Call the man, or how to grow your own $23 tomatoes

It´s bring your granddaughter to work day at Marabierto


I first became aware of "call the man" as a Uruguayan cultural trait when my mother visited me in New York and insisted on coming to work with me, back in the day when I was working in the flea market at Spring and Wooster. After watching me pull a couple dozen loaded boxes from a basement into a truck, followed by a clothing rack that I "walked" along two cobble-stoned Soho blocks to our flea-market spot, whereupon I spent two hours retrieving the boxes, tables and other fixtures from the truck and setting up our "booth" for the day (you know, then undo everything 5 or 6 hours later), horrified, she demanded that I "Call the man." At that point I explained that anyone I had to call to do my job would have my job, and therefore, I was the man.

On a subsequent visit on occasion of my moving into my newly purchased condo in Jersey City a couple of years later, and after inspecting the yard and noting there was no tap anywhere to hook up a hose --hence my bringing the hose from the sink across kitchen and living-room into the yard-- my mother again decreed "Call the man. Get him to put a tap outside."My answer, in this case, was "There is no man."

Team Sousluaga, with Pelusa

In the first case "the man" was my own job description, while in the second example it was something I could not possibly do on my own (major plumbing) and that neither could I afford to hire someone to do for me. Hence the years of watering the yard from the kitchen sink.

But look at me now. I am certainly back to my roots, or becoming my mother, or both, probably. No two days in a row go by without some man or men coming over to work at our place. There´s the pool guy, who does the regular maintenance and is different from the solar panel guy. There´s the gardening crew (good thing I consolidated the two landscaping outfits I used to hire into a single one), and most recently there´s team Sousluaga, who first built a shed structure to place the solar panels, and this week is improving my vegetable patch making it into two very long wooden boxes with a sort of nylon wall behind it against the existing fence.

In between we have the guys from Telecom, the alarm company, who come to install new devices, fix a malfunctioning sensor or check the satellite TV or the weird cellular-based fixed phone on a pretty regular basis.

The vegetable patch encased in wood.


In a way, it´s a miracle. We work hard, earn money, and that money is enough to be able to afford all these people who are constantly doing things to improve our house. Considering we have neither the time nor physical condition, not to mention skills required, I am always in awe at the fact that we can afford to pay for these peoples´ services, considering we are not actually wealthy. We´re also in awe of the end product.

But then again, after factoring in the amount spent on landscapers, top soil, and team Sousluaga to set up my very fancy encased vegetable patch with windbreaker and all, we´re estimating a unit cost of $23 per tomato that comes out of that yard...

It works

I finally swam in solar-panel warmed up water on November 1, at 6 pm, minutes after the installer had left, at a perfect 26 C, or 78.8 F.

We had turned on the system at noon, on a test basis, so not at 100% capacity because our cautious pool guy Alvaro (not the same person as the panel supplier-installer) wants to double check the pressure on the pump and other technical stuff.

When he turned it on, we measured the pool at 20 degrees (68 F), and the water coming into the pool at 23.3 C (74). This low reading at the pool is because although the water from the panels was coming out at about 40 degrees (104F) there was a long stretch of pipes to warm up.

From what I saw during the installation, only a fraction was insulated, and improperly at that, and then there´s the entire length of the filter circulation which is also not insulated. So initially all the pipes and earth surrounding it needs to be warmed up before the water coming out from the panels and the water arriving at the pool have a similar temperature.

All this will eventually be fixed by Alvaro, but right now I don´t feel like engaging in further works, just patching whatever leaks remained, and maybe in February when we have to travel to Asia the rest can be dug out and insulated.