Glorious! Three cheers for the NY Times for these fantastic, simple, quick, fresh, spotlight-on-seasonal, high-quality produce recipes!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?em
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Week 6
The past two weeks have started to really feel like summer, and three cheers for that! The last of the spring chickens were harvested today (THANK YOU Ellen, Bill, Anna, Jamie, Renee, Alex, and Sophia!), the first new potatoes were dug for Sunday's market, the pickle-putting up has begun, peppers are sizing up nicely, green and purple beans are harvestable, and the cukes and zukes are out to get me with a (growing) vengeance. Hooray!
Tomorrow will find you with two more fresh chickens ready for the oven or freezer, and I truly hope that you're enjoying the birds. It is a great joy to me to have had such great helpers in keeping the processing times quick and lively, and I am very pleased with how the entire process turned out. Both chicken harvest days have been exhausting, gratifying, and thoroughly educational-- there has been a lot of knowledge sharing that to me, is the heart of the matter-- everyone helping out and pooling our collective resources for what I think, and I hope you agree, is a stellar product. There are many, many ways to turn a chicken into Chicken, and I think our way is in tune with respecting the life of the animals and the bounty they can provide. Putting the birds into a natural, trance-like state relaxes the birds' muscles, lowers the heart and breathing rates, and prevents the panic-release of stress hormones into the meat. Hand plucking feathers is sometimes tedious and slow, but on this scale, "slow" is an opportunity to notice the different sections of skin, the different directions to pick feathers from, the development of more down and hair (as this week's set proved) and a handful of other nuances and small notable moments to think on. Yes, it's slow and takes a significant amount of time per bird, and yes, I've been incredibly lucky to have let this become a part of my daily life-- but to me it is that significance, those opportunities to recognize the chaos and beauty, and then the inherent appreciation that are critical, missing links in our current mainstream food system. I believe that these things matter. So, with all that Ado, it's my honor to provide your weekly shares, and these chickens, with the help of several fearless, kind souls with trusty hands. I'm raising my glass to you, Cheers!
Here's one of my all-time favorite poems, in honor of the furious outpouring of growth, beauty, and production we call summer. Go ahead and read it aloud for its phenomenal rhythms!
From Blossoms - By Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Tomorrow will find you with two more fresh chickens ready for the oven or freezer, and I truly hope that you're enjoying the birds. It is a great joy to me to have had such great helpers in keeping the processing times quick and lively, and I am very pleased with how the entire process turned out. Both chicken harvest days have been exhausting, gratifying, and thoroughly educational-- there has been a lot of knowledge sharing that to me, is the heart of the matter-- everyone helping out and pooling our collective resources for what I think, and I hope you agree, is a stellar product. There are many, many ways to turn a chicken into Chicken, and I think our way is in tune with respecting the life of the animals and the bounty they can provide. Putting the birds into a natural, trance-like state relaxes the birds' muscles, lowers the heart and breathing rates, and prevents the panic-release of stress hormones into the meat. Hand plucking feathers is sometimes tedious and slow, but on this scale, "slow" is an opportunity to notice the different sections of skin, the different directions to pick feathers from, the development of more down and hair (as this week's set proved) and a handful of other nuances and small notable moments to think on. Yes, it's slow and takes a significant amount of time per bird, and yes, I've been incredibly lucky to have let this become a part of my daily life-- but to me it is that significance, those opportunities to recognize the chaos and beauty, and then the inherent appreciation that are critical, missing links in our current mainstream food system. I believe that these things matter. So, with all that Ado, it's my honor to provide your weekly shares, and these chickens, with the help of several fearless, kind souls with trusty hands. I'm raising my glass to you, Cheers!
Here's one of my all-time favorite poems, in honor of the furious outpouring of growth, beauty, and production we call summer. Go ahead and read it aloud for its phenomenal rhythms!
From Blossoms - By Li-Young Lee
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Week 4
July 17, 2009 - Hi Members!
