Things are happening down on The Farm

I'll be going to The Farm tomorrow, so I figured I better put this post up before it becomes obsolete. I went to The Farm last Sunday, and things were kind of a mixed bag. We have had a metric shit ton of rain lately. We had no rain -- zero, zip, nada -- for the first two weeks of July, then had 11 inches in the last two weeks, making it the rainiest July on record. And the rain has continued into August. We're supposed to have some sun tomorrow, Sunday and Monday, but then rain the rest of the week. And, of course, it is raining as I write this.

This is good/bad for crops. Plants need water, but they need sun, too, and too much water will kill them just as dead as too little. As it is, the plants are mostly okay, but the production is off. Here, the second crop of beans is growing nicely, but not much in flowers yet. Still a couple weeks away from any major production:

The carrots are going gangbusters. We thinned properly this year:

The first bean crop is done, except for the pole beans that snuck in there:

The third bean crop is coming along, should flower in a week or two:

I am so tired of chard, but it keeps producing:

The kale (two kinds) is almost done -- burning up. We are pretty much past kale season:

The okra is coming along. A little early for production, but only a couple weeks away, I think:

The peppers are not digging the rain, but they are starting to produce:

Shitty picture, but look at all those serranos. A little sun, and some will turn red:

Some harvesting took place. First off, we got some early carrots. The effect of the proper thinning shows, as these are bigger than most of the carrots we have harvested in the past:

This is the last of the first bean crop. Not bad for a final harvest:

Of course, lots of chard:

A few peppers. Lots more to come, I suspect:

Kale, as well. Probably close to the last:

The tomatoes, squash and zucchini don't look so hot. Could rally late, I suppose, but March and April rains kept me from building beds, so the gourds went in late, no onions or potatoes at all, and the tomatoes are suffering from the rain, as well. We'll see how things turn out.

Things are a little mixed down on the farm, but looking good overall

Went to the farm yesterday to see how things were going. My farm partner, who owns the land, has been largely absent lately, clearly has not been tending things. Of course, with me working like a dog, I haven't been much help. There were a lot of weed-choked beds. Left me worried about the potatoes. It didn't hurt production much, near as I could tell. Lots of beans, squash and onions. I would imagine tomatoes are a few weeks away, but here's what I brought in yesterday:

I'm sure we'll see more soon.

So what do they actually mean?

Periodically, the two project managers from the firm, who are on-site on this project, will come out and let us know that "someone" is fucking up in some way. We always are assured that most of us are fine, but that a small number of people are fucking up and in danger of being fired for it, so we should all get in line, straighten up and fly right.

Usually, it's pretty vague. Sometime in February, not long after I joined this project, we were told by the project managers that some unidentified people were not meeting production expectations. To quote one of the managers, "58 documents in an 11-hour day is not enough. It means you don't get it." They couched the production shortfall they were talking about in terms of someone not understanding the document requests who was, as a result, struggling with the work and not really knowing what to do with a given document. Everybody understood, of course, that what had happened is somebody, probably only one person, was just a seriously lazy fuck who needed to speed up. Why this has to be brought to everyone's attention is beyond me. Everybody knows that in Temp Town most folks will look for the Mendoza Line -- the number of documents they have to code per day to keep their job. The guy who is averaging less than 6 documents per hour is an outlier -- the Mendoza Line is higher than  that. Or maybe not, since no one seems to have been fired following that particular speech.

So today they jacked us up a little -- assuring us that 95 percent of us were doing just fine with regard to this particular issue -- about timekeeping. They wanted to make sure that we were accurately recording our time spent at work each day. This gets stupid and complicated. Maybe even contagious. (Sweet Nirvana reference there.)

We have, on this project, a paper sign in/sign out sheet. Everyday, we are supposed to write on this sheet what time we come in, what time we take our mandated breaks and what time we leave. Yes, we have professional degrees and yet we are subjected to a Middle Ages timeclock. This exercise is rendered even more pointless by two things: first, we are required to submit timesheets each week (used to be paper, now -- finally -- online) that lay out what time we come in, what time we leave and the time we take for our mandated breaks. In other words, the sign-in sheet is superfluous. Second, the review platform we are using keeps records of what time we sign into the program, and what time we sign out. In other words, it records how long we work each day, thus verifying our timesheets in a way that cannot be faked. If we claim to have worked X hours, and the review platform shows we were logged in for only Y hours, if Y is less than X, we have some splainin' to do.

My point here is, if you're going to try and cheat on your time sheet, you're going to get caught. Frankly, I think this is an ethics violation that should result in the pulling of your bar card, but what the fuck do I know. Here, apparently, it doesn't even result in getting fired. Instead, it results in a vague warning to everyone to make sure our timekeeping is accurate -- even though we've just been told that 95 percent of us are fine. So why not pull aside the 5 percent and talk to them? Or maybe even just fire the fuckers? Or are they just trying to scare people? I don't know, but my money is on door number three.