Let's talk about....Bull Nettle

Hello friends. Please allow us to introduce one of the most beautiful, most unpleasant plants Texas hill country has to offer: Bull Nettle. Bull nettle is gorgeous. It is a vibrant green, reminiscent of that certain shade of moss found in the Cascades and is almost as neon as a Goodwill clearance price tag. It produces soft, crisp, white flowers that resemble the texture of a brand new, ultra-firm pillow. It also produces nasty, translucent spikes filled with poison. If you so much as brush up against one you will have an itchy welt for days and days. First, bull nettle stings. Then it burns. Then it itches like crazy! Quite frankly, bull nettle is the jerkstore of the plant kingdom. If bull nettle were personified, it would be that dude that goes to the bar just to start a fight. Whether alive or dead, its thorns get under your skin and stay there for days, leaving you with an itching, throbbing welt that makes every action painful. Bull nettle also grows rampantly across hill country. A good day for us is managing not to brush up against it before 8:30am. Tying 65 bunches of beets together under the hot Texas sunrise is hard enough without having to take the time to curse out a weed. Bull nettle has a way of vanishing in the undergrowth and jumping under your hand, just as you grasp and pull out a leek, like a deadly, miniature ninja hiding in the shadow of the squash plant.
Bull nettle also has an amazingly thick, complex, deep root system. When you pull it out, it just grows right back in a matter of days. The only way to get rid of it is to dig out the entire root system of every plant...an impossibility when you're also trying to run a working farm. This is just one of nature's many ways of punishing organic farmers. Coming soon.......fire ants, sunscreen and the best and worst aspects of living and working on a farm.

Bienvenidos

Welcome to our blog. We hope you find it entertaining and at least slightly informative. The title came from the subject line of the first e-mail that my step-mom, Deb, sent us after we arrived at the farm. We thought it was quite fitting. Deb has encouraged me to write a blog for years and so I dedicate the first entry of this blog to her. At this point Marisa and I have been farming hill country Texas for just under 4 months. It's late June and the daily high has been hovering around 100 degrees for the last couple weeks and the daily low has not gone below 75 for at least three weeks. It is discouraging to learn that the peak of summer is close to 8 weeks away... However, I cannot even begin to describe how beautiful this place is and how boldly this experience has re-shaped our bodies and our perception of farming. I now find it very funny that so many people I meet think that our job couldn't be more relaxing. Although the setting out here amongst the live oaks and gentle breezes fits the perception, the work load does not! We are never entirely done with anything because there is always something to do. It would seem that nothing is really ever finished on a farm except for maybe the season. Our muscles are tired and sore and we fall asleep exhausted. Countless insects take nips of our flesh as we labor underneath the blazing sun. The heat causes delirium. Occasionally in the heat of the day it feels as if I step outside of my body and watch it as it continues to hoe and weed. Summer in Texas creates a lot of blank stares on peoples' faces and no matter how much water I drink it is never enough. The weeds never stop and on top of that we have ants from South America whose bite feels like a bee sting. But all and all, I think we can both say that it's the best gig of our lives.

Hi Everyone, it's Marisa. To be quite eloquent, ditto to everything Mark wrote. I never thought that I would be one to have a blog, but we've had enough people asking us if we have one or have ever thought of writing one that it seemed like we probably should. One thing I have learned down here is that Texans and Texas are two very different things. Texans are incredibly friendly and hospitable and all of them say "oil" and "soil" in a way that I love, but have not managed to replicate. Texas, on the other hand, is a beautiful yet cruel place. There are droughts, floods, hail, blazing sun, lightning strikes, fire ants, bull nettle, weeds with thorns that stick in your fingers for days, the kind of wind that makes a person feel crazy.....and yet, I still love it here. It's not the state that we plan on living in forever, but I feel lucky to be spending time here now. Another thing I have learned in the last 3.5 months is the incredible misconception I had about farming. I had this romantic idea that we would spend approximately six hours a day in the fields, 4-5 days a week and then I would have tons of time left over (and an excessive amount of energy) to continue all the hobbies I had in Portland and pick up new ones. This is incredibly false. On average we work 9 hour days, 5-6 and sometimes 7 days a week. And that excessive amount of energy I would have for all those hobbies? Nope. It's all I can do to eat the dinner that Mark makes and then watch a movie or some Office episodes. I did manage to sew my mother an apron for her birthday, so that was quite the accomplishment. I have also signed up to volunteer at the local Domestic Violence shelter and I also attended my first sign language class on Monday, so I'm doing things besides farming. All in all, I wouldn't trade what we're doing now for anything.