A brand new year, a brand new boy

Spring has returned from a Winter’s rest, full with the sounds of birds and peepers, the first flush of flowers, the smell and feel of turned and warming soil.  So, too, do we return from our busy silence full of news to share with you.  Hopefully we won’t be away for so long next time.  As many of you already know, Clark arrived in dramatic fashion (fashionably late) early on Thanksgiving morning. We sent out e-mails from the Ronald McDonald house, where we lived during his stay in the Kosair Children’s Hospital NICU. We’ve spent the four months since we’ve been home reveling in his smiles, laughter, cuddles, and games; introducing him to family and friends; settling into routines of napping, eating, and working; and even getting familiar with his cries from time to time. It has been delightful and challenging, world-changing, humbling, and uplifting and so much more all at once. We’ve been so blessed that Clark has been healthy and thriving since he was discharged from the hospital, and continued to eat and sleep like a champ even through a monster cold last week.

On his birthday

That’s more like it—home, healthy, and happy!

Also in the interim between our last post and this one, we have received our orders of seeds and chicks, and here, too, are happy to report steady growth. Fifty chicks arrived on February 9 and have braved the cold nights with their heat lamp. Now two months old, the Auracanas and Golden Wyandottes are still chirping like chicks, though they are looking more and more like their clucking sistren. They and the veterans from last fall’s flock enjoy frolicking in the lush green grass that has been absent for so many months. The young birds faithfully wait until dusk to venture out, so this pleasure is fleeting for them. Soon they will mingle with the other hens, a new rooster or two (hopefully) will manifest himself, and the idiosyncracies of chick-hood, like the ambush, will become a memory. 
In addition to caring for Clark through the school week, Carden is managing to fill up the greenhouse—with help from John Bruggman, Stan Hankins, and Maria Leist—with trays of onions, leeks, flowers, parsley, chard, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, kale, boc choi, and collard greens. Sweet onion starts have already found a home in the garden, alongside of last season’s salsify and parsnips. Spinach and radishes, planted in the last two weeks, are poking their heads out from their beds; we’re still waiting to see the peas and carrots (and turnips, beets, onions, lettuce, dill, and cilantro). The brassicas, chard, and lettuce will be moving out to the garden this week, their spots in the greenhouse to be filled by the peppers and tomatoes now germinating in the “germination chamber” (an old fridge with a light bulb for heat). Also, Carden and company have planted several blueberry plants, and the raspberry plants are leafing out.
I returned to school shortly before Clark turned two months old. These past two months seem to have gone by much more quickly than the four before he arrived. This is comforting because surely the next two will fly by as well and summer will be here; but it also cuts me to think how much he has grown and changed in this flying time, and how many more changes will come in these next flying months that I will be working with someone else’s babies (their babies aren’t near as sweet, although I’m sure they once were). I know this is true for all parents, whether or not they work away from home—babies grow up, fast. But the combination of this sad and glorious truth with my missteps as a first year teacher has made for many a tearful dinner conversation about how I don’t want to go back the next day. And yet I have gone back and probably will (for a while longer, anyway), and have learned a good deal about myself in the process. However, these next eight weeks will test us all, as Carden enters his primary planting season with Clark in tow and me at school everyday. With help in the fields and in the nursery, and fairly lucky weather, we’ve managed to stay on target so far for the growing season; we must hope that this help will continue as the work increases in urgency towards the season’s first harvests. We continue to give thanks for the gift and the responsibility that come with deepening our roots in this place on earth, planting crops with their (and our) long-term growth in mind, and bringing a child to live and learn with us.

The Ambush

Yesterday was the first rainy day in many moons.  No field work, no chainsawing.  I knew I could not leave for long.  Not with Courtney, over 40 weeks pregnant, at school, potentially calling at any moment saying, “Come and get me!”

I beelined to the answering machine when I got home.  No dramatic blinking lights, though.  No good news of great tidings.  I recalled that the dog was a little weird in her welcoming me home.  I called her to come inside.  She did not come.  Strange again.

