A Great Week

by Andy

Our great week started last Friday night when the heat wave broke. It rained and the cool breezes and low humidity changed everything. It is easy to face the prospect of weeding, planting and harvesting, when you are doing it outside in some of the best weather ever. Then on Sunday evening our 10 apprentices showed up for their week of work (and fun). 


Monday we gave the garden a polish - weeding and fertilizing just about everything in the garden at the farmstead. In the afternoon, Donna worked with them at the Long Barn, getting the space ready for the harvest day. Laura and I protected the fruit trees in the orchard by installing anti-deer fencing around each young tree. The apprentices spent Monday evening connecting with each other and the farm - going for hikes, visiting with the animals, and playing on the A-field. 

Tuesday we weeded and fertilized over at the big field. This was fragrant work; we spread some of last years' manure that was now (mostly) composted. The winter squash received this odorous love, and we were able to hoe it in too. In the afternoon, Donna had the crew make the outside of the Homestead beautiful. She weed-whipped, and the students weeded the landscaping and washed the windows and knocked down cobwebs. After work, we all went to Clear Lake for a little swim. What a nice feeling. In the evening we played Kubb. Ask me about it. According to Eva, it rhymes with "book."

Wednesday found us planting broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower for the fall harvest. Laura twined up the tomatoes until her hands glowed green with tomato oils. We seeded beans, carrots, and beets for the fall too. Donna had the students finish prepping the harvest shed (including mending all the broken hoses!) and also washing and vacuuming the vehicles. In the afternoon We weeded the sweet corn, oil seed pumpkins, and watermelons. It felt nice to have entire sections of the field free (mostly) of weeds. Wednesday evening we had movie night, and we were already getting nostalgic for the week that wasn't even over yet.

It has been great to have all of the energy of our Junior High apprentices here on the farm. Now as I write this, the harvest is complete and our last lunch is over. We are preparing to go in with the veggies. It will be quiet here tomorrow, but the great week will continue. There a few things left to plant, some tomatos to tie up, and that one row of pumpkins left to weed. Oh, and good food to eat and good friends to eat it with. Happy Summer!
 

2012 Harvest Season starts today!

Hi Land School Veggie Share People!!!

Today is our first harvest day of the year. We have had 10 Junior High students here this week and the garden has gotten a good polishing up (weeding, planting, harvesting). Things look great! Thanks to our crew: Eva, Cami, Isabel, Harris, Amal, Ewan, Justine, Jo, Esme, and Yeshim. 

This week we harvested:

Green beans

Zucchini and Yellow Squash

Lettuce Mix

Onions

Garlic

Garlic Scapes

Herbs: Basil, Parsley, Cilantro, Dill

Cut Flowers

Beets

Kale
Pigweed

Swiss Chard

Yes Fennel

I know, right? 

See you today from 4 to 6 pm in the LCS parking lot. 

Andy

Laura's Recipes: Chickpea Salad and Scape Pesto

Recipes:

July Second Chickpea Salad

2 cups cooked chickpeas

2 cups cooked rice

2 cups vegetables (such as bell pepper, sugar snap peas, sautéed garlic scapes, steamed green beans, or steamed broccoli)

½ cup raisins

½ cup walnuts or roasted sunflower seeds

Mix above ingredients together in a large bowl. Blend dressing ingredients and toss into salad. Chill and serve.

dressing:

1 cups plain yogurt

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 clove minced garlic

1 tbsp honey

1 tbsp curry powder

salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Scape Pesto

1 cup garlic scapes, chopped

½ cup walnuts, roasted almonds, or other nut/seed

1 tbsp lemon juice

½ tsp salt

½ cup olive oil

½ cup grated parmesan cheese

Blend garlic scapes, nuts, lemon juice, and salt. Add olive oil in a stream, while blending. Stir in grated parmesan cheese. Serve on pasta, as a pizza sauce, as a sandwich spread, or by the spoonful!

Early July on the Farm

by Laura

Laura's July 2nd dinner

One of 27 heritage breed chickens that Laura is raising at the Land School

The second day of July, a hot Monday, is accepting earth’s rotation towards darkness. A beautiful plate of food sits before me, much of which came from the soil of this farm: nasturtium flowers, lettuces, basil, thyme, mint, broccoli (frozen from last year), pickles, garlic scapes. In our patient anticipation of our gardens’ overflowing, we have been harvesting wild edibles for our meals. Andy made a soup for lunch that included milkweed flower buds and a chicken of the woods mushroom, found by Jen. Two of our most abundant garden weeds – pigweed and lamb’s quarters – often find their way onto our plates. With the intense heat, it is easy to notice the growth in all parts of the gardens. It is looking beautiful, and it excites me to know our market will begin next week, potentially with lettuce, kale, garlic scapes, green beans, onions, basil, parsley, and flowers. This morning, Andy and I spent four hours weeding onions. Looking past the hot discomfort, it was a yet another opportunity to experience the nurture of encouragement: encouraging the plants to grow, and encouraging one another to persist with our work through the seemingly sweaty eternity of the rows. We typically rest for a few hours in the afternoon, and today, as I usually do, I packed my bag with a water bottle, book, and a few markers, and went to the tree house. One of my favorite places to spend time, the tree house is a love I know I share with many of the Lake Country students who I have met here. On my walk there today, barefoot as I typically am, I stepped on a bee, for the second time. The first occurrence left me with a swollen and irritated foot for days, but today I remembered what my Italian farmer friends taught me – put wet clay over the skin (or mud, and our soil here is mostly clay), and the bee venom will be pulled to the skin’s surface. It worked! Time fills up easily here, and I am continually renewed in gratitude that it fills with things I love: garden work, caring for animals, cooking, eating, preserving food for the winter, playing piano and guitar, reading, writing, walking. I am experiencing a simple and perfectly beautiful option for a way to live, to experience the earth, to contribute to and receive from the many communities of which I, we, are all apart. While I was hanging in my hammock under the great tree house oak today, making a card for a friend, I memorized a favorite Mary Oliver poem of mine:

Answers

If I envy anyone it must be
My grandmother in a long ago
Green summer, who hurried
Between kitchen and orchard on small
Uneducated feet, and took easily
All shining fruits into her eager hands.

That summer I hurried too, wakened
To books and music and circling philosophies.
I sat in the kitchen sorting through volumes of answers
That could not solve the mystery of the trees.

My grandmother stood among her kettles and ladles.
Smiling, in faulty grammar,
She praised my fortune and urged my lofty career:
So to please her I studied - but I will remember always
How she poured confusion out, how she cooled and labeled
All the wild sauces of the brimming year. 

I am thoroughly enjoying my time here at the Land School and look forward to meeting many of you, at the Thursday market or here on the farm. 

CSA Starts Next Week July 12th

Wow.

Is it ever hot out there! It feels like summer now.

A consequence of the heat is that we have vegetables that will be ready to harvest a little sooner than we had originally expected.

Our first harvest will be Thursday July 12th. We will bring the produce to the Lake Country School parking lot next Thursday from 4 to 6pm. If you are a CSA member, you can stop by and pick out your produce and mark yourself down for "credits" based on what produce you choose. One credit is equal to one dollar - everyone starts with 260 credits.

Then we will have the produce pick-ups every Thursday until the end of October.

Here is a list of some potential items for the first delivery:

Cut Flowers
Lettuce Mix
Garlic Scapes
Fresh Garlic
Green Onions
Green Beans
Beets
Kale
Swiss Chard
Basil
Parsley
Cucumbers??

If you have any questions, please contact Andy. Post a comment, send me an email, or call me (see LCS directory to contact the Farmstead).

We hope to see you at the first market!

Cheers,
Andy

P.S. We do have a few shares still available. Please let friends and family know that they can come to the first or second market and sign-up then.

Apprenticeship 1 Update

Wow. What a week so far! When the 5 summer apprentices arrived on Sunday evening, I gave them a "Garden Pep Talk." I described how this is our make-or-break turn-the-corner week of the summer. There are so many things that needed to be done this week, and all of them have an impact on the how the rest of the summer will go. I told them how this is the week when either the weeds take over or the plants take off. I explained that there is a mountain of planting that did not get done last week when there was so much rain - and now we have two weeks worth of planting to do.

So the first morning we took half of the garden by the farmhouse and weeded every bed. What a change! Then we wheel-hoed the onion rows (we can still see them - which is good). I was able to drive the cultivating tractor for hours on Monday afternoon and kill most of the weeds on either side of the single-row crops (corn, dry beans, sunflowers, squash, and potatoes). Laura and I also tied up one whole row of tomatoes - pounding stakes and weaving the tomatoes up so that they set their fruit above the ground. That all was a huge change in just a few hours.

Then on Tuesday morning we weeded most of the other side of the garden. The beets were rescued and some of the carrots. In the afternoon Laura and got a start on tilling between the pumpkin rows and she made progress on the second row of field tomatoes. In the evening we went to the Pizza Farm and enjoyed some farm-fresh pizza. Yum.

Wednesday morning found us planting, planting, planting. We planted 50 cucumber plants, a 100 scallion bunches, 200 parsley plants, 150 basil plants, 2400 sweet corn plants, 2 rows of green beans, 5 rows of lettuce mix, cilantro and dill. Wow. In the heat! Then in the afternoon Laura finished the second row of toms, and she and I watered all of the sweet corn in.

Tomorrow we finish rescuing the pumpkins and onions, tie up tomatoes in the hoophouse and install a fence for the cucumbers to vine up. Maybe we will rescue a few more carrots.

Shwhew!

   

June Garden Photos

It has been a while. Here are a few photos to let you know what is up in the garden.

Our summer intern, Laura, has created an herb garden in the terrace on the southeast side of the Homestead. 

The hoophouse has a a bed of peppers this year!

Our blueberries are just about there.

Winter Rye as a cover crop.

Tomatoes in the field. Paste and Heirloom tomatoes planted early as a gamble against a late frost.

Young zucchini plant.

Sweet corn, melons, and in the distance, sunflowers.

Pumpkins for pumpkin seed oil.

Potatoes. We sprayed an organic beetle killer called a spinosad today. Now the potato beetles' spines are so sad.

dry beans, popcorn, flour corn, onions, sunflowers.

Pumpkins.

Liberty Apple tree. Big growth spurt last year.