In your share this week:
Beets
Bag of salad mix
Cucumbers – slicing (smooth) and pickling (bumpy and small)
Summer squash
Squash blossoms
Broccoli
In your share this week:
Beets
Bag of salad mix
Cucumbers – slicing (smooth) and pickling (bumpy and small)
Summer squash
Squash blossoms
Broccoli
Baby leeks
Peas
Kale
Basil
Radish
flower bouquet!
Peas
Kale
Basil
Radish
flower bouquet!
I’m so happy that the flowers are coming along. It’s been a tough year for annuals, as the lack of sun and pounding thunderstorms melted down some of my transplants, BUT! they are coming along. And gosh, they’re pretty. To help them extend through the week, try to keep the water fresh. Calendula, for all its insect deterrence and pungence, does cloud up the water and shortens the vaselife (despite the fact that the secondary and sometimes tertiary flowers will still emerge into bloom.) To really stretch the bouquet, pinch the primary flower after the petals start to roll into themselves and die, swap in fresh water, and trim a quarter inch or so off the bottom of the stems. Just as we do, flowers drink more on hot days!
Please remember to return any baskets, wooden crates, or pint/quart containers this week.
And… here’s the really good news:
This past Tuesday marked seven weeks for our chickens, and as you’ve probably noticed, they’ve grown up to be healthy, robust, and enormous! I processed four yesterday as a test run, and to make sure they were going to be ready. Turns out, yup. The average weight of the dressed birds came out to be 5.55 pounds, which is huge. I had selected some of the bigger guys, and there will be some smaller birds, but expect the average weight of your four birds to be around 5 pounds.
I will harvest more on Monday so that everyone can pick up two of their birds this Tuesday. If you’re not heading straight home, bring a cooler. These chickens are exceptionally flavorful and juicy—and thanks to being finished out with corn and soy scratch mix, have a pretty thick, fatty skin. This makes for a great, juicy coating for roasting or deep frying, but if you’d prefer a leaner option, I’d be happy to skin your birds for you. Also, for anyone who is interested in making stock, stuffing, or dog treats, I’ll keep giblets, necks and feet. Birds are whole, and I’ll provide a photocopy of instructions on how to procure cuts like you’d see wrapped in Saran wrap in the grocery store on Tuesday. If anyone is interested in learning to harvest chickens, and wants to help, please let me know.If you’re interested in purchasing more than your allotted four birds, they will be available for sale for members at $4.00/lb and for non CSA members at $4.25/lb.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Week 3
7/7
As the sunshine pours through the window, it’s hard to believe that three days ago it was pouring rain for the umpteenth consecutive day. But, it looks like we might be in luck for the rest of the week, which is good news for the green tomatoes and mini pattypan!
As the sunshine pours through the window, it’s hard to believe that three days ago it was pouring rain for the umpteenth consecutive day. But, it looks like we might be in luck for the rest of the week, which is good news for the green tomatoes and mini pattypan!
This week’s share includes:
Head lettuce (Romaine/Cos)
Kale
Colorful salad mix
Radish
Sugar snap peas
Summer squash
Squash blossoms
New this week:
Super sweet pencil leeks
Cucumbers! – slicing and gerkin pickling
Broccoli
Beets - red and chiogga (fuschia on the outside, pink and white striped inside)
I’m ecstatic about the cukes. This week there are two varieties – picklers and a Middle Eastern “Beit-Alpha” type. Here’s what Fedco Seeds has to say about this family of cukes: “Descended from a vegetable that grows wild in the dry climate of the Middle East, the beit alpha was developed by breeders on an Israeli kibbutz. These small sweet-fleshed cucumbers were originally popular in the Mediterranean, spread to Europe and have now won converts in the States because they are almost completely burpless and have a long shelf life.” These buddies lack the bitterness found in English cukes, and I find them to be far crisper than their Anglo cousins. Hooray for summer!
