This week, we bodyguarded baby plants.

The day after last week’s CSA harvest, we began to weed.

Weeding is calm, satisfying and meditative work – remarkably enjoyable for a repetitious task. Satisfying moment to moment, and to look back down a row and see a clean row of nothing but crops, and later, satisfying to see those plants flourish and shoot up once freed from competition from wild and wily weeds.

We methodically deleted the vigorous weeds that had sprung up in a thick climbing canopy over any and every unmulched place. Our fingers traced backward along the cords of bindweed, along grasping twining feelers to the base of the stem, and popped them out by the roots, Ragweed,smartweed, lambs quarter and grasses were plucked up and left laying on the mulched walkways, no longer spreading shadow over the soil. Row by row, foot by foot, pluck by pluck, we brought the emerging little seedlings back into the open sunlight they needed.  That sun grew hot and hammering.

We watered  where we weeded; bare soil dries out readily. Our skin scorched and sometimes burned; we swam in the River. Eventually, clouds blocked the sun… but the heat and humidity remained. We sweated into the dirt in the grayness while we weeded.

Sometimes, I machine weeded – tilling as close as I dared to the plants, and weedwhipping the fenceline (where weeds love to ascend along the chickenwire and touch the lowest wire in the electric fence, allowing the fence’s zap to be diffused into the ground).

But not all our protective efforts were based upon being organic human herbicides – the second half of the week, we found ourselves spending just as much intensity into being organic human pesticides. Getting pesticidal. Committing mass pesticide.

When you grow organically, there are limited options for dealing with bugs that want to devour and destroy your crops. The option we rely almost exclusively upon is hand picking / bug squishing.

It was a mild winter, which works out well for certain bug populations.

There are swarms of leaf-eating, root-nibblng, disease-spreading cucumber beetles, eating not only the cucumber plants you’d expect them to, but also the squash, the melons, and the zucchini.  Cucumber beetles are tricky ones to squish – they are small, fast, and quick to take flight when approached.We got better at snatching them quickly between finger and thumb and grinding them up, ideally with a bit of sandy soil. We can only hope to put a dent in their numbers, prevent some eggs from being laid. There are always more, but it does seem there are less every trip.

WEEK 2 BOX:

• Spring Salad Mix 2: Red & green lettuce, pea tips, spinach, baby kale, green and red mizuna, arugula, and some lambs quarter (aka “wild spinach”).

• Purslane – this is a succulent edible garden weed – we don’t plant it, but we don’t weed it much – allowing it to grow and spread. It can be cooked but we prefer it raw. Can eat the leaves and the stems as well, although you’ll likely want to chop those up finely. We have enjoyed the crunchy, tart, lemony flavor on sandwiches and in relish. It’s said to be good in pesto but we haven’t tried that yet ourselves. Purslane is more nutritious than unicorn milk.
• Cilantro – Would go well with the green onions in a salsa, or in a dip, If you want to make a cilantro dip, do it now – this is the most cilantro we’ll get from the field until fall’s second crop comes in.
• Sweet Basil – This harvest was a salvage operation – the dread Basil Downy Mildew critters found us right away this year, and we had to take out all the basil we’d planted. Perhaps some of the new planting coming next will fare better …
• Broccoli – a little cute bag of broccoli. As mentioned previously, we had an unexpected late freeze put quite a hurting on our cool weather crops. Many of the broccoli plants managed to survive in spite of losing almost all their leaves … however, they went straight to work forming flower heads the moment the had a few leaves.So the plants and the broccoli are small – but tender and delicious! I’m grateful to have gotten anything from them after the beating they took … so much time and work went into those plants, and while it’s too bad they won’t be providing much return, getting anything at all feels like a positive thing after thinking all were dead!
• Radishes – better eating quality than last week, thanks to a better weather mix leading up to harvest
• Radish Greens – try to use them within the frst couple of days for best results! See last week’s newsletter for some ideas on that … but don’t try eating them raw I’ll repeat!
• Green Onion – aka scallions – the tops are mild, the white bottoms more potent.
• a Garlic Scape – It’s the curly thing bundled with your onions! You can use this garlc flower like a scallion, chop them into salads or as a topping.

• Zippy Sprouts (large shares only) – Grown with special secret powers by Neighbor Marcia – sprouted clover, fenugreek, radish, broccoli, alfalfa

 

      

Photos from the Harvest (thanks Nora!)

