Green

Hi all!,

I hope that this finds all of you well or getting better. Rain! Rain at just the right time, or even a little bit the wrong time, will make even the most crazed farmer very mellow. We are pretty mellow around here with the weekend's rain. Last week the crew, Paul and I work hard - direct seeding peas, parsnips, carrots, beets, spinach, hakurei turnips, pac choi, and radishes, as well as transplanting onion sets, onions plugs, and a whole field of cabbage, broccoli, lettuce, kohlrabi, kale, and chard. Whew, we were planting machines. I like to call a field that's transplanted all in one day "Insta-Farm". There it all was, planted, looking perky, but there's an amorphous hint of something that we may call "irrigation" later in the summer coalescing on the horizon of our minds. Please, not in April. Then, a weekend of slow soaking rain. Ahhhh. Instead of hauling all that bulky irrigation equipment around, wrestling with crimped dusty hoses and lots of leaks and loose end caps, we get to catch up in the greenhouse and service our equipment.

The first generation of u-pick peas are up, as are the first generations of beets, spinach, turnips, pac choi, and carrots. The first seeds of the season uncurling and punching through the soil seem so improbable to me. It really works! Later on in the season once there are lots of crops growing and you go and direct seed something in the soil we barely give it a second glance. Sure it will come up, most everything else did. And up it comes. But those first seedlings are a matter of faith. Out in the bare field, nothing but soil, the occasional perennial weed, and maybe some distant cover crops. Push the seeder through the dirt, the wind is whipping around and it's cold. A field is seeded and the only visual proof you've got is the empty seed packets and the glancing traces of the seeder running across the soil. The first time I ever seeded a field I was 21 and it was so mentally exhausting that I went home when I was done and slept for the rest of the day. At this point in our lives it's still a leap of faith, but less exhausting. Out there today those improbable little seeds have done their thing and germinated. The fields of bare soil are crossed with barely perceptible lines of green.

We still have plenty of shares left. Tell your friends! - June 1st is just around the corner.

For those of you who just joined the CSA The Piggery (www.thepiggery.net) will be distributing their delicious Charcuterie shares here this year. You can sign up on their website.

Thanks and have a good day,

Evangeline