Broccoli is finally here, and very sweet thanks to the chilly and wet June. Pencil leeks are simply leeks harvested while still young and tender; I am guilty of eating them raw in the field, as they’re candy-sweet almost all the way to the tops of the greens. The beets are a bit of an experiment to see whether or not they really are transplantable in multi-plant seedblocks. Turns out... sort of. Transplanting in bunches seems great for an early season crop, but you'll notice they're a bit on the small side, and some show the effects of crowding. The next set will be more round, promise.
The broilers at six weeks are sizing up nicely, and I’m anticipating a first round of harvest within the week. They're on to a 60/40, broiler mix/scratch grain diet to help fatten them up and boost the flavor profile; all the feed they've been given is organic (which prohibits the use of antibiotics) and supplied by Green Mountain Feeds based in Bethel, VT. I’ll let you know when the freezer starts to fill, and we’ll dole them out.
Braised Radish, Scape, and Kale
prep 10 minutes, cooking 5 minutes
1 bunch radishes, sliced in chunky rounds
5 garlic scapes, chopped in 1” lengths
handful of kale, deribbed and chopped coarsely
2 tablespoons butter
good dash of red wine
fennel greens scissored, or tarragon
salt and pepper to taste
chopped green onion or pencil leeks
Over medium heat, saute scapes and chunks of radish in butter until they begin to become tender; add kale and cover to steam for a minute or two. Uncover and dash red wine into the mix, scissor fennel or tarragon, and add salt and coarse cracked pepper to taste. Toss well. Serve hot with green onion or pencil leeks chopped on top.
Simple Kale Salad
prep 15 minutes
1 large bunch kale, deribbed and chopped
½ C tamari almonds
Dressing:
1/4 C maple syrup
1/3 C sesame oil
1/3 C rice wine vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 knot ginger root, grated
This salad is simple, fast, versatile, and has been known to make some kale converts out there. It’s good fresh, but awesome for lunch the next day, as the dressing helps to tenderize and sweeten even hot summer kale. The dressing will keep for a few weeks covered in the fridge.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Quick note on onion storage
This is a tip taken from a quirky little staple-bound book given to me as a gift from fellow-farmer Gentiana, called "1000 Expert Tips For Gardeners". Or something along those lines. I think it was a gag gift, but this one works and has stuck with me--
When you're cooking and only partially using an onion, chop what you need from the greens end (as opposed to the bulb end) first. The onion will keep much, much better than if you leave the top end. This goes for scallions, leeks, baby cippolinis... any of those good old allium family jewels.
Why, you ask? I can't help myself, either. Based from my understanding of biologic/botanic/physiological principles (that means I'm guessing...) it makes sense that more sugars (energy) would be stored at the base of the bulb, thereby rendering the plant (yes, it's still alive, even when sliced in half and in the darkness of your fridge!) more able to "heal" its wound, or localize the damage done to the plant tissues after having been chopped. While the green part of the onion is above ground, revelling in the glory of the sun and photosynthesizing the days away, the bulb is is the proverbial root cellar. The resulting sugar from photosynthesis, glucose, travels back down to the base of the bulb for safekeeping where the tissues are designed for storage, as opposed to absorption (roots), transport (stalks), energy production (chlorophyll-filled green parts), and respiration (greens, in the allium family's case.) As gravity and efficiency would have it, the storage begins at the base; if we're working with the root cellar idea here, it would be like stacking jars of pickles put up from the summer. You can't float jars of pickles in mid-air in the cellar, which even if you could you'd have to duck around and beneath to get to the floor if your goal was to fill the entire cellar. So, you start from the ground up.
Be this explanation satisfactory or not, the tip does work. Good luck and enjoy those cippolinis!
When you're cooking and only partially using an onion, chop what you need from the greens end (as opposed to the bulb end) first. The onion will keep much, much better than if you leave the top end. This goes for scallions, leeks, baby cippolinis... any of those good old allium family jewels.
