This week the garden started to look a bit more like a farm field, and less like a jungle. Don’t get me wrong – there are still towering weeds, masses of bindweed vines, and endless shelter for our several species of herbivorous rodents to sit in the shade and comfortably munch on the fruits of our labor.

But there are several broad swathes of deeply piled hay mulch, and rows of neatly weeded crops growing in the open air and full sunshine, and I find myself making excuses to walk past the ends of the rows just to appreciate them.

It’s odd for us to enjoy such a thing – we’re both more about nature unbounded,organic swoops and curves, coexistence and wu wei and wabi sabi. Well, we still have plenty of that to appreciate – in contrast to the little bits where we’ve brought human order to the land.

We even have the “Western Front” of the garden (in our war on quack grass) tilled deeply … after whacking down the thick weeds that came up seemingly overnight with the “motorized machete” (push mower), I began the struggle of tilling through the remaining roots and weed stalks with our little walk-behind … when I heard “STOP! STOP!” through my hearing protection.

And lo and behold – like an angel there appeared Neighbor Marcia, bearing glad tidings – Neighbor Dave had the tiller attachment hooked up to their tractor, and he could come and make short work of the area I was in if we could take down the fence a bit for access. And now the thick growth has been transformed into a nice fluffy uniform soil, ready to have salad mix, beet, cilantro, and dill seeds sown directly into for the late season’s harvests.

the Week 7 Box

• Cabbage – the last of cabbage until the fall crop comes in. Early Jersey Wakefield is a great coleslaw and sauerkraut cabbage –  but if you ate your last one raw, you may want to try sautéing in butter. If you use a big skillet and give it plenty of space, parts of it will brown and be delicious.
• Cucumbers

• Zucchinis
• Green Beans & Wax Beans
• Beets – With their greens on. Cut them off for storing in the fridge. Greens are good cooked or smoothied. If you don’t like beets, you could always hide them in chocolate cake.

• Purslane – we have a really great crop of self-seeding purslane. After our initial years of only having inedible weeds we are not bothered by this edible and nutritious one. I’ve heard of adding it to pesto and cutting back on the oil for a lighter result.
• Basil – isn’t basil awesome???
• Garlic – The clove wrapping is thicker and not papery because it was just harvested and has not cured yet.

It was a lovely summer week.

The heat and humidity took it down a notch, and the mosquitoes faded to far more reasonable levels – just in time for our friends Nik and Michelle’s wedding on the Farm. It was good to have a reason to get things cleaned up and put away a bit, and wonderful to look around with new vision, seeing just how uniquely beautiful our surroundings truly are.

We also did some serious weed remediation, using the motorized machete, aka my old lawn push mower, tilted back to wheelie blades-first into the forests of weeds coming up in the aisles around the tomato and melon plants. Fall broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbages were transplanted out into the field. We weeded the onions, leeks, crushed potato beetle larvae and pruned-n-trellised up the constantly-growing tomato plants.

The earliest tomatoes are starting to ripen, the eggplants are sizing up, the okra is popping.

Summer is summering, and it sure is fine.

Week 6 Box

A beautiful harvest day!? No rain, moderate humidity, minimal mosquitoes, no gale force winds … just sunshine, a light breeze, and gentle bees on the farm-field flower arrangements.

Flowers of the Field – Good for the soul. This article discusses the many ways you can eat sunflowers, but honestly I’m skeptical of anyone that suggests eating the prickly, tough leaves (zucchini, borage, sunflowers) of a plant in a salad.

Beans – A much lighter harvest than last week’s. Probably best to not overthink them. Just sauté them up with some tasty seasonings and enjoy.

Red Cabbage – According to Wikipedia, “In acidic soils, the leaves grow more reddish, in neutral soils they will grow more purple, while an alkaline soil will produce rather greenish-yellow coloured cabbages. This explains the fact that the same plant is known by different colours in various regions.”

Onions – Go with everything.

Broccoli – Florets are of course delicious but so is the stalk part if you peel it.

Zucchini – Ranging from tiny adorable ones to a few that I had to harvest Monday so they would fit in the box.

Cucumbers – Most likely the pickling type. They are just more versatile.

Dill – flowers are a flavorful and pretty compliment to cucumbers.

THE WEEKLY NEWS

In this week’s chicken news, Slick Junior escaped the tyranny of Slick Senior’s reign, and went to live with his own private hen harem on our friends’ rural property, and Grey Ghost the hen, having set up a broody base in our secure secondary coop, successfully hatched out 7 new chicks. So our annual “what will we do with the chickens this winter!?” conundrum has been appropriately complexified with a larger flock.

Complexity this cute just has to be worth it, though.

The weeds continued their assault on our sanity, growing nearly tall enough to block all light from Planet Earth.

But we made headway as well, carving out open channels with weed whackers and lawn mowers, and burying the fallen evildoers under thick blankets of hay mulch.

The potato beetles rallied impressively, defoliating our spud plants’ leaves mercilessly  – I took an unplanned break from today’s harvest to squish every dang one I could find in the 600 row feet of infestation.  I wanted to get a picture of my gore covered hands to show the woman at the farmer’s market last week who refused to believe that we really grew things without chemical pesticides and herbicides since we weren’t certified by The Man’s inadequate and unnecessary stamp of approval – but my fingertips were too slimy to work my phone, so you’re spared the horror.

