For the last six years we have had the help of four guys (Gabriel, Alvaro, Ignacio and Refugio) from a local farmer named Joe Martinez. Joe grows tree crops, and he has work for them in the spring and from August onward. They fill in with us from mid-May until late July. They are hard workers, and over they years they have learned to do many of the important tasks on the farm. For the next week or so they will be helping us weed. Then we will plant winter squash seeds. After that comes lavender harvest and back to catching up on staking and tying the last planting of tomatoes. Our permanent crew is thus given time to focus on your boxes and the more skilled work that they do so well (setting up drip irrigation, for instance)
The main weed in the thyme is bindweed (the white flowers above). The only real way to get rid of this weed is to smother it by growing an alfalfa crop for at least one year. This is why there are so many benefits to having the chickens—they eat the alfalfa, so we get some value from the crop (eggs) while also controlling perennial weeds.