Outer Space Veggies

June is a welcome month – oh summer! and also a welcoming month, on a CSA farm. 

In June, we farmers welcome back returning CSA members, and we also introduce new members to the garden, the fields, the workhorses, the greenhouses.  We slip in a little warning about our scratchy bitey kitty, on our way to the last stop on the farm tour: the distribution shed.

The shed is where it all comes together, from soil to compost to seed to food: the fresh from the spring garden vegetables are ready!  Returning members, and many new ones, look eagerly for favorite spring treats, knowing that the season is relatively short for many of the crisp, crunchy spring offerings. 

There are always a few new folks, however, who are a little more hesitant.

First up in the shed are the fresh herbs: basil, oregano, thyme, lemon balm, garlic greens. 

“Wow, they smell great,” says the new member.  “but I don’t really know how to use fresh herbs.”

“Just like dried herbs,” we answer.  “Just use three times as much in your recipe as dried.  You’ll be amazed at what a difference fresh herbs make.”

“Well . . . I’ll take a little.”  The member takes a smidgen of each kind of herb.  Then she/he thinks better of it, and puts half of each smidgen back in the basket.     

“There’s plenty more,” we encourage.

“Oh, that’s all right.  Whoa! what’s that thing?  It looks like a space ship! Are you supposed to eat it?” 

“Oh, yes,” we answer, holding up a purple spiky fist-sized vegetable.  “This is kohlrabi!  It’s in the broccoli family.  You can eat it raw with dip or in a salad, or you can cook it.  But first you have to peel off the purple skin.  You eat the pale green part inside.”

“Okayyyy . . .”  the member places two kohlrabi gingerly in his/her bag.   “Now what’s this?  A radish?”

“That’s a spring turnip.”

The member wrinkles her/his nose.  “I don’t like turnips.  My grandmother always tried to get me to eat turnips.  I do not like turnips.”

“This is not you r grandparents’ turnip!” we reassure.  “This is a spring turnip, mild, crisp, tasty.  You don’t even have to peel it; and you can eat it raw or cooked.   You could even eat it out of hand, like an apple.” 

One farmer gleefully eats a turnip, to demonstrate the spring turnip’s non-poisonous, non-icky, decidedly delicious nature.  The other farmer points and nods encouragingly at the happy turnip-eating farmer.

“Okayyyy . . .”  The bunch of turnips goes slowly into the bag, next to the space craft.  “Now what’s this?”

“That’s pac choi, or bok choy, it’s also called.  You might know it from Asian food?  You can stir-fry it, or you can slice it up for your salad.  It’s crisp, and tender, both.”

“Okayyy . . . I guess I could try it.”  The member peers in his/her bag, as if the addition of yet another strange item might cause a sudden blast-off of the space ship kohlrabi.   Then she/he turns to the next tray.  “What about this?  Is this some kind of lettuce? Or what?”

“Very close.  It’s great in a salad: a mix of salad greens, mustard greens, arugula, tatsoi, tiny kale.  It adds a little spice to your salad.  Here, try a leaf!”

The member takes a tiny bite of a tiny leaf.  “Whoaa,” he/she says,  “That’s really spicy, really spicy.”

“Good, isn’t it?  It mixes in beautifully with the lettuce.”

The new member’s eyes light up, with excitement or relief, we’re not sure which, when she/he sees the next tray of produce: heads of lettuce. 

Lettuce.  Now that is a proper vegetable.

And right next to the lettuce is spinach.  The member is positively beaming.  Lettuce!  And spinach! 

“This looks really good,” he/she says.  “All this lettuce and spinach.  And I can just chop up all this other stuff and stick it in my salad?”

“Yes!  But don’t forget to peel the kohlrabi.”

“The kohlrabi . . . which one is that again?”

“The purple space ship.”  The space ship that will take to you to new heights of local sustainable gastronomic delight! we want to add. 

But we don’t want to scare our nice new member too much.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Jun 12– Jun 18, 2013

The Perfect Time . . .

In May, my fellow and I begin to feel like the middle-aged farmers who live in a shoe, and have so many projects we don’t know what to do.  We wave encouragingly to each other as we race from one task to the next.

Well, one farmer races.

That one farmer is direct sowing a second planting of beets and carrots; the other farmer, me, is happily weeding.  I’ve got my favorite hoe, called a collinear hoe.  It is light and long handled, with a narrow blade meant to skim under the surface of the soil, both breaking up any crust and disturbing any just geminated weeds.

I whistle; I love weeding, especially this May weeding, light, easy, and fast.

“But I don’t even see any weeds yet,” says my fast-forward farming fellow as he dashes by with the seeder.  He seems a little doubtful about my choice of contemplative farming work this morning.