Stranger yet was the sight out the window in our bedroom: the chickens, spread across the chicken yard as usual, were not moving.  No, those could not be chickens.  They were…lumps of…something—something else.  But, though some 50 yards away, the truth was starting to sink in, like blood into straw.

As I followed Tierra, as if in a dream, to the scene, several alternative realities suggested themselves to me, and each successively was dismissed, crushed by reality.  The chicken-size shapes on the ground were not giant leaves.  They were not all taking deep dust baths in the rain.

Drifting closer and closer, dazed, I wanted to wake up, to open my eyes, turn over in bed, and try a different dream.  The silence and stillness was stark and surreal, the quietest space I had ever been.  Not a cluck, not a twitching feather interrupted the absence of sound.  No alarm clock clicked on to save the day.  The dog and I, stopped and stunned together, were in a sort of netherworld, a timeless lacuna, stuck between suffering and acting.

My feet somehow carried my swirling mind through the litter of carnage.  Facts of the massacre piled up like dirt filling in a grave: the fence pulled down, chunks of chickens missing, scalps of feathers strewn about.

Wishing for a miracle—for a fantasy—I rolled the stones away from the door of the coop.  The floor of straw litter was grey and black and wrong.  The home was quiet as a casket.  More broken, stiff bodies.  The bustling metropolis of a few hours before had turned to ghost town, echoing with only the silent screams of mangled spirits.  I had let my flock down.  I believe Tierra felt this too.

One of our two roosters, Bono, was our constant companion of almost five years, years of crowing his heart out every day like a rock star.  I could feel his last pangs of rage and honor.  I could feel also the mass panic and terror—desperation—that swept through the crowd of 60 hens, four-year olds, two-year olds and nine-month olds.  But mostly I felt the unsettling calm after the storm and my broken promise to protect my family.

How do I tell Courtney?  What if she sees this?  What do I do?  Where am I?

As I headed out of the coop, I heard a movement.  A shocked and awed Astralorp nervously fumbled in place atop a feed can in the corner.  I knew what she had seen and my heart broke for her.  I wanted to explain.  A big mistake.  I am so sorry.  My compassion and apologies stretched all round the war-torn world.  Whose eyes could ever recover from watching their family mercilessly murdered, one by one?  What would “I’m sorry” be worth?

My mind revolved around to the impending birth of the fully-formed life in Courtney’s belly, the overpowering polarity of life and death, the single heartbeat that divides the two, the eggshell fragility.  And the untold billions of bodies swallowed by time. 

 *                     *                     *                   *               

On April 16, 1998, spring break of junior year in high school, I was visiting my grandparents in Nashville.  My grandfather was out grocery shopping while my grandmother and I watched an old movie.  By the time we figured out that something sinister was happening and made it to the bathroom, the event was over.  The tornado, with winds up to 200 mph, had come and gone.  I witnessed a new world as I emerged from the house.  All was eerily still and uncannily changed.  The world, at that moment too, was unworldly.

Trees bowled over and strung about as if discarded children’s toys, including one atop my dad’s Camry I had driven and numerous ones crisscrossing the driveway and Rosebank Avenue.  With all the old, tall trees taken down, the quality and quantity of light in the sky was different.  The carport was gone, to later be found several back yards down the street.  It is a rare blink of the eye in which reality is profoundly altered, but, when it occurs, there is no rubbing one’s eyes and recovering the vanished vision.

I do not much trust my memory.  I am curious how long the stillness lasted.  However long, it existed enough to buoy my faith in black holes.  At some point, though, after an infinity, consciousness comes back on.  From the great void resumed the familiar sound of chainsaws, men and women talking, crying, strategizing.  The pieces were picked up, but could not entirely be put back in place.  It was some time before the roads were cleared, and eventually we heard from my grandfather.  And, luckily, he was all right and that much reality was restored.