Why, you ask? I can't help myself, either. Based from my understanding of biologic/botanic/physiological principles (that means I'm guessing...) it makes sense that more sugars (energy) would be stored at the base of the bulb, thereby rendering the plant (yes, it's still alive, even when sliced in half and in the darkness of your fridge!) more able to "heal" its wound, or localize the damage done to the plant tissues after having been chopped. While the green part of the onion is above ground, revelling in the glory of the sun and photosynthesizing the days away, the bulb is is the proverbial root cellar. The resulting sugar from photosynthesis, glucose, travels back down to the base of the bulb for safekeeping where the tissues are designed for storage, as opposed to absorption (roots), transport (stalks), energy production (chlorophyll-filled green parts), and respiration (greens, in the allium family's case.) As gravity and efficiency would have it, the storage begins at the base; if we're working with the root cellar idea here, it would be like stacking jars of pickles put up from the summer. You can't float jars of pickles in mid-air in the cellar, which even if you could you'd have to duck around and beneath to get to the floor if your goal was to fill the entire cellar. So, you start from the ground up.
Be this explanation satisfactory or not, the tip does work. Good luck and enjoy those cippolinis!
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Week 2 Tuesday
Howdy Members!
I'm switching gears here in an attempt to help these weekly farm updates be more truly weekly-- moving into the blogosphere and out of email/tinkering with formatting on greenpeakfarm.com. From here on out, you can depend on this blog being the most up-to-date information about your weekly shares, what's going on in the fields, and what's being planned for the future.
Some notes about your share this week:
Susan noted that the cippolini onions didn't hold well in the fridge last week. Good point. They and many other leafy green veggies (think scallions, kale, lettuce, spinach,) do best in a high-humidity conditions. You can make that happen by storing your greens in a tupperware with the lid cracked or plastic baggie.
You'll notice your basil has not been field-washed -- it holds much better in the fridge that way, so give it a rinse just before you use it.
Thai basil is an essential addition to Thai-inspired curries, and provides a lovely anise-type flavor. Once the weather heats up, it will produce nice purple spikes of flowers that not only add a great flavor to asian-inspired dishes, but look purdy, too. You can also drop it into your pot of rice as it's steaming to flair it up a bit.
Squash blossoms are great tossed in salads fresh, and they're also a marvelous excuse to deep fry! If you're feeling indulgent, try stuffing them with chevre (I'd highly recommend the fine folks' at Consider Bardwell) and then beer-battering them with a little cornmeal to boot. We whipped some up with some fresh garlic, cippolini greens, cracked black pepper and CB chevre mixed together as stuffing, twisted the blooms shut, dipped and rolled, dunked in hot oil... Good for the soul.
On a heart-healthier note, there are a few notable firsts for the season: summer squash fruits and sugar snap peas. The squash are tiny and tender, and you can use them just like you'd use their bigger sisters. The squash blossoms are the male flowers from the plants, providing the pollen needed to get to the female blossoms (which auto-produce the squash as we know it, which is the flower's ovary.) Once the female blossom is pollinated, the signal is a "go" and the main plant's energy continues to feed the fruit. If not pollinated, the ovary shrivels, turns brown, and falls off. You'll note that the peas are not as sweet as they ought to be. I debated about providing them for the share, as their flavor is not as stellar as I'd like; they will get sweeter as they mature and the sun fuels the plants a bit more.
And as with last week, three different lettuce heads, a bag of mixed salad greens, a bunch of tender, young radishes, and a bunch of Dinosaur/Lacinato/Black kale round out the mix for this week.
In other garden news, I've been hilling the potatoes, which are coming along nicely, and will hopefully be ready for some tender new potatoes in the coming few weeks. Purple flowers are gracing the tops of some of the plants, and on the next hot day, several more are sure to come.
More to come soon. Thanks!
I'm switching gears here in an attempt to help these weekly farm updates be more truly weekly-- moving into the blogosphere and out of email/tinkering with formatting on greenpeakfarm.com. From here on out, you can depend on this blog being the most up-to-date information about your weekly shares, what's going on in the fields, and what's being planned for the future.
