Our earliest plums (Methleys) are blooming already! Because these ALWAYS bloom early, their fruit set is unpredictable. But when they do produce, they are divine. Plus, blossoms now to enjoy!
Ah, spring. The official start is still later next week, but this week has represented a profound shift in our experience on the farm. Some notes from the week:
- The turkey vultures returned.
- Frogs sang at night.
- We skipped building a fire in our woodstove more than half the days. When we did build a fire, it was too warm very quickly!
- We spotted a red tail hawk building a nest.
- We picked the first of the nettles and dried them (nettle tea is hands down our favorite, followed closely by Linden tea).
- Our forsythia bloomed.
- Daffodils everywhere. Yes!
- Many lambs were born!
- Egg production started moving upward after a very long hard period of almost no laying action at all.
- The kids happily waded and splashed in all kinds of puddles, mud, and flood waters.
- Our days shifted between warm mildly sunny weather to windy rain squalls back again as quick as can be.
- We harvested the first of the spring kale (so tender it cooked up in a flash).
- The Methley plum trees bloomed (see above photo!).
- Our spirits lifted with the sight of so much green everywhere on the farm.
In other words: spring things. Undoubtedly spring things! Every shift in the season is welcome, but today I can’t imagine that any turning of the year is quite as welcome as this one. After a long hard winter (by Willamette Valley standards), I feel limp, hungry, pale, and fragile. Perhaps those are exaggerations, but a significant part of my body and soul hungers for all that is about to come — the new foods, the easier outdoor experience, the sun on my skin. Rejoice!
The mild weather plus longer days has already sped up the rate of growth for everything. We find it hard to believe this kind of growth is even possible when we are living in the midst of winter, but here it is. That being said, as always, we experience a “lag time” between the season experience and what shows up on our plates. And, as noted before, this has been a particularly rough winter for our vegetable fields. If we hadn’t made this clear before: between the cold, snow, high water and geese, we lost almost everything in the fields. Including the plants that normally produce abundant rapini for us this time of year. This is a [very sad] first for us in our seven years of offering winter vegetables. But we keep hearing that same language from other farmers too: “This is the first year I’ve lost carrots in the ground.” “This is the first time my strongest greenhouses broke from snow load.” Etc.
We feel especially grateful for our large storage cooler, which has provided the bulk of the CSA veggies over these recent winter months. Soon our field greenhouses will be in full production, and then hopefully not too much later crops from the field. This has been a winter to learn from (as have others before) — in future years we will take more measures to keep geese off our fields, as we have learned they can do immense damage within hours of deciding to eat a crop of ours. We lost a huge chunk of our over-wintered brassica planting as it emerged from the snow — the crop was fine when Casey checked on the animals first thing in the morning, but decimated by lunch. Wow.
We also plan to build another field greenhouse for further risk management and early spring growing. It’s funny to build an additional greenhouse when so many other farmers lost theirs during that recent snow, but it’s a risk we’re willing to take to alleviate other risks in different years. Risk management is all about covering our bases for many different possibilities!
For now, we do our spring work with great enthusiasm and hope. Our days are filled with signs of life, and beauty abounds. Isn’t this a gorgeous sight for winter-weary eyes? …
I love the spring quilt that grows in our starts greenhouse!
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. Amidst all the other news of the winter, have we mentioned one of our most amazing unexpected delights of the season? Our garlic crop somehow managed to go into winter essentially weed-free. Normally this time of year we are working hard to pull annual rye grass and other winter weeds from between garlic plants (especially Dead Nettle and Persian Speedwell). This year we just get to stand back and marvel at the beauty of a vast thriving garlic planting. We salivate at the sight. I think this is the glory of having more land for crop rotations. It will take longer for us to build up certain kinds of problems (such as winter weeds) because the land will have a much longer rest between veggie crops of any kind. Here, salivate with us:
GARLIC!
~ ~ ~
Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Salad mix — One thing that has survived in the fields are some of our winter hardy salad greens. Greens such as chicories will regrow from their roots, so even though they melted in the cold, they are back! We are so grateful!
- Cabbage — We have eaten so much cabbage this winter. I grew tired of standing at the stove stirring pans of cabbage, so a few weeks ago I tried slow baking it and loved the results. This has become a new standard dish for us, and I love that it’s fairly “hands off” (as long as I am home). A few hours before the meal, I chop cabbage into big chunks and put them into a large Dutch oven with other large chunks of veggies (usually big pieces of peeled carrots and onions). I drizzle it with olive oil and salt liberally and then bake covered at 300° for several hours. Once it starts to soften, I like to remove the lid and add a bit more fat or pan drippings for flavor. That final hour or so, I look for the cabbage to begin to caramelize. If I have leftover meat from another meal, I’ll put it in the pot at the end to reheat with the veggies. It is so easy and so delicious at the end of a long blustery day.
- Sunflower seeds
- Beets
- Carrots
- Green onions or chives
- Garlic