*                *                  *                   *                    

Luckily, too, Bonnie was home yesterday afternoon.  The task before me—alone—seemed so huge.  When she opened her front door, I only had to utter, “I need your help,” and Bonnie sprang to action.  Together we gathered up all the birds, dead, dying, and alive but shocked.  In the end, we recovered 57 bodies, 13 of which were alive at last count, though they are still dropping.

John Grant helped me bag up my old friends.  Then the three of us went on a search party through the wet weeds and blowing rain.  I found a couple feathers leading to our neighbor’s place, and John and Bonnie saw their dog with a chicken in its mouth.  Tierra’s nose discovered a body in the tall grass behind their house.  By dark, the case was closed and we were drenched.

Later in the evening, Bonnie came back and we doctored the casualties.  She packed an antibiotic cream into the missing, maimed flesh and puncture holes, while I held the poor creatures in place.  In times of deepest distress, we survive by the power of courageous human kin who pick up the chainsaws, or don the rubber gloves and fighting spirit, and pack the wounds and care for the living.  What would we do without angels?

 *                 *               *                  *                 

I believe in the opening of eyes.  I believe in instantaneous transformations.  I believe that the very walls around us can collapse, and, so long as we have community, the beautiful human spirit will rise up from the rubble, bridge the broken bones and troubled waters, and rebuild, one precious life at a time.

Yesterday, when all the surviving chickens had turned up, save one, I was heading to the house from the coop again when I espied a mirage-like shape in the distance by the house.  Soaked and a few feathers missing, there stood Little Richard, our other rooster, bewildered-looking, making his way back to his ravaged home.  My heart leapt up when I beheld him.  A humble triumph.  Thanks be for survivors.

News, 11-13-10

The past two months have been incredibly busy: baby showers, weddings, rehearsal dinners, birth classes, doctor and midwife appointments, parties, potlucks and concerts.  Newsletter has been on the list for some time, but with all the work besides, I am just now getting around to it.

We hope you enjoyed this CSA season.  Replete with weather and other challenges and changes, it has been one that I will never forget.  Another year that proves the resilience of a diversified vegetable operation.  Some things always fail, but, at least so far, many things inevitably prosper as well.  We are inexpressibly grateful for your unwavering support and love.  Next year will of course present all new opportunities to learn and grow, and we look forward to sharing it all with you.

Yesterday was the much ballyhooed, anticlimactic “due date.”  (Hopefully there will not be a late fee!)  Courtney has felt good all along and has handled the dueling stresses of first-time-teacher/first-time-pregnancy with a beautiful sangfroid.  We are excited to soon welcome those thrashing little arms and legs in her womb into the world.

Lest you worry that I have been too free and bored this past week, rest assured I have still been hard at it.  As of today, our half-acre of garlic is all mulched with some 130 bales of straw.  On Tuesday, Stan came out and helped split, haul and stack firewood on a strangely warm November day.  I feel thankful to have been able to get the farm closed down for the Winter before a new, as-of-now mysterious job arrives.  

We do still have ample amounts of sweet potatoes, parsnips and garlic available.  If you are interested in purchasing any of these items in bulk, let me know.  It is a little difficult to plan at the moment, but we will figure out a way to get the veggies to you sometime soon.

Thanks again for being a part of our CSA, for making this community such a good and giving place, for nurturing our budding family and for making it clear that life is a rich, sweet smelling soil that only gets better.

We will send out an email in the near future announcing the arrival of….

News, 9-27-10

And then the rain stopped.  I have got to stop writing things like, “We have been fortunate this year with the rain.”   It has now been almost six weeks since our last ½ inch.  In addition, we have broken several more temperature records, including most days in a year above 90 degrees.  These are not the kind of records that inspire celebration, and this is why it is foolish for a produce farmer not to have irrigation.

A good bit of farming news was unearthed recently.  For months we watch sweet potato vines run wild aboveground and wonder what lies beneath.  Well, this year it’s a great wealth of beautiful potatoes.  While last Fall we struggled to fork the roots out of a muddy mess and lost many to rot, this time around the struggle is to wrest them from nearly impenetrable, hard soil.  Thankfully, sweet potatoes prefer the hot and dry and have really outdone themselves.  Expect plenty from here on out.

