If anyone can find the first ripe cherry, it's Rusty. He's on the search for ripe fruit all day long now that we're in the season for it. This cherry tree grows "wild" along the edge of a field, and it's always the first to ripen.
Oh, how lovely it is to be in the main growing season again. To be moving along, checking things off our ‘to do’ lists left and right. We have a relatively long growing season here in Oregon — the harvest season, of course, is year-round (hallelujah!), but we still have a restricted seasonal window in which to do quite a lot of tillage, planting and growing of crops.
Knowing how much must be fit into the months between May and October puts a lot of pressure on spring. Spring being a notoriously variable season, this means a lot of that work is unpredictable until it is done. We make our lists; we watch the weather; we act.
And, now, we’re in June, and quite a lot has been marked off those lists. This weekend, Casey and the crew worked extra hours to get our first batch of hay under cover. The bales were finished on Friday afternoon, and they were all safely tucked away by Sunday afternoon. Everyone involved breathed a great big sigh of relief knowing that some extremely sweet delicious goodness is already in storage for feeding our animals during those dark months.
More sighs were breathed as we watched our five acre field of corn emerge — row after row of corn, to be fed to animals and people both over the next year. And we sighed after the first hilling of the potatoes. Hay, corn, potatoes — these are big crops for us, representing a lot of calories for everyone. It is Very Good to be moving along on these, and countless other, crops. Summer still technically lies ahead, but we are in the midst of peak photosynthetic potential — we are happy to make as much use of the sun’s power as we can every day!
We’re very nearly at the end of our spring planting. We’ll do some more big rounds of sowing and planting to get greens in the ground for fall and winter, but nothing quite like this spring push. Soon, more and more of our field work will be weeding and tending. And then as the season turns, the fields will be in maturation and ripening mode, and we will spend most of our free time harvesting. The turning in our work follows the turning of the seasons, always.
And as we approach summer, I am also thinking about this next season here in our home life too. As we finish up our “school year” activities, what will our next rhythm look like? How will we shape our summer days and weeks? Each year is a bit different as these kids grow and have new interests/abilities/needs. We spent quite a lot of time at the river last year, and I anticipate that will be true this year too. Rusty has also recently mastered pumping on the swing and likes to spend plenty of time swinging each day and jumping on the trampoline. Dottie’s role is still mostly to follow along, often still on my hip or in a stroller, but she can run and jump too. I feel like the three of us are in a transition right now as figure out this next rhythm — soon enough, we’ll hit our stride as summer arrives. In the meantime, I am trying to think of fun ways to celebrate the seasonal turning with them too. Not that they need much more than the farm already offers — we ate our first ripe cherries today, along with a few handfuls of raspberries. Good stuff.
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
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Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Strawberries
- Snap peas
- Cut lettuce — A cut salad mix of tender spring lettuces! Salads have been a staple in our house of late! My next adventure in salad dressing making will be to try using some nut butters in place of some of the oil (tahini sounds like a good start). I’ll let you know how it goes.
- Beet greens + baby beets — We love tender young beet greens and often harvest them as we “thin” our beets (two tasks in one!). Casey went out to get you beet greens this week and found that the beets were growing faster than he thought! So these have some baby beets attached too! You can prepare these greens as you would chard. Or chop the greens and use them in a salad (they are that tender).
- Parsley — One of our favorite uses of parsley this time of year is making parsley pesto. Simply put parsley leaves in a food processor with a bit of olive oil, some good nuts (walnuts are our favorite because they are local), and some garlic (this week’s scapes would work!). Delicious on meat, pasta, bread, anything!
- Chard
- “Torpedo” onions — These are some of our favorite onions ever (and we love onions as a general rule!). They are beautiful to look at and oh so delicious to eat! These are sweet and mild enough that they are awesome raw (chopped on salads, sliced onto sandwiches, etc.), but they have enough flavor to cook too. Butter + a torpedo onion sautéing is one of my favorite smells ever.
- Garlic scapes — We gave these out two weeks ago, and I forgot to properly introduce them! Garlic “scapes” (or “whistles”) are the flower that grows out of the top of certain garlic types. Long before they open and flower, they are delicious to pick and eat. The stalk is tender the whole way up (although the actual flower bud is not — add that to a stock, but don’t try to actually eat it). You can use this any number of ways. Chop and add to any dish as you might garlic (parsley pesto, cooked greens, salad dressing, whatever!). Or, treat it as a vegetable itself, and chop into longer pieces to roast with other veggies (maybe some torpedo onion slices and snap peas!). A little butter and salt, and you’ve just cooked up a bit of heaven.