“I know,” I am pleased.  “It’s the perfect time to weed!” 

“It would be the perfect time to get the rest of the irrigation laid out, too, before everything gets too dry!”  He speeds past with a roll of irrigation drip-tape, and a handful of headers.

“Yes!” I call after his retreating form, and go back to my weeding.

“It would be the perfect time to transplant this broccoli,” he says next, running by with a flat of plants, a measuring stick, and a trowel.  “Before they get tired of being in the flats.”

“Yes!”  I call after him.  I smile beatifically at my hoe and my beautifully weeded spinach and kohlrabi, and weed some more.   Soon enough, my fellow reappears.

“It would be the perfect time to cover the next planting of salad greens!”  Now he’s dragging a big bag of row cover, trotting along, slowing down a notch.  “Before they germinate, and the bugs find them.”

I smile and wave.  I’m making great progress.  I love weeding.  I love May.  I love farming.

On his next pass, my fellow is walking.  He’s not carrying a thing.  And he actually comes to a stop.  “It would be the perfect time to finish building the new greenhouse, before the tomatoes are desperate to get into the beds,” he says.

“Yes!” I say.

There is a pause.  He is actually standing still, watching me for a moment. “How’s it coming here?  You think you’ re almost done?”

“Oh, pretty soon.” 

“Aren’t you hungry yet?” he says plaintively.  “It’s almost one o’clock.”

“You mean ‘It would be the perfect time to make lunch? before the farmers are desperate with hunger?”

My fellow gives me a friendly little poke.  “Oh, you’re really funny.  Let’s go make lunch.”

I have to admit I like this invitation better than some of the other offers that have come my way this morning.  I’d be willing to stop weeding for some nice lunch.

“Don’t you love May?” I ask, on the way to the house.  “We get to do a little bit of everything.  A little planting, a little weeding, a little horse work, a little office work, a little greenhouse work, a little . . .”

My fellow looks askance at me.  “Yeah,” he says, “you do the little bit of weeding, and I do the little bit of everything else.”

Now I give him a friendly little poke.  “I love weeding,” I say.  “Plus there’s so much possibility in May of getting everything done.”  In May, we still labor under the illusion that we will accomplish everything, and that we will accomplish it wonderfully well, better than ever before.  Now that’s a sustaining belief for a sustainable farmer.

“There’s no big disasters yet, either in May,” I add.

My fellow nods.  “No, not yet.  And today would be a perfect day to get up that new deer fencing, before the big deer disaster happens.”

“Yes!”  I say.  “I’m almost done weeding . . . ”

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, May 15 – May 21, 2013

Workhorse Ruckus

April is a funny flip-flop month on a farm.  The farmers, and the farm horses, go from tender beseeching moments to wild heel-kicking moments in the bat of an eye.

In April, Betsey, oldest and wisest workhorse, stands at the paddock gate.  Whenever a farmer comes into view, Betsey lifts her head high and pricks her ears.

This starts a rumor in the herd: it’s time, it’s time, it’s time!  Three more horses barrel over to the gate.  Now there are four big horses standing in a row:  Betsey, and Ben, the black Percherons, and Molly and Moon, the Belgians.  And they are all gazing beseechingly at the sympathetic farmer.

“Not yet, “ I say,  “I’m sorry, oh, not quite yet.  There’s not enough green grass yet.”

The horses gaze and gaze.  As I back out of their view, wishing I could give a different answer, there is a sudden reckless thundering: four big horses, wheeling around, kicking up their heels, and racing around the paddock.  Oh, blast!  I can almost hear them saying.  Blast this winter paddock!

It’s been a long season, there in the paddock.  Sure, there’s breakfast, lunch, and supper to look forward to.  There’s sunshine to soak in on warmer days.  There’s a barn to tuck in on colder days.

There’s also the fun of causing a winter ruckus: figuring out how to get the barn door open, to sneak a snack of hay.  Knocking the metal manger over, making an enormous crash, and alerting the sleeping farmers that breakfast must be past due.  Working the water trough over, another banging good time. 

And then there’s the water delivery: what’s more fun than flipping the hose right out of the tank and watching the water run down the driveway?  And then watching a frantic farmer come bolting out of the house and running to the paddock to remedy the wasteful, oh-so-unsustainable situation?

Some days, between meal or water ruckuses, the two geldings, Ben and Moon, will wrestle and rear and nip and chase each other for big chunks of time.  Betsey and Molly, the mares, are not wrestlers, but Molly is the most talkative horse we’ve ever had, and she causes commotion in her own way: the big squeal. 