The die has been cast for this season.  At this point our attention really starts to turn to Winter and next year (not to mention the rolicking lifeform in Courtney’s belly!).  It is time to make sure we have ample firewood for the cold season to come, to get next year’s garlic crop planted, and finally (please) to say goodbye to the stupid heat.  This Winter will obviously be quite different than any before for us.  I look forward to napping and waking day and night like a newborn.  It has always been exciting in the past to welcome in a new batch of beeping chicks in the dead of winter; how much more thrilling the arrival of the precious being to soon join our life!

 

Seeds of Hope

At a time when the world seems woefully won over to greed, to getting and spending, when we appear to be working intentionally to make our climate uninhabitable, when we prefer concrete shopping mall parking lots to life-giving soil, it is so importantly refreshing to have hopeful moments like our Autumnal Equinox potluck.  I am convinced that the end product of a truly good CSA is not food.  It is relationships.

Although the rhythms and workings of farming satisfy my soul, I do not think I could make it as a vegetable wholesaler, shipping produce off to anonymous markets.  What sustains me are the children joyfully exclaiming at roots dug from the earth, seeing very familiar vegetables on friends’ kitchen counters, sharing hot and cold, bug-ridden and ideal, high and low with kindred spirits in the field.  Economists cannot put a price on the profitability of a loving community.

Hurtling headlong for the future, we forget where we came from, who and what and why we are.  Swept away in the glitzy bustle, we accept that cheap food comes from shiny stores, water from ever-flowing faucets, and energy from quiet outlets.  The source of things can seem to be our own ingenuity and technological prowess.  And while this all-too-trying Summer nearly pasteurized the idealism right out of me, on a beautiful Fall afternoon the point of all this toiling was crystallized for me: right relationships are being restored.

Yes, our world is sick. The ailments are too numerous to enumerate.  Congress will not pass an answer (though they pass more methane than all the cattle on Earth ever will).  Doctors will not dispense the cure (though they will surely prescribe).  I believe our hope lies in us banding together in our communities, caring for one another, sharing the life and love (and food) that is worth living and giving.  I am hardly an optimist, but who could be a defeatist who experiences community in its richest form?

Greed steals the headlines and usurps our common wealth of air, water, earth.  But we know all too well now that the romantic promises of luxury and convenience were a hoax; we are less happy, less harmonious, less healthful.  We know that multivitamin pills cannot compete with sweet potatoes, that online “friends” cannot give warm embraces, that we do not improve mountains by blowing them up, pushing them into streams and making them golf courses.  We know we need what is real.

And so the chard may have holes in it, the tomato may have a small split, and dirt may cling to the carrot.  They might be unappealing to the supermarket since they obviously lived their lives outside.  You may get more of this or less of that than you would choose at the market.  But you know us.  You know we are not poisoning our watershed or stuffing chickens in torture cages.  You know we are not trying to drive our fellow farmers off their land, buying low and selling high, or experimenting with strange genetically modified organisms to maximize profit  Without a doubt it is time for a new economy based on trust, relationship, and reverence for life.  We are in this together, and that to me is reason for hope.

8-28-10

The date of our Autumnal Equinox potluck has changed.  It will be on Sunday, September 26, at 3 PM.  Sorry for any inconvenience.  

Notes from the Field  

I’ve written and erased and written and erased this newsletter several times over the last few weeks.  I struggled to find a way to be non-whiney, to beam a bright light through a dreary attitude.  But the heat kept coming, crops and chickens were dying, and visions of weather dystopias swam through my sweaty brain.   

Today is the 100^th day in a row of high temperatures above 80, a new record already.  The hottest June on record.  July was the fifth hottest month ever.  August was oppressively brutal up until a week ago.  Meteorologists are already calling this the hottest June-July-August in history for the Louisville area, making 2010 just the latest record-breaking year.   

