned with soy sauce and vinegar) that L. had brought with her. Then it was back to the fields, where E., L., and I hunkered down and weeded one of the onion beds. Then L. and I went to the other field, installed four lines of drip tape between us, and transplanted six flats or so of flower and parsley seedlings.

My reward for the day included beets, onions, basil, sunflowers, and assorted greens. And, of course, lots of purring:

From photoblogging

The cat didn't really cooperate with my camera-phone, its basic attitude being why the hell are you [fiddling with the gadget, fussing with the flowers, looking for your keys, etc.] instead of petting me some more? Which is admittedly awfully close to my own mentality as well, which is perhaps why cats and I tend to get along. ;-)