Molly saves all her squeals for Betsy and Ben (the black Percherons, who happen to be auntie and nephew, and good pals).  Moon is favored, because he and Molly were raised together, and are siblings and good pals, too. 

According to Molly’s squeal-o-meter, Ben is way too close to her in the paddock.  Or Betsey is way too close to her.  Or Ben is way too close to Molly’s hay.  Or Betsey is way too close to Molly’s hay.  Or Ben and Betsey both are getting ready to be too close to Molly and/or her hay.   Molly handles all these dreadful possibilities with a big squeal and a little buck behind.

But all four horses are in agreement about one thing, in April: it is time.   It must be time.  Time for green grass, big pastures, lots of room, warm days and nights. 

We farmers agree.  We want to buck off this winter weight, too. No more filling hay mangers, no more filling water troughs, no more beseeching horses.  It’s time.  It must be time.

And yet: the green grass isn’t green enough until May.  Everybody wants to be out in the pasture, but if we go out too soon, the pasture isn’t likely to provide enough grazing for the next six months. 

Sometimes sustainable, green farming means we just have to sit tight with all the beseeching.  And give an occasional buck and squeal, until it really is time.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Apr 17 – Apr 23, 2013

Farmer's Tropical Vacation

We farmers like March.  The sap is running, the snow is melting, the draft horses are shedding, the red-winged blackbirds are hollering. 

The only sorry thing we see in March is the woodshed, which is looking mighty roomy right about now.  Some years, in fact, we are out of firewood altogether by March, and our house hovers around fifty degrees.  Not quite warm enough for comfort, but not quite cold enough for us to turn the ancient oil furnace higher, which is painful to both our green consciences, and to our not so green pockets.

Happily, March boasts one more wonder for New Hampshire vegetable farmers: it is time for our tropical vacation!

It doesn’t take us long to pack.  It doesn’t take us long to get to the tropics, either, maybe thirty seconds, give or take a few.  We thrifty farmers know how to save on airfare, not to mention tourist guilt, jet trails, and jet lag.  Our vacation begins about twenty yards from our front door.

We stand poised for a moment, on the threshold of bliss, surveying the New Hampshire landscape.  Snow, not all melted yet.  Or ice, not melted yet.  Or slush, or freezing rain.  We shiver.  We run.

Then we fling open the door to the heated greenhouse!  Then we fling it shut!  We’ve arrived! 

Actually, we’ve almost arrived.  Before we strip off our hats, our mittens, our coats, our wool shirts, we have to travel a little further:  We go through the temperate zone; the unheated section of the greenhouse, at 60 degrees, is already a welcome improvement over the normal March atmosphere. 

Then we duck behind the giant plastic wall that encloses our private tropical island.  This is a highly exclusive resort, measuring thirty by sixteen feet.  Minimum day and night-time temperature here on our propane sponsored vacation is sixty-eight degrees.  If the sun is shining too, we can work up a sweat in March just by standing around admiring the lush greenery.

The flora here is stunning, hundreds of miniature, brilliantly green plants, some just curling their way out of the unique soil of the area.  (It is remarkably reminiscent of the soil mix that we use to start our seedlings at home, but it seems unlikely that such a fine small local business, Ideal Compost of Peterborough, New Hampshire, would ship so very far away.)

We breathe in the fragrance: a heady mix of moist, warm soil, and the almost onion-tomato- eggplant-basil-sweet-pepper-like aromas of the foliage.  We marvel in the fauna too, or more precisely the lack of fauna, including the insects and reptiles: no fierce garden predators such as deer and woodchuck here, no black flies, no horse flies, no giant pythons, all so typically found in the tropics.

Next we dabble our fingers in the warm coastal waters, beautifully heated by the blazing sun (in a sixty gallon white plastic barrel, formerly a Coca-Cola drum, used to water the seedlings).  Then we lie on the beach, soaking up the rays, working on our tans.  (Ah!  A little March nap in a greenhouse pathway!  How delightful!)

Waking, we farmers on tropical vacation find ourselves almost feeling overheated.  We glance at the thermostat, prominently displayed for the pure enjoyment of our Northeastern sensibilities.  Good glory, it’s almost ninety degrees in here! 

We leap up!  Hurry!  Open up all the doors, and turn on the fans!  Before the beautiful flora suffers, wilts, dies an unhappy death!  All our precious CSA garden seedlings must not be broiled by this tropical sun!

Cool air (an ocean breeze, we’re sure) rushes through our island resort.  We farmers smile on one another.  Here we are, enjoying our tropical vacation, in March, with a little help, of course, from our (green? oh, maybe not completely green, but greenish) friends: Propane, Plastic, and the Power of Positive Thinking.

Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Mar 20 – Mar 26, 2013