We have been most fortunate this Summer—with all its soul-sapping heat—to get frequent storms with quenching rains.  The scene would be truly nightmarish had the rain quit coming.  

Still, the punishing heat wave has plenty taken its toll.  Summer-planted Fall crops are nearly a complete failure.  Many cool-weather crops will not germinate in such extreme temperatures.  Because of the withering weather, I planted our late cabbage, kale, broccoli and cauliflower one night until 12:30 AM.  I headed out early the next morning with a rain barrel and a garden hose and watered each of the 1000 plants.  I then covered them with row cover to protect from the predatory insects.  As this Summer would have it, the plants all burned up and died despite my best efforts.  Sometimes a great amount of work is repaid with naught.  

I love farming, but August is rarely a bowl of peach tomatoes.  When I am at my most vulnerable is certain to be when an ungodly swarm of sweat bees arrives and stings me all the way down the row, while a raccoon throws half-eaten ears of corn at me and a cloud of hornworms and flea beetles darkens the sky as if night.   

When the world becomes such a flock of pigeons above one’s head, at some point we must burst to our better senses.  The tragedy of our woebegone lives finally flips rightside up, and the great antidote is comedy.  I am the three stooges in one body.  I laugh.  It is all fast-passing, and it is all one.  Soon this sweltering Summer will be a memory, a story to share with our children.  

Thanks many times to those who have lent their time and encouragement and enjoyment to the effort this year.  Working shares have been wonderful, going extra hours, making marvelous meals, suffering and swearing and laughing alongside, along for the ride.  They’ve tolerated my grumpiness and longgoneness with loving grace.  Special thanks to John Bruggman, who has been steady and sure as the sun, volunteering two full days a week on the farm and manning the Wednesday morning pick-up.  Can’t imagine this Summer without John.  

As production slims down, we are grateful for all the grace and generosity that has meant so many healthy harvests so far.  Although we may hobble to the finish line, we did for another time bask in the glory of Summer bounty.  And thanks be for that.  

Notes from the Classroom  

Many a veteran teacher has given me the same look—expressing a sentiment known only to the duly initiated (which doesn’t yet include me)—when recalling the first year of teaching.  I can only imagine it means something like, “Well, thank heavens I don’t have to do that again…but somehow it’s made me the teacher I am now.”  Like some real-world fraternity, where the hazing is all worth it…eventually.   

In the last two weeks, I have realized how pitifully my classes prepared me for the classroom, how much there is to learn, and how slowly and patiently I will have to learn it.  It is tempting to think that just another hour (or two) spent at school or on schoolwork will somehow speed the process along.  Given that temptation, I am finding it difficult to balance the rest of life—of which there is so much—with teaching.  I’m doing about half as well as I’d like at getting home at a reasonable hour and being prepared for the days ahead at school.  But I could be doing worse!  The 160 students (about half are freshmen) are mostly sweet and I’m getting to know them poco a poco.  Hopefully they’re learning a little Spanish, too.    Thanks to all of you for your kindness through this transition.

News, 7-21-10

The good growing season continues.  Every time I start to get nervous about the desiccating heat and our lack of an irrigation system, it rains again.  Happy plants bulge with fruit, the barn is brimming with onions and garlic, and the foods of Fall are already in the works.  Although the heat started early and continues to bear down, there is sweet mercy in the cooling, gentle rains.  Let’s hope it keeps coming!

Courtney has finished her teacher-certification classes and this week is honing her skills st a foreign language camp.  She has bravely pushed through the disorientation and exhaustion of the last six weeks and is now enjoying interacting with kids.  Because the camp only lasts the morning, she is able to come home every day, which is mighty nice.  The first day of school at Henry County High School is August 11.

It is easy to see now there is a baby growing in her belly.  Besides the bulge, we’ve got pictures and a vigorous little heartbeat to prove it.  Trying to fathom the new reality of husbandry to come.  Excited and bewildered.  Full of love.

