After the Rain

Finally, it rained.  It had been at least 5 weeks since there had been any appreciable rain here.  The average person was probably thankful for unending sunshine, but my time on the farm has completely changed how I view the weather.  I've always welcomed rain for filling the rivers, as that makes for a much better kayaking season for me, but now I'm adding farming to my considerations.  I count the days since the last rain, try to figure out if it's fallen long enough to make a difference, and listen for the sounds of a soft, soaking rain that won't just run off the sun-baked fields.

The pansies had a little too much rain.  Their delicate blossoms aren't terribly fond of being hosed off, so when rain splashes mud all over them, their market value quickly disappears.  John cleverly solved the problem with newspaper.

Speaking of flowers, the rest of the bearded irises have bloomed.  Have I mentioned how much I love them?

The lettuce patch has changed dramatically in the past few weeks.  It used to look like this, but after being thinned out and soaking up the rain, its progress is quite remarkable.

The peppers are going crazy.  There are blossoms everywhere and more fruit than I can count.  I'm used to the customary colour progression from green to red, so I was surprised to learn that some of them start out black or brown, and turn red later.  This Trinidad 7 Pot Douglah pepper has produced in a variety of colours, but the peppers will eventually be red.

There was also a Black Pearl plant, whose peppers resembled tiny eggplants.  When fully ripened, they will be a shocking red.  And if you need some more pepper porn, here's a cayenne:

and a Takanotsume:

Consumers are used to how things look as a finished product in the market.  As a result, I was confused when John pointed out the radicchio.  It didn't look at all like the small purple cone with white veins that I buy in the store.  Instead, the heart of the plant forms the cone, but the outer area spreads out its leaves, much like the small bud at the center of a rose.  It's really quite beautiful.

I also tried stevia, which I've only ever had in its powdered form.  Marketed as a natural sweetener, it has become more common in recent years.  I was completely unprepared for how cloyingly sweet the leaves were, especially since it looked just like any other herb.  The sweetness lingered for several minutes after I spit it out.  John will sell it both fresh and dried, and it makes a great simple syrup.

The peas clearly soaked up the rain and put all their effort into growing tall and producing pods.  They had more than doubled in height in a week and a half.

We pulled sugar snap peas right off the vine and munched on them.  I'm not kidding when I say I could easily chow down a pound or more of these without hesitation.

The potatoes were very happy to see an end to the drought.  The straw that covers them will retain moisture very nicely, so they should develop quite rapidly over the next few weeks.  Most of the action is under the straw, but we can still monitor their progress by watching the leaf structure.

Happy Rich, a less-bitter type of broccoli rabe, was ready for some early harvesting.

Formerly an obscure ingredient, it has been popping up more often in food magasines and on cooking shows.  If you're like me, you sometimes end up scratching your head, trying to figure out what you can do with a vegetable you've never had.  Fortunately, Kitchen Ninja has the answer.  Each week, you can get advice through the CSA Share Ninja Rescue.  Consider it an opportunity to find a new favourite.


And finally, the strawberries were ready.

John picked a few and offered them to me.  Remember my long-standing dislike for them, I took the smallest one.  Seconds later, after a loud, "Holy crap!  That's delicious!", I reached for more.

I hope to bring some home with me next week, as I'm dying to try this Strawberry-Mint Sparkling Limeade from Cooking Light.

And speaking of Cooking Light, I brought home some baby bok choy, which is the star of tonight's dinner.  I've made this Turkey-Jasmine Rice Meatballs with Baby Bok Choy several times, and it's always a hit.

Out of the Greenhouse and Into the Ground

I spent this visit re-potting seedlings and bringing them outside, now that the weather has warmed up.  It still hasn't rained in weeks, except for a minute of rain and a minute of snow, which wasn't even enough to settle the dust.  The wind has made the dust even worse, and it whipped around so fast I nearly blew backwards more than once.  I asked John how he was dealing with the drought, "spraying, praying, or both?"  He laughed, and said both.  The well used to hold about 9 hours of water, but lately, he runs it dry in about 6 hours of watering.  Keeping the plants watered isn't just about nourishing their growth:  the bugs that eat them love hot, dry weather.  The flea beetles have been having a field day lately.  As a result, many of the spring greens are a loss as far as restaurant sales because they're not pretty enough, despite the taste being unharmed.  This is an on-going problem for growers, and it results in a tremendous amount of food being wasted at farms and markets across the country.

