Andrea and Conall harvest Cioggia beet greens in the hot mid-afternoon sun. In tiny farming, it seems that every action has several different effects and offsets, some good, some not so, and a balance, hopefully leaning to the positive side, is struck each time. Here, harvesting greens in the heat is not the greatest for the freshly pulled leaves or the plants that remain, but this is the time we had (a cloudy afternoon with a mild, refreshing breeze every harvest day would be nice!). A quick bath in cold well water instantly refreshes the harvest, and the plants will recover overnight. This particular bed of beets had gotten quite weedy, so weeding while harvesting slowed things down. But, the fairly dense piles of pulled weeds, spread between rows, dries into a decent mulch that’ll help retain moisture and prevent more weeds from germinating. And, the harvest is also a thinning session, giving the remaining plants the space to fill out into proper beets. It all works out…!!
Month: June 2007
Beet greens at market
Yesterday’s beet greens harvest is today’s fresh produce at market—well under 24 hours from field to stand! The fine dining action is really up top with the leaves—great raw or lightly sauteed at this size—but the tiny, unusually bright red Cioggia beets at the bottom got all the attention, with every third passerby asking about these strange looking “radishes”. Beet greens aren’t a staple veggie around here, still, enough people know ’em and love ’em to make these 500g bunches move briskly. A little slow, people-wise (it picks up in July), it was nonetheless an all around enjoyable, successful day at the farmers’ market, with beautiful weather to boot.
The hay around us
The garden, approaching 2.5 acres with this year’s addition, floats near one corner of a 9 acre field of hay. I could fairly easily expand into much more of the field, and ride around all day, machine seeding and cultivating. This is definitely not the plan. Instead, it’s stay small in area and add people—I’m somehow attached to the idea that, in a pinch, I could still (with help!) manage the whole thing without gas-powered machines…more or less. So, twice a season, Bob cuts and bales the hay that’s all around, using 30-year-old big tractor gear, carefully kept up over the decades. Since the whole farm is certified organic, I suppose we could find a specialty market for “organic hay”, but that seems a little precious—this stuff gets fed to the half dozen cows, couple of dozen goats, and single miniature donkey, who live to eat and loaf on other parts of the tiny farm (I call ’em 10,000 lbs of pet…they’re Bob and Karen’s, it’s not I who takes care of ’em!). This field is overdue for reseeding, the hay has lots of grass that’s grown into the diminishing clover and alfalfa. Oh, you can also see Conall’s old Volvo station wagon, in the parking circle mowed out of the hay in front of the stand—it’s rapidly become part of the season’s local errand routine (it will lose some character when he gets that rear bumper reattached). And that’s the hay story.
Three generations…
On the left, watering in the latest of six succession plantings of mesclun with a basic lawn sprinkler that’s quite efficient for shallow irrigation of newly seeded beds, when there’s no wind. Here you see the last three generations. I started planting four beds at a time, a week apart, and stretched that to nearly two weeks as the sun, heat and regular rain we’ve had so far made the growing fast. With the great weather, they’re catching up to each other—you can see the beds on the bottom right are moving up on the previous planting up top—and I’ll be tilling under a lot. This is absolutely strange for me, in past years, cutting every last bit of available salad greens every week was normal. But the people and planting expansion this year make this sort of abundance the new normal, production levels that assure harvests for all the CSA members, market and stand, even if conditions get tough. It’s not WASTED, I tell myself, it’s organic matter and even nutrients, back to the soil… I’m getting used to it!
Cloud show
Second only perhaps to badly done snapshots of kittens are unfortunate attempts at capturing majestic cloud formations. Still, this evening, I couldn’t help but point the camera at the sky and snap away… For an hour or more as the sun set, all manner of clouds formed and reformed into the most fantastic combinations and configurations I’ve seen in a while. At one point, the wind suddenly picked up from a breeze to maybe 40km and low, menacing storm clouds, seemingly close enough to jump up and touch, raced across to one side but missed us entirely, then the wind as suddenly died down. Everywhere you looked, fancy cloud action was going on. I spend a fair amount time looking at the sky, usually to see if rain is actually going to make it all the way to us instead of veering away at the last minute. But a lot of the time, as you look around, the sky joins the field, your gaze travels up, and it’s all…good! (Hope the photo manages to stir fun memories of…looking up!)
Checking potatoes
Potatoes are looking good, all weeded and hilled, around seven weeks after going in. There’s been a Colorado potato beetle watch on for the last few days, the little guys are out in some force this year, more than in the last couple, although not a major problem so far. Control is time-consuming (what isn’t ! :) but easy: they tend to congregate conveniently on the topmost leaves, munching away, so we pick them or shake ’em off into a small bucket of water. A simple end.
Doing the rounds
Since the start, the idea of a daily full garden inspection—”doing the rounds”—seemed to make sense. It sounds easy enough, but somehow, it doesn’t get fully done all that often, there’s almost always something that seems absolutely pressing to do early in the morning or in the evening when a stroll about is most practical and pleasant. But of course, I do get around to see everything every couple of days at least: checking for weeds alone insures that. Today, Conall and I managed to do a pretty full walk about. You look to see how things are doing in general, check for the start of new weeds and pests…it’s amazing how things can creep up and then jump out at you if you’re not watching closely. Here, we’re checking out the onions. So far, they’re doing well!