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.

Local Food

We've been eating a lot of local food! We've been able to harvest strawberries from the rows that were left from last year's crop, which Allan has reserved for our own use! We brought those and some home-made
bread to a farm-and-community pot luck. We're all aspiring bakers, so we've been eating exclusively our own bread, and soon we'll get our share of local flour from a guy who grows and grinds his own grains. We had some folks from Living Lands Agrarian Network over for a pond swim and potluck on Friday night, and they came arms overflowing with fresh salad greens, while we provided mint for the mojitos and herbs for the beans. This week we also found some wild cress, called Upland cress, which we ate one lunchtime in a delicious salad with some Miner's lettuce thrown in, and another time with some sauteed foraged mushrooms. We're doing our best to appreciate and use what is growing around us while we wait for the main veggies to come in -- which is much more interesting when sharing and trading with friends. We've made a lot of food with goat whey that Living Lands folks have given us, left over
from their own goat cheese making. We've used it for oatmeal, bread, and soaking beans. It's fresh and healthy and full of good protein.
Last week we feasted on a wild goose they had shot with a bow and arrow at Riverhill. We've also been making really delicious herbal teas - lots of mint tea, and also thyme-lavender-fennel frond tea, which changed from light purple to a hot pink when we added lemon. We've been using a lot of allium scapes (the flower heads) - fried in a light tempura batter was phenomenal!

Planting update: last week we planted peppers, more cukes, more potatoes, jerusalem artichoke, melons, collards, salad mix, more carrots. This week we (almost) finished planting potatoes, and we planted a sea of tomatoes.

Tomatoes, just getting started:

Sorting rotting Jerusalem artichokes:

The Lower Pond

It's getting hot in these foothills! Upper 90's this weekend and into next week, and this is only a taste of the heat to come. Luckily, we have an oasis, and we all jumped in this week. There are two ponds on the Riverhill property, an upper and lower. The lower is big, fresh, and deep, with appropriate diving and sunning rocks surrounding it. There's a large raft, too, that our young black labrador Simon likes to share with the crew. It's a beautiful spot, cleansing the body and invigorating the spirit! It's amazing how good it feels at the end of a long day in the field. Yee-haw!!!

Cultivating, Trellising, Irrigating, Seeding, and Transplanting!

We're getting the vegetables in the ground! Since last Friday, when the ground was finally dry enough to till and prepare beds, we've seeded or transplanted the following:

Cucumbers
Sunflowers
Basil
Zuchini and yellow zuchini
Tomatoes (Early Girls)
Bush beans
Raspberries
Eggplant
Peppers
Potatoes
Kale
Chard
Carrots
Turnips
Cabbage

For each of these crops, of course, we've prepared the beds and set up the irrigation system. This involves tilling and amending the soil (which Allan does on his tractor, but can be done on a walk-behind tiller); calculating and planning the lay-out of the rows and aisles for the crop (which crop should go here? how much and what kind of space does this plant need to grow? what kind of space is required for harvesting? what orientation should we lay these beds to achieve a flat row for irrigating?); preparing the beds appropriately (staking and running string to mark the rows and aisles, raking the beds (or digging the trenches, for raspberries and potatoes), or building trellis or stake systems for the plants to climb; and laying down the irrigation.

The irrigation system is set up by measuring and cutting and fitting 3/4-inch polytube to 2-inch T-shaped risers that attach two valves (with pressure reducers) to underground PVC piping. The polytube runs down the end of the bed, and drip tape is attached to this polytube and then run down each row. Stake everything in place, flush the system, and then drip drip drip! The irrigation system is fed from three large tanks sitting at the top of the farm property, into which water is pumped every evening from the well. During the day, though, the entire system is fed by the pressure of gravity only.

Once the beds are prepared, we can set our seeds, or plant our little transplants, which had been started in the greenhouse. The seeds are awesome: each one stores all information it needs, so that the seed "knows what to do" as Allan put it. We simply give it the environment it craves, (as best we can figure) and off it goes! In a matter of weeks, we'll be able to harvest its leaves or, a little later, its fruit!

Other tasks this past week: We've continued to cultivate the alliums and strawberries, trimming flower heads (and runners on the strawberries) so that the energy from the sun and the soil will continue to go into filling out the plant (for better production later), and of course weeding to reduce competition for nutrients and sun. We dug trenches for the 400 raspberry bushes we planted (our beautiful stick garden, we call it, as right now it looks like a bunch of twigs in the ground.) We built a re-bar trellis for the cucumbers to climb, and posted six-foot metal stakes to which we'll attach horizontal strings as the tomatoes grab and grow.

Talked more about building a chicken coop - a project slated for next weekend. The plan is to get around 20 chickens, enough to have a couple dozen eggs a week to supplement the veggie harvest.

Only a few more weeks until we can eat from the farm!