The bed of pansies is blooming quite happily.  John had to pick a bunch of them quickly, before the wind blew them all off.  Destined for Bistro Bethem, they began life at the nearby Lowe's.  Since they're usually sprayed with chemicals at places like that, the initial blossoms were picked and discarded.  The new blooms, which have never been treated with chemicals, they will be served as edible garnishes.  If you have these in your own garden, without chemicals, don't be afraid to eat them.

I adore peas.  Love them.  And sugar snap peas are the best.  I don't have a sweet tooth, but I'll eat these things like candy (same with the baby carrots from last time).  They're not quite ready yet, but the plants are winding their tentacles around the fence as they climb toward the sun, with each blossom promising the sweet, crunchy treat that is to come.

Speaking of sweet promises, the strawberries are bearing fruit, and John assures me they will be ready to eat in the next week or two.  We grew strawberries when I was a kid, but I never cared for them.  I've liked them a little more over the years, so I'm quite eager to experience them again.

I did spend some time in the greenhouse, getting basil plants ready for market.  With a mindful eye toward making it pretty for the consumer, I carefully labelled them all with my very best handwriting.

Sophie was feeling particularly lazy this week.  Despite being a farm cat, she's not much of a hunter.  But she enjoyed a well-deserved rest after her victorious hunt of a very large black snake.

Gaga for Greens

Most of my time thus far has been spent in the greenhouse.  It's been incredibly dry, with no rain for weeks, and the nights still get a bit chilly for many of the infant plants.  The greenhouse is quite large, nearly 2,000 square feet.

Inside, it's lined with row upon row of wooden shelves, sized to fit the thousands of plant pots in their trays.

The seedlings begin in tiny little pots, then get transplanted to 3" ones.  From there, they will either go in the ground or head straight to the farmers' market.

John grows more kinds of mint that you can shake a stick at.  My favourite so far is the chocolate mint.  It reminds me of the old-fashioned mint chocolate chip ice cream of my childhood, a far cry from the artificially-flavoured varieties so prevalent today.  There's also orange mint, lemon mint, peppermint, spearmint, and a fantastic sweet citrus mint with an earthy flavour and an incredibly long finish.  Home gardeners, beware:  unless you want mint to take over your garden, you should keep it in pots.  It's very hardy and quite invasive.

The bed of various lettuces is coming along quite nicely.  They're just a few inches tall right now, but they need to be thinned out.  The bits that are pulled out this early will be sold off as baby greens, sometimes combined into a braising mix.

The rest of the potatoes have been planted, nestled securely under their bed of straw.  A series of tires, held together with bailing wire, keeps it in place.  All told, the 350 pounds of potatoes went into an area covering about 1/10 of an acre.  A few of them are starting to poke up through the straw, but they're waiting for the rain.  Another crop that's waiting for better weather is the zucchini.  The seedlings have already gone into the ground, but at this point in the season, that's a bit of a gamble as the weather may be too cold at night.  In fact, it's been quite chilly and incredibly windy out there.  Even Sophie isn't interested in being outside.  She's been spending most of her time in the greenhouse, where it's always warm, and always the perfect temperature for a lazy nap.

The wild poppies don't seem to mind the chill.  Not destined for market or restaurants, they've cropped up throughout the garden and surrounding fields.  They might not be a cash crop, but sometimes, simple beauty is its own reward.

Another beautiful flower, a personal favourite, is the bearded iris.  John has two beds of them, which will later be separated and sold.  At the moment, only the purple ones are blooming, but they're fantastic.

This week's best nibble was baby carrots.  Ben and I brushed the dirt off and ate them like candy.  They're true baby carrots, not the kind you see in the grocery store, which are just regular carrots pre-peeled and cut into smaller pieces.  These were sweet, crisp, and indescribably delicious.

And, of course, no visit is complete without some time with the cattle.  #907 was feeling very sociable, and happily delivered slobbery kisses while I giggled.

Tours, Turnips, and Cow Kisses

This week I got to plant the potatoes I'd cut up on my last visit.  The plan was to plant all 350 pounds of them, but you know what they say about the best laid plans.  Ben and I managed to get the 100 pounds of Red Pontiacs into the ground.  Ordinarily, the pieces would get buried about 2" deep and dug up at harvest.  John and Ben experimented last year with covering the pieces with rolled out straw bales.  It made harvest time much easier, since all they had to do was reroll the bales and pick up the potatoes.  The experiment was deemed successful, and is being repeated.