Some notes about your share this week:
Susan noted that the cippolini onions didn't hold well in the fridge last week. Good point. They and many other leafy green veggies (think scallions, kale, lettuce, spinach,) do best in a high-humidity conditions. You can make that happen by storing your greens in a tupperware with the lid cracked or plastic baggie.
You'll notice your basil has not been field-washed -- it holds much better in the fridge that way, so give it a rinse just before you use it.
Thai basil is an essential addition to Thai-inspired curries, and provides a lovely anise-type flavor. Once the weather heats up, it will produce nice purple spikes of flowers that not only add a great flavor to asian-inspired dishes, but look purdy, too. You can also drop it into your pot of rice as it's steaming to flair it up a bit.
Squash blossoms are great tossed in salads fresh, and they're also a marvelous excuse to deep fry! If you're feeling indulgent, try stuffing them with chevre (I'd highly recommend the fine folks' at Consider Bardwell) and then beer-battering them with a little cornmeal to boot. We whipped some up with some fresh garlic, cippolini greens, cracked black pepper and CB chevre mixed together as stuffing, twisted the blooms shut, dipped and rolled, dunked in hot oil... Good for the soul.
On a heart-healthier note, there are a few notable firsts for the season: summer squash fruits and sugar snap peas. The squash are tiny and tender, and you can use them just like you'd use their bigger sisters. The squash blossoms are the male flowers from the plants, providing the pollen needed to get to the female blossoms (which auto-produce the squash as we know it, which is the flower's ovary.) Once the female blossom is pollinated, the signal is a "go" and the main plant's energy continues to feed the fruit. If not pollinated, the ovary shrivels, turns brown, and falls off. You'll note that the peas are not as sweet as they ought to be. I debated about providing them for the share, as their flavor is not as stellar as I'd like; they will get sweeter as they mature and the sun fuels the plants a bit more.
And as with last week, three different lettuce heads, a bag of mixed salad greens, a bunch of tender, young radishes, and a bunch of Dinosaur/Lacinato/Black kale round out the mix for this week.
In other garden news, I've been hilling the potatoes, which are coming along nicely, and will hopefully be ready for some tender new potatoes in the coming few weeks. Purple flowers are gracing the tops of some of the plants, and on the next hot day, several more are sure to come.
More to come soon. Thanks!
Monday, June 29, 2009
Green Peak Farm in the news
Read more from the local newspaper of Mego's high school...
http://www.yoursewickley.com/sewickleyherald/article/academy-graduate-loves-living-land-her-vermont-farm
http://www.yoursewickley.com/sewickleyherald/article/academy-graduate-loves-living-land-her-vermont-farm
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Week of June 18th - Weekly Update
June 18, 2009
Greetings!
With just under one week until our first CSA pickup, the garden is moving right along. Bright, beautiful lettuce heads are filling out, two kinds of kale, radishes, mustard greens tender and big for braising, scallions, and pea shoots will all be ready for munching come next Tuesday. The chickens are robust and hilarious as ever, and learning the new, fun game of Worm Rugby as they explore the delights of outdoor life. This week’s update is a two-for-one bargain to make up for last week’s (busy!) silence.
This year so far has been marked by the generous donations of time, muscle, and and tender loving care of friends from near and far, past and present. Visitors and co-apprentices from two of my previous farm experiences in Oregon have ventured easterly and brought with them their passion and pragmatism, helping to organize and harvest for the first Dorset Farmer’s Market, transplant veggies, and wreak havoc on the weeds (Hoe Fever!); a dozen college friends came to celebrate a Happy Dirtday party in May and help pick rocks out of the field and transplant over a dozen flats of onions; summer squash was moved out and covered with reemay, filled with updates from Peace Corps life in Kazakhstan and Liberia; winter den sity ledis and swiss chard were seeded by the tentative eight-year old hands of Green Peak Farm’s official Junior Rock Patrolller neighbor; nearly weekly photo-journal entries are snapped; plans are being made with a college/now Oregonian friend to snag her away from her new draft horses and milking goats in early August. Thanks to everyone who has invested themselves, in whatever and every way, for rounding out the character of this place!