CSA BOX #1

Some general storage info – twist/fold plastic bags to keep things from desiccating. Use the crisper drawer in your fridge – it maintains humidity better than the rest of the fridge. Actually, let’s save me some typing- here’s a link to some good info on storage.

• Spring Salad Mix – Red Ruby lettuce, Waltman’s green lettuce, pea tips, arugula, baby kale, green & red mizuna (red is a bit spicy).  If you’re like me, dig in as it comes – if you prefer smaller and neater bites, chop it up just before eating.
• Orange Marmalade – When we were down south this winter WWOOFing on other farms, we spotted an ad on Craiglist for free oranges – a guy had a tree in his yard that produced super abundantly, but he was unable to harvest them – so we went over armed with several empty boxes, climbed up, and got to work transforming his burden into dozens of jars of preserves to bring North to share. (Please return the jar when it’s all gone!)

• Radishes –  Tasty zingballs in your salad, whole or sliced. If you’re not a fan of that radish zing, you can roast them to create a mild side dish, with a flavor similar to roasted rutabaga or turnips – perhaps you’ll find that roasted radishes are the vegetable that’s missing from your life!
  
  
• Radish Greens – Don’t try to eat them raw: that’s gross (unless you blend them into pesto). Don’t be intimidated by the size of the bag – you’re going to cook these down, like veggie shrinky-dinks. Being a good CSA member means learning to cook greens and love it: fact. We didn’t eat many cooked greens before we started the farm, but they’re now a large part of our diet and it’s awesome. They hold sauces and flavors really well, taste great, and are as nutritious than the roots they’re plucked from. Ways we’ve enjoyed them: chopped up with beans, in soup, sauteed in butter or bacon fat, with soy sauce, garlic … or green onions! We usually sautee them only lightly to maintain more of the green nature, especially since they’re not that tough. (We washed and spun them for you, but you might want to rinse them one more time because these leaves tend to hold onto grit better than most.) Here are some idears to consider.

• Green Onions – The green tops are milder, good to use fresh or add at the very end of cooking. Good in salad dressing, on eggs, or as garnish on a baked potato. The white part has a stronger onion flavor, and can be used anywhere you’d use regular onion.
• Oregano – We threw a couple of sprigs in – use it to flavor a salad dressing or on eggs …
• Free range eggs (large shares only) – Our flock spends most of every day foraging in the woods, begging for scraps, jostling with Widget for dominance in the animal pecking order, and learning to jump up and eat from our hands. They’ve got it pretty good, and we love their antics – we don’t have a TV, but we have plenty of entertainment watching the Chicken Show go down all around us.

Oh, and that pre-season dread I mentioned at the beginning? It’s gone, replaced by a mix of excitement, pride, satisfaction, and even awe – it’s ON, we’re doing it, and it’s beautiful.

Hell. Yeah.

It’s gonna be a great year.

Overall, things are going great on the farm. We’ve had WWOOFers (B, Nora, and now Megg) helping since early on, which has really helped us keep on top of the weeding and mulching and planting and fencing and such.

The field looks great, the high tunnel hasn’t blown away, and your farmers are feeling much less stress than we were last year at this time.

Up until yesterday, it had not rained here for weeks – but we’ve been running the drip irrigation daily, and being glad that the weeds and mosquitoes have been dry too. But yesterday, enough was enough and the heavens finally opened up and gave us a much-needed inch of glorious rain. Without coordination, all 5 of us ran outside to bask in the deluge … as good as it felt for us, I have to imagine the crops were just about in heaven.

The Big Freeze:

May 15th is officially the Last Frost Date for our zone – in theory, we can expect that it’s safe for plants to be outdoors overnight past then. It’s just a rule of thumb (we had frosts past that date last year), but the weather took it seriously this year – the lows ever since then have approached a balmy 60 degrees … but on the night of the 14th, we were thrown a wicked curveball. Not a frost – a full-on freeze – and one that was not predicted by the weather forecasts we relied upon. It got below 25 that night – and stayed there, for hours.

The budding oaks were ravaged, the neighbors greening vineyard and Christmas tree farm were rendered brown-tipped and sad, our asparagus drooped over limply, plants inside greenhouses were nipped even under cover, our grapes and raspberry plants lost their leaves … but the worst of it, for us, was the impact on our cool weather plants we’d lovingly nurtured all  spring from seeds. After weeks of shuttling them into our home at night when they were young, keeping them toasty on the new rocket mass heater, carefully hardening them to sunlight and wind, we had transplanted them out into the field, and tucked them all in with a blanket of hay mulch. Hundreds of feet of plants that would have been fine with a little frost – but which were not able to withstand a true freeze.

