In the foreground: worked up ground. In the background: Casey working up more ground!
It’s happening! The sun is out! The high on our porch today hit 84° — the highest temperature we’ve had out here by far this year, breaking yesterday’s record-setting (at that point) 73°.
The plants aren’t sure how to respond. Have you ever seen thistles wilt? They are wilting in our fields at this very moment. Knowing how tenacious they are, we have no doubt that they’ll bounce back overnight. We’re assuming the same will happen for all our cultivated plants that are suddenly being thrown into a very different climate than the one they’ve grown accustomed to over the last seven months of mild-to-cold weather.
They’ll adjust, but the shift today is very sudden, and the plants just don’t have the hardness yet to weather it without showing some affects.
We humans are also adjusting. I always joke that in Oregon, our talk of the weather often goes something like this: “Too wet. Too wet. Too wet. Too wet … TOO HOT!” But I’d say that our family and friends all seem to be taking the shift in stride. That’s an understatement — folks around here are downright giddy (as well as a bit sweaty and sunburned). We had to dig out all our sunhats today, and it’s time to pull out the stored kids’ clothes from under the bed to see what still fits from last year’s warm-weather gear and what we can pull out anew. Even though I’d normally do this much earlier, I’d been waiting for the weather to make it truly needed.
What a relief to have it truly needed now.
We hope that the weather holds long enough for us to keep working on all our tillage and planting goals. Casey has been on the tractor a lot during the recent mostly-dry spells, and now he has most of our ground for the year in some stage of being worked up. Hoorah! He planted yesterday in the ground that was the most ready, but we have plenty still to get in the ground.
This Saturday we are going to plant our potatoes for the year, and we’d like to invite folks to join us if you are interested! The past three years, we’ve made a real event out of the planting, but this year we just hadn’t felt like we could reliably schedule anything like that until the weather shifted. Now that we know we can plant, we’re going to focus all our energy on Saturday on planting. So it will be a very casual — “your-help-is-welcome” — kind of gathering. This year, the work should be pretty easy — just dropping bits of potato into trenches, which Casey will cover up with the tractor. If you’d like to join us, come out anytime between 2 and 4 pm. We’ll have a shade canopy set up, some water, and apples for snacks. If you plan to come out, please let us know at pick-up or via email (farm at oakhillorganics dot com) so that we can expect you (and if you need directions, we’ll send those your way too). Work is always more fun with more people!
I imagine that you too are catching up with sunny weather tasks. Or, perhaps even just starting them now that the sun might finally trigger those thoughts of: “I should buy veggie starts!” or “I should wash my car!” or “The garden shed needs some spring cleaning!” I know I’m having many such thoughts these days; we’ll see how many I get around to in the coming weeks. Either way, I will aim to approach all that I do with joy and gratitude for these days and the opportunity to live in this beautiful season of life.
Enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
P.S. If you haven’t caught on yet, some of the late spring vegetables that all love are later than usual because of the wet/cold spring. Thanks for continuing to enjoy the delightful things that are available this year. But, changes are on the horizon. Right now there’s a race going on between two crops to see which one can be ready first: the sugar snap peas and the strawberries. We’ll see which one wins in a not-too-distant week!
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Meet this week’s vegetables:
- Rhubarb
- Apples
- Seasonal salad mix
- Radishes & turnips
- Kale
- Chard
- Rapini & purple sprouting broccoli
- Potatoes
- Sunchokes
- Leeks
- Green garlic
