Abundant Harvest!

We've reached the peek of the season here at Riverhill. The fruits of the harvest are hanging abundantly from the plants, and our CSA members are receiving **enormous** boxes of produce each week (probably at least $35-40 worth, for their $27 weekly share). For example, this week the members received about 5 lbs. tomatoes (heirloom and other); onions, garlic, peppers, eggplants, bunches of beets, salad turnips, carrots, leafy greens, and basil, cucumbers, as much summer squash as they can handle, 2 lbs. of potatoes, a pint of strawberries, 2 melons and 1 watermelon!

The veggies are coming so fast, we can't keep up. Unfortunately, we've swallowed a lesson in planning/marketing/keeping our eyes on the plants every day this part of the season. We've lost a lot of melons to rot in the field: perhaps not catching them quite in time, perhaps overplanting, and being unlucky in two fields planted at different times coming to ripeness simultaneously. We've composted what I've calculated to be thousands of dollars in melons. Similarly with some gorgeous eggplants, not finding a market for an abundance of food means adding once again to the compost pile as they've gone too far on the vine and keep coming fast. The waste is hard to bear. Fortunately, we do have a worthy receptacle for the abundance of summer squast that we harvest every other day: squash and other good produce that doesn't go to our CSA members (and we can't find other markets for) goes to the InterFaith food bank. We're extremely happy that they'll take it by the truckful!

It's truly amazing the amount of food being produced here. The land is healthy and the sun shines every day. The challenges of farm planning and marketing are being highlighted now, as the success of the harvest hangs heavy on the vine. The soil and the sunshine do what they do best, and we farmers attempt to funnel their gifts into needy hands one way or another.

This is also the time to plan for the lean times: we're brushing up on food storage skills and a variety of strategies are being pursued whenever time permits. On the farm we've harvested and dried storage onions and hung garlic. We've built sun-drying racks and began to process bushels of tomatoes every week. After hours, I've started pickling and canning whenever I can stand a hot and steamy night in the kitchen: pickled fennel, dilly beans, sweet pickled eggplant, pickled cukes and summer squash and sweet peppers, and cold-pack whole tomatoes, skinned and ready to be used for sauce some chilly day this winter. Jeremy's been making jams and chutneys with the abundant peaches we've received in our fruit share (and the shares of those who astoundingly fail to pick up each week!)

This is an amazing place. I've never eaten so well and been so grateful for my food. It's a joyous time for we farmers and our communities. I hope you're a part of one this season! Bon appetit!

[FYI: pictures to come]

Friends!!

We love our pollinators!!! See the bee? We have a host of sunflowers growing all over the farm, primarily to attract pollinators, but also to shade basil, beautify the farm and market stands, and to sell at market. We love them! I recently returned from being away from Riverhill for 10 days, and I think the sunflowers grew at least five feet in that time! One of the best places to rest on the farm (hmmm... i need to do this more) is between rows of sunflowers, in their shade. Lying underneath them, you can just about hear them grow.




Recently we've been inundated by butterflies! We've seen many different kinds, even monarchs. Here is a pretty yellow one on some lovely purple verbena.


Our cockatiel friend has started to visit us in the fields, chirping happily and flying free! Here he is munching on grass near the carrots. Recently he's enjoyed riding on a shoulder or a hat for a while, doing what he can to show support for our work on the farm.




And have I introduced you to the Riverhill farm dogs? Here's Spot relaxing in his basket, Spike asking Susannah to throw a stick (he's quite obsessed), and Simon running happily with his sister Chayla:

I was fortunate to be able to take a trip to a friend's farm in Mendocino county in late June. They keep many animals there, including four steer, lots of sheep, chickens, and these two happy masters of their domain - the barn cat, and the lone rooster:

Here I am on the Mendo farm with my friends Tony, Shanna, Amy and, Sasha. New Moon represents!!!

A few weeks ago I went on a beautiful hike with three beautiful girlfriends: my dear friend Amy Lyons, and two of my friends from Riverhill, Susannah and Melissa. We hiked to Upper Loch Leven Lake not far from Donner Pass in Tahoe, and we had the solace of the lake to ourselves all afternoon. The silky water was kissed by the full moon, and we ladies of the lake celebrated our womanhood in wild style!!!

The plants themselves, of course, are our friends, too. I leave you with the beauty of broccoli and allium flowers:

Harvest!!!

We're harvesting FOOD!!!!!!!

New Moon, New Season, New Harvest, New Life, New Energy!

With the new moon comes new life on the farm. After a relatively tense weekend among the group, today we found new energy and shared joy with the new task of harvesting food!!