This week Green Peak Farm has been host to my dear friend, Brian, who was a co-apprentice at Gardenripe Farm in Silverton, OR. Thanks to Brian’s tenacity and zeal for hoeing, we’ve managed to chase out a lot of the ryegrass, timothy, tap-rooted red clover, and other pasture plants looking to re-inhabit their one-time homes. Yesterday evening found us weeding the winter squash hills, which are just starting to be visible from the landing on Green Peak. As we made our way down the beds, the roar and tumult of our neighbors’ tractors came rumbling in to tet and bale the hay in the rest of the field. You can hear them coming from miles away. Zing! And they’re off! Roar and tumble around the field, round and around again; Brian and I paused in our hoeing and hand weeding, shot sidelong glances at each other, and couldn’t help but sit to watch for a minute to ooh and ahh over the speed and easy mechanization of the entire process. In the course of about an hour, sixteen round bales with a 4-foot diameter were deposited in the path of the machines, laid like golden eggs from the giant green oviduct of the racous JohnDeere-bird.
As we got back to the task at hand, Brian looked at me and said, “You know, they think we’re crazy, too.” And he’s probably right, and we probably are, but as I’ve had ample opportunity to work out The Case For Hand-Weeding, I’ll give it a go on you. For me the bottom line is the idea of simple tools begetting simple problems, which in turn beget simple solutions. Where is the nearest tractor supply store? The average in-transit shipping times for parts coming from Whoknowswhere? The cheapest supply for new 3-point hitch arms or welding tools to reattach them to my busted rig? How much is bulk fuel going for these days, and what sort of fuel buying club do I need to submit membership to? I’m happy not to know. Every time I pause to look down the row to see how much further there is to go, I think of all of the time and energy it would take to fire up the tractor, attach the implement, drive it down to the field, make one pass, drive it back up the field, park the tractor, and get back to where I was, remembering all along to not run over irrigation or dogs or pointy rocks, not to let the fuel level get too low, to drive wide around the corners so the rear hitch has room to swing. I love the quietude of the hoeing, quiet enough to open windows of thought or, as I’ve had the good fortune with this week’s visitor, carry on a great conversation about our national attitudes toward food and how short-term our concepts of health and value have become. My working knowledge of different stages of development for insects and plants, beneficial and otherwise, grows every time I plunge my hands into the soil. I like to think of the empathy my hands share with the roots of my plants, and small discoveries like the five degree temperature difference between the west side of the cabbage plants and the shaded east side on a hot afternoon get a chance to be noticed. Careful observation can only happen with time, observation pays off in the long run, and I do hope to be running for a long, long time.
Here’s a quote from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim At Tinker Creek:
“Cruelty is a mystery and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitious. About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.
The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
Have a great week!
Mego
Greetings!
With just under one week until our first CSA pickup, the garden is moving right along. Bright, beautiful lettuce heads are filling out, two kinds of kale, radishes, mustard greens tender and big for braising, scallions, and pea shoots will all be ready for munching come next Tuesday. The chickens are robust and hilarious as ever, and learning the new, fun game of Worm Rugby as they explore the delights of outdoor life. This week’s update is a two-for-one bargain to make up for last week’s (busy!) silence.
This year so far has been marked by the generous donations of time, muscle, and and tender loving care of friends from near and far, past and present. Visitors and co-apprentices from two of my previous farm experiences in Oregon have ventured easterly and brought with them their passion and pragmatism, helping to organize and harvest for the first Dorset Farmer’s Market, transplant veggies, and wreak havoc on the weeds (Hoe Fever!); a dozen college friends came to celebrate a Happy Dirtday party in May and help pick rocks out of the field and transplant over a dozen flats of onions; summer squash was moved out and covered with reemay, filled with updates from Peace Corps life in Kazakhstan and Liberia; winter den sity ledis and swiss chard were seeded by the tentative eight-year old hands of Green Peak Farm’s official Junior Rock Patrolller neighbor; nearly weekly photo-journal entries are snapped; plans are being made with a college/now Oregonian friend to snag her away from her new draft horses and milking goats in early August. Thanks to everyone who has invested themselves, in whatever and every way, for rounding out the character of this place!