John gave me an edible tour of the garden, pointing out what's emerging, what's being choked out by weeds that never died over the winter (we never got a freeze here), and what he planted as an experiment in past years.  As we walked around, he plucked various leaves for me to taste.  It is, by far, the best way to tour a garden.  There was lovage that tasted like celery, and salad burnet that tasted like cucumbers.  My mind immediately went to thoughts of a Greek-style pesto.  Since the plan is for the farm to get an inspectable kitchen for pestos and salsas, those thoughts may come to fruition at some point.  My favourite salad snacks of the day were sorrel, which was refreshingly lemony, and African Blue Basil.  I could have munched on the sorrel all day, and I desperately wanted to make a bouquet of the basil to carry around with me at all times.

It was intense and yet mellow, soothing and yet stimulating.  It flowers constantly at this time of year.  Unlike other basils, it doesn't go to seed or die back, so it can only be reproduced by cutting.

Another thing that had gone to flower over the winter was baby turnips.  When they flower, they're done growing, so these had to be harvested.

Normally, they would grow more quickly and develop bigger roots before being picked, but the weather's been quite unusual lately, so these are quite small.

I got to prep several buckets full of them to go to Bistro Bethem, where chef/owner Blake Bethem is apparently quite fond of them.  Sophie came by for a little quality control inspection.

After giving me her approval, she returned to the heated mat in the greenhouse that was keeping her warm on an chilly morning.

After I finished with the turnips, I went to check on the greenhouse.  I can't stop fretting like a mother hen over every little seed I've planted.  I inspect each flat and wonder why some have sprouted but others have not, and marvel over how much they've grown since the previous week.  It was fascinating to see how basil and zucchini that were planted on the same day have both sprouted, but to vastly different degrees.

The basil in the foreground is less than an inch high and is completely dwarfed by the neighbouring zucchini.  More peppers have started appearing, but they're still quite small because of their winter growth.  This habanero wasn't even as big as my thumbnail.

On my way over to the dairy pastures, I spotted this little figure.

He had been completely hidden by crazy weeds on my previous visits, or maybe I just wasn't yet ready to make his acquaintance.  Having been introduced, I went on to see the cattle.  There were lots of calves who observed me from a short distance while I became friends with #485.  (No, they don't have names.  John jokes that the males should all be named Brisket, as there is no use for them on a dairy farm.)  She sniffed me a bit before kissing my hands and arms, with a quick little peck on the cheek.  If you've never been kissed by a cow, you're really missing out on one of life's sweetest little treasures.

Potatoes. Why Did It Have To Be Potatoes?

My task this week was to cut 350 pounds of seed potatoes up for planting.  John has been kind enough to give me tasks that take my bad back into account, so I was comfortably situated at a rescued restaurant counter.  Even so, being confronted with all those potatoes gave me flashbacks to every soup kitchen I ever worked in.  "Hey, new girl, start peeling that pile of potatoes.  We'll tell you when you're finished."  At least this time, I didn't have to peel them.

Seed potatoes look just like the regular potatoes you get at the store.  A lot of people throw out their potatoes when the eyes sprout.  Next time yours look like this, cut them up so there's an eye on each piece and plant them.

After about 5 hours of work with a pocketknife, I was done.  Finally.  This is what 350 pounds of potatoes looks like.

After all that cutting, it was time to visit the greenhouse.  I didn't take any pictures last week, but there wasn't much to see.  All the gazillion dozens of tomato seeds I'd planted had yet to sprout, leaving me fretting that I had done something wrong.  I was quite relived to see them growing quite happily this week.

Last week, I planted a more varieties of tomatoes than I could count.  Most of them were seeds John got from trading online with other growers.  (Check out Tomatoville if you want in on the action.)  All told, he estimates there are more than 40 varieties working their way through the dirt and into the sun.  He's also growing more than 100 varieties of peppers.  (Traders should go to ChiliGrower or The Hot Pepper.)  They're not producing much yet, but some of the winter ones have struggled valiantly and managed to produce some tiny peppers.  Here's a Cleo's Dragon Habanero, your requisite pepper porn for the week.

That little beauty is about the size of the tip of my thumb.  John described it as very sweet up front, but then building to a very surprisingly hot level in the finish.

Out in the field, I met Ben.  He's worked for John for the past few seasons.  He spent the day busily weed whacking down the overwintered patches of greens to make way for new plantings.  There's already a nice bed of lettuces growing.

Some of the overwintered greens are still worth something before they're whacked into oblivion.  This patch of brassica and arugula has gone to blossom.  Since the blossoms are both beautiful and edible, don't be surprised if you see them garnishing your plate at Bistro Bethem.

