Here. We. Go.

OK. So. By the time you read this, you guys will probably already have your hands on the box of stuff that we brought into the world for you. But at the moment, I’m in the van with the family – the boys, the boss, the Widget, on our way into the Cities to deliver them.

The season has started out well. After three years of drought, lasting right up through this barren winter, somebody turned the sky water back on. It started raining in April. I wasn’t relaxing – last April was raining too – right up until we needed it; the drought set the day after we planted hundreds of little trees, and then deepened as we started planting our crops. By summertime, even the quackgrass was brown and crispy beneath our feet. The drought sunk into my brain. We adapted.

So this year, I’ve been continually surprised when the rain falls, again, and again, in non -trivial amounts, The mosquitos rejoiced. The dragonflies returned. The woods filled in in a thousand shades of crayola green, and we awakened the idle lawnmowers with wrenches and starting fluid and swear words.

So I dare believe it and even say it aloud: it rains here now. Our daily irrigatory rituals are now limited to the insides of the greenhouses. We have learned to find other things to do with all the available time.

As a result. the field looks pretty darn spiffy: neat and mulched and not like a bowl of dust at all. Sure, the voles and the cut worms are omnipresent, reveling in their robust populations coming out of the balmy winter – but the rain’s positive powers are far mightier.

Oh, and the deer. Last year they were desperate to get inside to sup upon the crops, which were among the only plants in town that had been receiving the nourishment of water. This year, not one has come in.

Of course, we are not lulled into complacency. The deer will return, sooner and later and in between,. But Kristin got a grant, and we got paid to build a great defensive wall. Well, a fence, but a mighty fence, eight feet tall and built to keep out any critter larger than 2″ in diameter.. (So also great for preventing the roving chicken squad from tempting death by angering the farmer).

It’s a game changer. Or a Level-Up, as the grant was entitled. I’ll get better sleep, not responding to the endless motion sensor alarms, and the plants should fare much better, not being devoured regularly by the voracious beasts.

Here’s some of what we’ve thus been able to put into your box this week:

Week One – Inside the Box

Sorry, I didn’t get pictures this week of this stuff …

• Salad Mix (lettuces, arugula, pea shoots, tat soi)
• Green Onions – the tops and the bottoms are all delicious. The bulb is more pungent, the greens, more mild.
• Green Garlic – these too – but the tops are more fibrous, so you’ll want to chop em up, similar to celery.
• Radishes – It was a tough year for radishes – the cut worms had a stronghold in their row it seems. Another one with edible greens – great for pesto, or chopped roughly and sauteed with garlic and salt and lemon juice, perhaps. The radishes are awesome straight and raw but perhaps even moreso when fried or roasted.
• Pea Shoots – Top your stir fry, sandwich, or whatever.
• Mountain Mint -Tastes like peppermint, kinda. We’ve found it delicious in tea. I hear it makes nice mojitos too.
• A Canned Good – probably grape jelly made from the infamous Neighbor Marcia’s vineyard, but maybe something else as demanded by your dharma.

That’s all for now. Hope you enjoy!