This week Green Peak Farm has been host to my dear friend, Brian, who was a co-apprentice at Gardenripe Farm in Silverton, OR. Thanks to Brian’s tenacity and zeal for hoeing, we’ve managed to chase out a lot of the ryegrass, timothy, tap-rooted red clover, and other pasture plants looking to re-inhabit their one-time homes. Yesterday evening found us weeding the winter squash hills, which are just starting to be visible from the landing on Green Peak. As we made our way down the beds, the roar and tumult of our neighbors’ tractors came rumbling in to tet and bale the hay in the rest of the field. You can hear them coming from miles away. Zing! And they’re off! Roar and tumble around the field, round and around again; Brian and I paused in our hoeing and hand weeding, shot sidelong glances at each other, and couldn’t help but sit to watch for a minute to ooh and ahh over the speed and easy mechanization of the entire process. In the course of about an hour, sixteen round bales with a 4-foot diameter were deposited in the path of the machines, laid like golden eggs from the giant green oviduct of the racous JohnDeere-bird.
As we got back to the task at hand, Brian looked at me and said, “You know, they think we’re crazy, too.” And he’s probably right, and we probably are, but as I’ve had ample opportunity to work out The Case For Hand-Weeding, I’ll give it a go on you. For me the bottom line is the idea of simple tools begetting simple problems, which in turn beget simple solutions. Where is the nearest tractor supply store? The average in-transit shipping times for parts coming from Whoknowswhere? The cheapest supply for new 3-point hitch arms or welding tools to reattach them to my busted rig? How much is bulk fuel going for these days, and what sort of fuel buying club do I need to submit membership to? I’m happy not to know. Every time I pause to look down the row to see how much further there is to go, I think of all of the time and energy it would take to fire up the tractor, attach the implement, drive it down to the field, make one pass, drive it back up the field, park the tractor, and get back to where I was, remembering all along to not run over irrigation or dogs or pointy rocks, not to let the fuel level get too low, to drive wide around the corners so the rear hitch has room to swing. I love the quietude of the hoeing, quiet enough to open windows of thought or, as I’ve had the good fortune with this week’s visitor, carry on a great conversation about our national attitudes toward food and how short-term our concepts of health and value have become. My working knowledge of different stages of development for insects and plants, beneficial and otherwise, grows every time I plunge my hands into the soil. I like to think of the empathy my hands share with the roots of my plants, and small discoveries like the five degree temperature difference between the west side of the cabbage plants and the shaded east side on a hot afternoon get a chance to be noticed. Careful observation can only happen with time, observation pays off in the long run, and I do hope to be running for a long, long time.
Here’s a quote from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim At Tinker Creek:
“Cruelty is a mystery and the waste of pain. But if we describe a world to compass these things, a world that is a long, brute game, then we bump against another mystery: the inrush of power and light, the canary that sings on the skull. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitious. About five years ago I saw a mockingbird make a straight vertical descent from the roof gutter of a four-story building. It was an act as careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star.
The mockingbird took a single step into the air and dropped. His wings were still folded against his sides as though he were singing from a limb and not falling, accelerating thirty-two feet per second per second, through empty air. Just a breath before he would have been dashed to the ground, he unfurled his wings with exact, deliberate care, revealing the broad bars of white, spread his elegant, white-banded tail, and so floated onto the grass. I had just rounded a corner when his insouciant step caught my eye; there was no one else in sight. The fact of his free fall was like the old philosophical conundrum about the tree that falls in the forest. The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”
Have a great week!
Mego
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