Let’s see, what else … the mosquitoes are still pretty dang bad, especially when cloudy and windless like this morning. And the rodents continue to wage war on us – rats in the chicken yard, gophers gobbling up our broccoli, voles destroying pepper plants, munching random veggies, and expanding their tunnel network of terror.

Fortunately, their abundance seems to have summoned the bull snakes – and what they don’t devour, Neighbor Dave has been helping us slay, with his array of traps.

And through it all, Otis continues to grow, unhampered by weeds, aphids, rodents, or the state of the nation. If you look into his eyes and speak to him, he will almost always respond with his huge open-mouth toothless grin (which some refined languages likely have a single word for). He learned how to purse his lips and make raspberries back at us, he loves the people and live music at the farmer’s market, and is learning how to pet dogs and other babies.

BOX 5 –

During this morning’s harvest, I was quite certain that I knew what the focus of the newsletter would have to be. But then a harvest that had been epic in one way, changed course and became epic in another, and now you get convoluted sentences like this instead of a straight and simple tale of terror at the proboscises of incredible swarms of mosquitoes.

So yeah, first came the epic mosquitoes. A couple of days ago, an insane hatch of mosquitoes emerged, and suddenly the mildly buggy season became the worst plague of bloodsuckers that anyone around has seen in many years.

And harvest morning was mosquito heaven – darkly cloudy, damp, and still. Even those who never wear bug spray, did … but found it entirely ineffective.  They swarmed us coming out the door, swarmed us walking through the woods, swarmed us in the field and even worse in the processing area.

We each retreated soon enough to put on pants, sleeves, and even head netting. I wondered how many got into the bags as I packed up salad mix and they devoured my hands.

I think some folks must have prayed for relief or something, and some kind of gods took pity on us. But maybe too much pity, or perhaps there was some kind of multiplier effect due to multiple requests and varied compassionate deities working in accidental synergy.

Because when the breeze we wished for to keep the skeeters down came, it was, well,  a bit of overkill.

And the Epic Mosquito Harvest became the Epic Wind Harvest – a couple hours of strong, steady wind punctuated regularly by gusts that staggered you when they hit you square, shattered sunflower stalks, scattered any loose objects about, attempted to murder the rain canopy, brought down a limb the size of a tree next to the processing area … and completely removed the mosquitoes from the rest of our harvest!

It was awesome; not just the sudden absence of hangry bugs, but the incomparable, refreshing excitement that comes with a wind storm.

Box 4: May Contain Mosquitoes.

Salad Mix – (Red & Green Lettuce, Arugula, Mizuna, Pea tips)  It’s probably the last salad mix of the spring crop! Officially summertime now …

French Breakfast Radishes – You know these. Don’t forget to eat yer leaves! And cut them off before storing them if you won’t eat them soon. They’re pretty over this summer weather and might be a bit hollow inside, hopefully not though.

Radish Pods – those weird bubbly nugget things in with your radishes are edible immature seed pods from radishes that we let bolt. Don’t eat the tough stems. The pods are juicy, crunchy, with a mellow flavor. You can snack on them, put them into salads, or come up with something I can’t even imagine.

Sugar Snap Peas – and lots of them! These sell out every week at the farmer’s market. They sell themselves if you give out a sample …

Snow Peas – these too! Great snacking while stuff grills at a cook out. This week, they share a bag with the:

Broccoli –  Enjoying the side shoots of Broccolini while awaiting the harvest of the full size heads … next week perhaps?

Spring Onions (aka “Table Onions”) –  Slice them in half and grill them for the 4th of July! Maybe with some oil and salt n pepa.

Deb and Jim hauling stuff “upstairs” before the Saturday market

The week’s work included tomato pruning and trellising, plenty of weeding (they’re getting to be tree-sized out there!), hunting and killing potato beetles. Then more weeding.

We had family visiting for most of the week from all around the country, getting to know the newest addition to the family, so we weren’t able to kick as much weed butt as we’d have liked, but it was still great to connect with our tribe a bit.

In other news, we have a rat! It’s living beneath our chicken coop compost bin, and has evaded all attempts at capture. Neighbor Dave is not going to give up easily though … the battle is on!

Produce-wise, the bean plants are flowering, the high tunnel tomatoes are flowering, setting fruit, and shooting upward quickly, making us question the adequacy of even the new and improved taller trellising. Overall, things seem to be doing pretty well – crops and weeds alike!

Box Three

Today was a rainy harvest – we set up canopies over the processing area, and donned raincoats for our forays into the field. Rainy days are actually pretty ideal harvest days – the crops stay cool and nothing is getting desiccated byheat or sunshine. (You might think the crops would also be nicely pre-washed from the field, but nope – they get splashed with sand & soil and require more rinsing than usual.)

Kohlrabi – They’re beautiful this spring! The greens are edible as well, similar to kale – perhaps chop & sautee them up together?

Kale –  A mix of dinosaur, red Russian, Vates, and scarlet varieties.

Salad Mix – Red & Green lettuce, arugula, pea tips, mizuna

Sugar Snap Peas – EAT THEM BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DOES

Snow Peas – A classic for stir fries, but also delicious raw or sliced up in a salad.

Sage – there are many creative uses for fresh sage, what will you get up to this week? Perhaps when the temps get back up above 90 this weekend, you could make a nice sage iced tea!

Green Onions –  the annual link to this song comes … now:

a bit of broccoli – tucked in with your snow peas … waiting for the brocollini to get rolling!