Crop Update

Tomatoes!  Purple, orange, and red cherries, peach and paste tomatoes, big red slicers and juicy, ugly heirlooms, pink, yellow, orange, green, white, and striped tomatoes, tomatillos.  For many the greatest gustatory pleasure, the most epic epicurean adventure of Summer, tomatoes are in all their glory right now.  They’ve thrived this season, and, despite the fact that some critter is eating holes in all the largest, most beautiful specimens, they should be in abundance for a while.  Let us know if you’d like a box for canning.

Sweet Onions are all harvested and curing.  Red and Storage Onions are gradually being pulled from the field and into the barn.  This is the best onion crop we’ve had on this farm.  Ought to be plenty to last to the end of the year.

Peppers are finally really producing.  The intense hot weather killed off the first round of flowers, but the plants are looking good and getting heavy with fruit.  Eggplant will soon enter the shares.

Okra is booming.  This is an okra kind of Summer.  If you’re a big fan, don’t be shy taking your share; a number of people do not want theirs.  If we grew only okra we would pick it every day—maybe twice a day—and no pod would ever be longer than 3 inches.  We pick twice a week, and 3 or 4 days is plenty of time for a zucchini or an okra pod to go wild.

First planting of Summer Squash and Cucumbers is winding down.  Another is on the way.

Watermelons and cantaloupes are close.  Last year groundhogs wreaked havoc, this year we’ll see.

Beans have suffered from the heat.  Blossoms drop off and the plants wait for a cooler time.  Planting 3 is not far off, and #4 is coming along behind that, so we still have plenty of opportunity.

Sweet corn has not fared well either.  We usually have three crops, but this year we will have one.  Planting one failed to germinate, number two looks good, and planting time for number three slipped by.  While the deer are fenced out, the raccoons are no doubt keeping a closer eye on it than I am.  I’ll put up an electric fence inside the deer fence to protect the corn.  Then, of course, there are birds, worms, winds…corn is always quite a racket.

It won’t be long until we’re talking Fall crops!

Thanks again for the many and various ways of help.  Summer is always super intense.  To go from two people full-time to one person in the height of the season has been a little insane.  But your company, your helping hands, your encouraging words, your unwavering support has kept me going and from going completely nuts. 

May the bountiful produce, the purposeful process and the sacred provenance be nourishing to you and yours, body, mind and spirit.

News – June 30, 2010

Thanks to all who came out and made our Summer Solstice potluck a great event.  Experiencing the farm and its food firsthand is a vital component of CSA.  We love to share this place and are encouraged by your appreciation and respect.  May the soil-farmer-consumer circle be unbroken.

This is always a busy time of year on the farm, but never more so than this year.  With the normal fixins (planting, weeding, picking, etc.) plus Courtney away at school, an early heat wave, and a predator in the chicken coop, it has been hopping.  Which is why it has been crucial to have wonderful, generous, encouraging, nourishing help.  Many thanks to all of you for breaking the loneliness, easing the burden, and making joy and jokes in the June swelter.

Tuesday was a big day.  The incessant Summer steam had receded, and the tender breeze rendered a sweet reprieve.  While I gathered produce and packed the boxes, Dottie, Wayne, Katie, Maria, Gary, Stan and John pulled and sorted garlic.  By lunch (a fabulous spread whipped together by my mom), over a thousand bulbs were out of the ground and curing in the barn. 

Meanwhile, an Amish crew was busy repairing our old barn.  For two and a half years we watched as each storm rattled loose more of its siding, leaving wide holes for rain to blow through.  We bought the lumber from our good friend Steve, the local CSA pioneer who now has a portable sawmill.  He harvested the ash trees from his farm and delivered a trailer-full of beautiful lumber to our barn.  It really is quite an extreme makeover.