Ben was also sorting through some hops seedlings that had overwintered.  Not all of them will make it, but there was enough to make a good start.  Eventually they'll be trellised along some teepee-shaped chains so they can stretch themselves to the sun.  Hops are beautiful when they're flowering, so I can't wait to see them grow.

Those are all Cascade, but there will be Centennial and Crystal as well.

All of this activity was, of course, supervised by the farm's manager, Sophie.  She was feeling quite lazy this week, but managed to plant herself in the middle of all the activity with a great vantage point to our hard work.  She really understands the fundamentals of good management.

Speaking of great vantage points, this was my view for the day.

The farm has over 500 cattle.  The dairy ones, like these, are Holsteins.

The meat ones are primarily Angus, with some Hereford blood mixed in.  Thirty years ago, there were about 100 dairy farms in Spotsylvania County.  Today, there are just 4.  The milk was once processed here in Fredericksburg, 26 miles from the farm.  Later, it had to go to Charlottesville, about twice as far.  Now, it has to go all the way to Norfolk, more than 150 miles away.  There, it gets mixed in with milk from all over the place and processed.  As much as I try to buy local, I've discovered there's really no such thing as local milk around here.  (There is, but it's totally illegal to buy it, and the government gets downright cranky about it.)  I have yet to see John mention the dairy side of the farm without hearing, "the dairy industry is ridiculously over-regulated."  I'm still learning the full extent of what that means.  But don't worry--you'll be learning it right along with me.

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

I try very hard to "eat fresh, eat local."  It's a really big deal to me.  So this year, I decided to take it a step further and actually work on a farm.

My friend John Biscoe tired of his desk jockey job a few years ago, so he returned to his farming roots.  He grows produce on the family homestead, land his ancestors started farming 150 years ago.  Most of the 900 acres is devoted to dairy production, and the hay fields that support it, in the hands of his older brothers.  John works as much as 10 acres for produce, selling to restaurants, farmers markets, and CSA customers.  Not long after he returned to farming, I spotted his name on the menu at Bistro Bethem, my favourite local restaurant.  This made me very happy.

He also sells to FoodE, which takes its local sourcing very seriously, and a company that distributes his microgreens to restaurants throughout the D.C. area.

It's early in the season, but things are already underway in the greenhouse.  This week, I planted seeds.  Lots of them.  Like, more than I could count.  I stopped counting the tomatoes when I hit 72 dozen, then moved on to chervil and fennel.  They're both quite trendy on all the cooking shows right now, so I'm hoping they'll do well at the markets this summer.  While those seeds are germinating, they'll be under the close supervision of the farm manager, Sophie.

Right now, microgreens are what's keeping John busy.  They're all the rage in restaurants, including my lunch today at Bistro Bethem.

I adore beets, especially with goat cheese, so this salad was right up my alley.  But it gave me a special thrill to know that it came from a local farm, especially since it's where I get to play in the dirt.

John keeps busy in the off-season with peppers.  Dried, he can fit quite a lot into a flat-rate box, and pepper afficiondos are willing to pay good money for crazy, hot, and/or new.  While they'll be sold primarily in the winter months, they're already underway in the greehouse.

Some of them are a good deal farther along than those seedlings.  He's been watching one plant for months, watching a still-green pepper sit on the plant since at least October, waiting for it to turn its promised yellow.  And finally....

Whoops.

I'm only working there once a week, and I asked to be paid in produce.  I'll experiment with whatever's in season that week, approaching it the way an Iron Chef approaches that week's secret ingredient.  This week's take included watercress, which I hadn't had in far too long.

It made a fantastic soup from a recipe I've been dying to try.  And yes, it should've been pureed more smoothly, but my immersion blender chose that particular moment to die.  It was still delicious.

I also brought home a bunch of microgreens, which are destined for salads tonight and this weekend, some radishes and onions, and some pea shoots.  The pea shoots went into a salad loosely based on this Jamie Oliver recipe.  Alas, I was too busy eating it to take a picture.  You'll just have to imagine how delicious it was.

Which brings me back to my point about "eat fresh, eat local."  You really can't beat the taste of vegetables that were pulled out of the ground very recently (in this case, just hours earlier).  They will always taste better than a hothouse tomato trucked in from the other coast, stored in a warehouse for who-knows-how-long, and then set on a shelf in the store for another indeterminate period.  I'm not pushing arguments about biodiversity, farm policy, or globalisation.  Not today, anyway.  It's as simple as this:  if it's fresh, and it's local, it just plain tastes better.