Yesterday was the summer solstice, and today the first CSA pick-up day of the summer season. Our subscribers are finally able to enjoy the fruits of our labor, as are we! We had a salad at lunch today made exclusively of our harvest: the sweetest cabbage, the freshest kale, the juiciest radishes and their greens. We also picked sweet japanese turnips, so sweet they're best eaten raw. Tonight We'll have some of the white onions, shallots, or garlic, sauteed with zucchini and some combination stuffed into squash blossoms with fresh oregano and thyme, and perhaps some local goat cheese. All these (except the blossoms and the cheese), as well as some of the tastiest arugula I've eaten, were in the CSA boxes today. We interns have also bought a fruit share and a grain share from local farmers partnering with Alan in the CSA. These came today, so we've got apricots and peaches, blue corn meal, rye and wheat flour, oats, beans, and more! The harvest has just begun, and there is lots of cooking to be done.

There are also signs of new life all over the farm. We saw a nest of tiny finches in one of the plum trees, and I hear the cries of hatchlings from a nest box outside the window as I write. There are lots more around the farm (despite the loss of the batch of eggs in a nest box we saw being invaded by a gopher snake a few weeks ago). For about a week now, we occasionally have seen glimpses of a harem of turkeys with about a dozen young, wandering about the pond or down the fire road or into the tall grasses around the property. Today on the farm, once again, I feel joy and wonder and a sense of peace.

Welcome Summer!!

Restoration

This afternoon I was crouching in the hot sun, above the warm earth, finger weeding purslane and grasses from the melon seedlings hiding amongst them, battered and small. I thought aloud, and the others agreed, Today is a restorative day. It felt peaceful today, honest, careful, slow and steady, the object of our care close at hand, close to our faces, as we gently cleared the space around them, and opened up the soil that feeds them. Take a breath. Now take another.

The melons were battered in the hail storm last Wednesday night, like all the other plants in the fields. Some took it better than others. Some were left with ragged leaves dangling from stems, or flattened leaves shot through with holes like swiss cheese. Some had stems cracked, branches and leaves plastered to the ground and caked with mud that left the swirly mark of its flood etched into the scrubbed surface. The field of kale, whose stones we'd discovered beneath the soil the day before as we cultivated, now lay them out high and defiant, in plain sight, adorning the scoured field like scattered gems. On Wednesday night the hail had pummeled our charge, and the sheets of rain had carried off its food and its home.

Thursday morning the interns had greeted one another in the kitchen dazed and cautious, jarred from the fury of the night before, not sure what we'd find when we ventured out to the field. We didn't find Alan, and understandably so: not only had he endured a sleepless night as this land's anxious steward, but he was also hosting family throughout the weekend, and preparing the farm for the season's first potluck, the welcoming showcase for CSA members and friends. These members would be strolling through the fields in three days, most for the first time. Alan couldn't bear to look. Without our guide, we interns did what we could around the farm, but the fields were too drenched to cultivate, and the plants were still in shock. They needed a day to rest undisturbed; the farmers needed a day to weep, and a breath to say a prayer.

Last week, then, brought momentous endings -- Alan's son graduated high school -- and new beginnings, as Riverhill celebrated the start of its 2009 CSA season with food, music, dancing, introductions, and thanks. And underscoring the transitional energy in the air, the week was marked by lightning and rain and hail, and capped on Sunday night with the full moon.

Today was the first warm, sunny day in the field in over a week. The earth was warm again, the sun piercing, the bees buzzing, and the birds gabbing up a storm. Alan was present, and calm. We set to work with our hoes: start at the top of the farm and work your way down; open up the earth to the air, give back to the plants the comfort of their home. Working the soil, focusing more exclusively on its quality than we ever had before, I came to appreciate more deeply how important this living medium is to the growth of the plants. Its not only what's in the soil that matters -- its nutrient content, its organic matter, its moisture -- but also its texture, its crumb, its structure with respect to the air it breathes and the plants it feeds. The hard crust that had set atop every patch on the farm had to be broken up, and the earth made light again. And as this earth, so too were our hearts made light, restored in the peaceful and quiet effort of caring for these plants, one by one, row by row, through the fields, throughout this day.

This Land

This farm has pieces of its history scattered all over itself!

Worked stones and Native American grinding stones.

An old well house

Cairns made of field stones (some covered in grapevines):

Old stone walled pig pen, with modern corrugated metal shack (predators were kept at bay with shotguns):

Heat

Soon we'll be looking for the cold spots in the pond. We were hot today in the field. It was strangely nice to be relatively still on the ground and finger weeding all day, though the ground itself was hot. We talked of thermoses of iced lemon water, and using ice cube trays to make popsicles on cherries from the cherry tree. As if our fantasies were coming to life, Elena brought us strawberry popsicles at a crucial point in the afternoon. At lunch time, we saw a flock of cranes spinning up and up and up on the air currents rising from the valley, taking advantage of the warm day's flow to boost their migration effortlessly and gracefully.