The devastation was depressing to behold: row after row of colorless limp leaves, their very cells exploded by the freezing water within. The dead included kohlrabi, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and even the hardy arugula and kale plants.

Not all was lost – for some reason, the peas and lettuce (which I thought would be less hardy than the kale and arugula) were mostly just fine – and even among the worst of it, life and hope spring eternal – a good number of the plants that initially looked to be utterly lost unfurled brave, tiny green leaves from their centers that over the following days, the robust root systems working to keep the system alive and receiving the power of sunshine.

We won’t have the abundance of spring crops we’d hoped for, but it’s gonna be alright. Que sera, sera!

After the freeze, Spring set in for real – swimming in the Saint Croix, laundry on the line, frog choruses and darting dragonflies, and the end of wood smoke scents.

Under Siege!

Up here, the coming of Spring also means the coming of bears – and this year has been just beartastic. The Neighbors reported a lot of sightings and raids on their birdfeeders, but we only caught a few glimpses … until this week.  A young male, just kicked out by his mom, has been bumbling around trying to figure out how to survive in our neighborhood. He finally got the nerve up to start raiding us at night, and my sympathy for him is wearing thin …

The first raid didn’t work out very well for young Mr. Bear – he tried to get into the composting outhouse, got into a big gross barrel that was on its way to the humanure pile, dined on used fryer oil from a 55 gallon drum he knocked over, and chewed open a brand new big jug of unscented laundry detergent. After this trifecta, I know that the answer was that yes, indeed, bears do shit in the woods. I suspect he was doing plenty of that the next day …

We didn’t see any sign of him during the immediate aftermath of his first foray into our turf, but we still had our bear encounter quota met the next day – Kristin and WWOOFer Megg were out doing dishes when all ten pounds of Widget came hurtling past them barking ferociously – drawing their attention to the big momma bear and her cub that had just strolled into the driveway. The gals screamed “BEARS!” and then screamed at Widget to come back, I ran out the door and bellowed like the hugest most badass beast I could feign, mama bear took off into the woods – but the baby climbed a tree on the edge of the driveway. Fortunately, Widget came back to us, and mama bear ordered the baby down the tree and out of our property.

“And don’t come back!”

The next night, Mr. Bear Junior came sneaking back while were were all celebrating at the Neighbors’ … and this time, he did much better for himself. We had friends from the Cities visiting, and they’d brought a bunch of bacon and cheese to share – and left it in our “fridge” – the buried chest freezer we use to keep our food cool. Unfortunately, the bacon was wrapped loosely in paper – and the fridge is ventilated, allowing delicious smells to waft to the nostrils of munchies-stricken bears.

Mr. Bear could not refuse the invite … and he destroyed our fridge, ransacked the contents, leveled our rocket stove grill to get to the meat drippings within, tore down and chomped our birdfeeder, and dragged a cooler into the woods and mauled it.

We heard him tear off into the woods when we returned home to the remnants of his party – and later, he came back and was spotted leaning against a tree about 15 feet from the trailer in the middle of the night, trying to look innocent and nonchalant.

No. We chased him off … but we know he’ll be back.

And I’ll be waiting for Mr. Bear with Mr. Shotgun – not to shoot him, but to scare the holy hell out of him with the loudest sound we have the capability to make …. hopefully that will be enough to send him foraging for less frightening food sources.

(The destruction of the rocket grill and the fridge has a silver lining, really  – both had issues that begged for redesign upgrades, but since they functioned well enough, these rebuilds never attained priority, and they just kept getting used as they were … now, we’ll rebuild them better! Future Us will thank Young Master Bear, even though Current Us would rather kick him in the butt.)

Today is our friend Megg’s last day on the farm – we actually met her while we were all WWOOFing down in Mississippi two winters ago, and told her to visit us sometime during her Full-time Traveling – and so she did!

In addition to all kinds of help with the usual farm work, she tapped into her past as a signmaker for Trader Joe’s, and helped us make some sweet signs for the farmer’s market with her freakishly good lettering.

… as for everything else we’ve been up to, I’ll let the pictures do their thousand words thing: