Late night central

It's Sunday night. The Farm Center is trashed. 

Mugs, cracker boxes, gargantuan metal bowls and sticks of lavender traipse across the bowling alley tables.

Salt shakers and pots and baskets with the dregs of berries stand lonesome in the over head lights.

Half filled mason jars and huge wooden cutting boards attest to a cooking project long over.

Outside, our fiddler plays a slurring late night tune to the half moon,

a good night serenade to the trappings of an eventful weekend.

Dry Flowers

I began to dry flowers today. And I will love me a few floral wreaths come November.

Recipe:

Cut the flowers with short stems, trimming the ends evenly.

Wrap with rubber band tight.

Hang on nails or twine or wire out in doors out of the sun.

Recipe works best with some combination of the currently available plants: Lamb's ears, Zinnias, Larkspur, Lavender, Calenjula, Nigela and Statice.

Add others as they come on.

Preserving the Harvest

This was my recent contribution to the CSA newsletter. (CSA is short for Community Supported Agriculture, the main way we sell our produce. Over 100 families receive a pre-packed box of fruits and vegetables from June-October. They pay us up front for the season, thus 'supporting' our farm in the pre-harvest costs of growing the food.)

As you may have noticed from the recent plethora of choices in your box, the time of plenty has begun. Our fields are beginning to pump vegetables and leftover green, red, white, and yellow filled boxes have begun to line the walls of our walk-in, begging for a second chance.

And so the time of preserving the harvest has commenced. In the late-nights and off-hours, you can find the large canning pot full of boiling water, steaming up the windows of the farm center, sentinels of sterilized jars lining the stainless steal counters, chatty voices swapping recipes into the wee hours. I thought I would share some of the things canned thus far, to pique your interest and inspire your own preserving fervor. Jams have included blackberry, apricot, blueberry, plumb, and strawberry, as well as rose petal jelly. Preserved vegetables have recently taken off, with dilled beats, cumin carrots, and pickled fennel as the forerunners. We look forward to the near onset of string beans to dill, zucchinis to spice, and after that tomatoes to salsa and sauce. We recommend that if you happen to frequent the local farmers markets, you stop by the Happy Girl preserved food booth and peruse their creative cans for ideas. And as reference guides, we collectively suggest The Ball Blue Book of Preserving, The Joy of Pickling, Putting Things Up, and The Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food. Happy canning!

CSA Presents

I packed 64 boxes for our CSA today. Lined up like expectant mouths, the boxes engulfed the hundreds of pounds of dew-laden vegetables coming out of the morning field. There is something instinctually gratifying about packing dozens of boxes full of beautiful things, knowing that some stranger is going to open that present and take it home.

It’s like playing Santa, filing boxes full of lush leaves and bountiful bobbles headed for who knows what table in what kitchen. For some meal in a neighbors house, our kohlrabi the centerpiece of someone’s dinner conversation.

CSA presents an opportunity to gift people with good food, straight from field to counter-top, radicalizing its participants through direct action along the way. 

Irrigate in Blocks

Week two of irrigating the field. 

Revolutionary. 

I will never water the same way again.

The entire 7+ acres is separated into blocks and irrigated all at once, mixed veggies and flowers regardless. Instead of running around turning individual beds on and off, you slip on a flat hose and water sixteen beds at a time. We irrigated 5 acres of dozens of different crops of different ages in an afternoon.

Impressive. The scale has perhaps convinced me I may want to grow more.

Salad Mix Kid

I read a chapter from Organic Inc. for class yesterday and it blew my mind. I suppose that I never fully grasped how all of the different parts of my life, from my many different stages and fazes, are interconnected. The chapter described the evolution of the Salad mix revolution, the beginning of salad in bags, of spring mix, of baby greens. 

Most attribute that revolution to Earthbound Farms, started in Carmel Valley, walking distance from my middle school. Others attribute it to Todd Koons- Salinas Valley tycoon, friend of my present boss Deborah, who I run in to at Christmas parties, and Mill Valley social affairs.  In addition the article made vague mention of other smaller companies that were bought out early in the competition for salad mix king, and one of those was started in my mother's backyard by my late step father, Jake Hougham.  From the beginning of the 15 page article, that spanned multiple geographical areas; Salinas, Carmel, Santa Cruz, New York- until the finale where Earth Bound trumps all, my life story was interwoven with the articles' cast of characters. Even seemingly random connections like houses that my dad built for the managers of Earth Bound gave me chills. 

And when the UCSC Farm and Garden was mentioned as an inspiration to go organic, I looked out from our Farm Center deck and laughed to myself. I felt like my whole existence and purpose had been wrapped up into some strange history of the small green leafy trend that swept the nation a dozen years back. 

Some times it's nice for me to think that this means my life has one grand meaning behind it all, some greater significance, but then again maybe it means nothing more than the fact I grew up in Central California, a child of farmers and contractors- a salad mix kid. 

A growing addiction

Please excuse my prose as I humbly search for a grand metaphor to equate photosynthesis with my life and learning experience at this moment.

Today I fully came to realize and appreciate that the photosynthetic growing power that produces all green matter is attributed to the timely intersection of Light from the sun, Water from the sky (or pipe), and Carbon Dioxide. When combined they make Carbohydrates- or Sugars, the building blocks of life. 

Rudimentary but Extraordinary. 

Taking a metaphorical step out on a very shaky rhetorical branch-- my current explosion of brain synapse is the combination of:

  Light; wisdom from the garden, my teachers, and my peers

Water; my blood coursing through my veins as I learn the irrigation systems of the field

(and) 

Carbon Dioxide; the precious breaths of fresh air that comes wafting over the grass fields from the Monterey Bay as I work. 

Today they came together and created Sugar, the sweet syrup of inspiration- feeding my growing addiction. 

In the Field

It seems fitting to be bumping up production just as the summer solstice flies by. I have made the transition from the Chadwick garden to the Field- where most of the $100,000 worth of produce that supports our program is grown. The Field area is comprised of 5 acres of row crop vegetables, along with assorted grains, limited fruit trees,  a patch of blueberries, and a perennial flower garden. It is a radically different reality from the magical garden on the hill where I just spent my last six weeks.

None the less- it’s beautiful. It’s a bit confusing for those of us who have only worked in hand-cultivated market gardens to be suddenly surrounded by such an immense quantity of food- beats, broccoli, chard, turnips, basil, lettuce—all in 300 foot rows. As I stood there this morning, hula hoe in hand I can’t say that I wasn’t intimidated. And when Liz explained that we wouldn’t be needing our hallmark forks and spades this rotation- I can’t say I didn't feel uneasy. Field anxiety sets in. How to farm with mechanical cultivation 101. 

New roots

It seems like every week I’ve decided upon a new thing to do, a new thing to grow, a new possible future. But I swear, this is it. Perennial flowers. What better thing to ground my life and existence then that? What if I planted flowers that begged me to root myself? Ones that demanded intensive energy for years before they flowered? That encouraged me to set up a growing plan for myself, a development model based on long term sustainability and also created opportunities for a constant presence of being.

Flowers.

Perennial Flowers.

I’ve begun to make cuttings in secret from the up garden. Shush. Don’t tell.

Morning Rose

I awoke my last day in the Chadwick garden, 

dew on my covers,

pie on my breath,

vague memories of late night kitchen dancing, soft light and laughter

looking up  into the fog caught slipping through the redwoods

I awoke my last day in the Chadwick garden,

wood chips pressed into my cheek, my fellow farmies stirring 

the banksia rose arbor our four poster bed