The day was altogether a testament to the impressive things that can be accomplished by a community working together.  Although the term “CSA” can be co-opted and corporatized just like anything else, the esprit de corps of our cooperative organism cannot be cloned in a cloistered boardroom or bought and sold or trucked in and stored in walk-in coolers.  The spirit is alive here.  It is watered with sweat, fed with food and propagated by people.  The spirit of CSA ever strides towards more aware and more familiar—with soil, sky, seasons, seeds, energy, origin, work, weeds.  We want to know what has been sprayed on what our children eat, whose children’s parents are toiling in the fields for whom and for what quality of life, what biodiversity is being destroyed or begotten by our food choices.  We want a new economy that considers all the stakeholders and values honesty and decency.  We know the web is infinitely wide and we are unalterably interconnected.

Crop Update

The farm smells like garlic at present.  The bulbs have nice size this year.  They take a couple weeks of drying to be fully cured and keep well, and they will no doubt appreciate our improved barn.  Expect a steady supply of garlic for the rest of the year.

Beets and Carrots are maturing and look good.  We enjoy the variety of colors and shapes.  Let us know which ones you like best.

Basil and Swiss Chard are the workhorses of Summer.  I’ll do what I can to give you a week off from time to time, but they have really been booming with the heat and good rains.  You will also get a bit of New Zealand Spinach this Summer.  It and chard are the only greens that thrive in our heat.

The first Sweet Onions are about ready.  The whole onion crop looks good at this point—and much better since the huge weed problem was resolved.

Summer Squash and Cucumbers are abundant now.  They will go down to insects before long, which is why a second planting is on its way. 

Cherry Tomatoes have started ripening, which means it will be no time before the world is aflood with tomatoes.  The plants are very healthy and loaded with large fruits.  Look out!  

Okra has begun.  We know some of you love it and some hate it, so it will not regularly go in the boxes.  If you are a lover, help yourself a la carte.  Peppers are just about there and Eggplant is not far behind.

John Grant says potatoes are almost ready.

 

Hope you are enjoying the season so far.  Thanks for being a part of A Place on Earth.

Summer Solstice Potluck Pictures

On the Weed Warpath

The weed hunters: Maria, Stan, Stockie, Katie

News, 6-13-10

*Summer Shares start June 23 and June 26

*Summer Solstice potluck: June 19, 3 PM

Dear Friends,

We are approaching the Solstice, and the garden is in good shape—thanks to many helping hands, timely rains, and 16½ hours of daylight.  After a long week for both of us, it was wonderful to be reunited with Courtney Friday night, cutting flowers and catching up.  One week down, six to go.

We are looking forward to seeing many of you here next weekend for our potluck!

Crop Update

It had been a couple years, so it was especially delicious to have a nice crop of strawberries this Spring.  If the rains keep up, we should have a few more through the Summer.  We have picked a few handfuls of raspberries.  The plants are vigorously growing now, so next year’s crop is looking good.

We believe wholeheartedly in garlic, and this crop is shaping up nicely.  We purchased the seed in 2006 and have been saving our own since.  The two varieties are “German Stiffneck,” which has 5 or 6 larger cloves and “Spanish Roja,” which has more numerous (and slightly more pungent) and smaller cloves.  The weakest plants are thinned out in early Spring as green garlic, and the seedhead and stalk—the scape—pops up a month or so before the bulb is ready.  No one ever eats the best garlic we grow, because it is saved for seed and replanted in October.  We still have quite a bit of garlic powder for sale. 

As the heat gets cranked up, the Spring peas and greens quickly head for the hills, except for Swiss Chard, which reigns over the Summer months.  Rushing to fill the void of the cool-weather garden are the squashes, cucumbers, beans and tomatoes of the world.  Beets, green onions and carrots are sizing up, while parsley and basil are starting to hit their stride.

Eggs are bountiful right now.  Give us a couple days notice, and we will have a dozen waiting for you with your share.  They are $4.

Thanks Again

With all the changes taking place and on the horizon, we are very grateful for all of your well wishes and encouragement.  You are a nourishing community to which we belong.  We know for certain we have reached the end of an era, and many things are unclear about the future.  But our love and commitment to this place, these people, this process is not unclear.  It is rewarding to share the fruits of our efforts with you, and we are thankful for all the people who share our pains and triumphs through the cycles and variations of the seasons.