(CSA Newsletter: Early Season Week 6)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
We’ve been seeing signs of spring around the farm lately: soaking rain showers broken up by brilliant sun breaks; wild flowering plums in hedges; turkey vultures returning to the skies above our fields; daffodils blooming; and nettles popping up through underbrush along roadways.
And, of course, the spring equinox, which occurs this Thursday and marks the B’hai New Year and the Jewish holiday Purim. The next day brings the first full moon of spring and Good Friday, followed two days later by Easter Sunday. An eventful week for the physical and spiritual worlds — surely a sign of good things happening these next five days.
Here at the farm spring’s arrival is a ‘hurry-up’ cry. As we wait through this rainy spell, we’re planning our first plantings (to be transplanted as soon as the ground dries again) and focusing on finishing our winter projects before summer’s work begins in full force. This last week we finished the ‘rough-in’ wiring of our new pole barn, and we hope to finish the final wiring as soon as we pass the first inspection. Following that, we will pour the concrete slab — a daunting project that we’ve delayed partly because of other pressing tasks and partly because it’s simply over-whelming to think about pouring and finishing a slab that large. (If you’ve never done it, flat concrete work is physically exhausting.) We’re working up to it …
We also worked more on our new wash station set-up on Saturday. After using it for a few weeks, we found ourselves wanting to tweak the layout, including lifting up more of the surfaces so that we can avoid bending whenever possible. So, we built two pallet ‘tables’ and also two screens that we can place over our washtubs for draining, spraying, etc. They’re small tasks that will make a big difference in how efficiently and comfortably we can wash our produce before packing.
We also hung a fence along the backside of the washing area and then wove sticks and branches into it — creating a screen of sorts that helps separate the washing area from the rest of the area under the walnut tree. The screen makes the washing area feel more contained and will hopefully help us keep our work space somewhat separate from our entertaining/hang-out/relaxing area. It also just looks kind of neat, which we think is valuable too, since we have to look at it all day.
We think of finishing our projects as a kind of ‘spring cleaning’ — a literal cleaning of spaces, tidying them up for summer, but also a cleaning of our lists and minds. It’s amazing how much mental clarity and relief we achieve simply by finishing a project 100%. To that end, we also tackled cleaning out our downstairs a few weeks ago. Since we’ve been space limited since we moved here, items have been stowed in places simply because that’s where they ended up. Now we’re trying to find more appropriate homes for everything — an ongoing project that won’t be fully finished until we can move things permanently to the pole barn (after the slab is poured), but our initial clean-out already created more clutter-free workspace and delights us every time we use it these days. Simple pleasures.
Even though it’s only March and we still have more projects on our ‘to finish’ list, we’re already feeling infinitely more prepared mentally, physically, and practically for the upcoming season than we did this time last year. I was looking at last year’s records this week to prepare for our recent organic inspection and I was amazed to remember what we were trying to balance last March: for example, dry-walling our house and planting into the fields. That’s a lot to handle at once. Our spring cleaning list is much more manageable this year. Rather than ‘install kitchen cabinets,’ we simply need to clean out and reorganize our cabinets. We can do that.
I hope that everyone finds a moment this week to address their own spring cleaning, whatever form that takes, and to recognize the cosmic turns later this week. Spring — the season in which the mundane (cleaning) meets the magical (new life). An all around beautiful season, and one that we are excited to welcome. Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers,
Katie & Casey Kulla
Oakhill Organics
