Harvesting Tabasco Peppers on a Day That I did not feel my self
Some days start on the wrong side. On this one my back hurt, the kitchen counter was still covered in groceries I'd only half unpacked, and my car was overdue for a clean-out I kept putting off. I woke up in a weird headspace, the kind where everything feels like a mess and you can't point to why.
But the garden doesn’t care about any of that.
The groceries on my counter weren't going anywhere. They were canned goods and pantry staples. The peppers out in the garden were a different story. Tabascos ripen fast once they turn, and if you leave them too long they start drying out or going soft right on the plant. I'd put a whole season of work into those beds, and losing them now would have stung a lot more than a messy kitchen.
So I prioritized what was perishable. Some days that's all you can do.
My trick to save my lower back is: cut the branch, not the pepper (And then deal with picking the pepper off of the branch once you’re at home and sitting on a chair.)
Tabasco plants grow bushy and dense, and their small peppers point straight up, so picking them one at a time in the bed is slow and hard on your back. This time we tried something different. We cut the outer branches off whole, carried them out of the row, and stripped the peppers off where there was room to work.
A few things we learned today so you don’t have to:
Good scissors matter, and grip strength matters more. I bought a big new pair of garden scissors. They weren't as good as I'd hoped, Johnny and I ended up doing more efficient work snapping branches off by hand.
You don't need gloves to cut, but wear them to handle the peppers if you plan to touch your face anytime in the next ten hours. And wash your hands before and after picking, duh.
Check for soft ones. Anything that had started to turn went into its own pile, separate from the good ones. Chickens don’t mind a little heat.
We ended up having time to finish laying out plastic for the last fall brassicas.
While we were out there we got a new row started. The ground was so dry it looked like a dust bowl, so I went barefoot and covered the seed line with my feet. There was some friendly debate about spacing.
I am committed to repeatedly reminding myself: Most days at some point, I say this out loud like a prayer or a chant: I'm doing the best I can with what I have. It's true, and it's also something I have a hard time believing on mornings like this one.
If you're having one of those days too, where the house is a mess, your body hurts, and you're being harder on yourself than you'd ever be on a friend, this is your reminder. Take care of whatever's perishable first. The rest can wait on the counter.
Then we headed home to the home farm to process peppers and make it back in time for the school bus. See you tomorrow.