Pictures, then day. Snapped these before heading home (apologies to Darlin for stealing her photo job).
Always gotta start in the greenhouse. The empty looking trays in the center are the 2000+ broccoli plants I marathon seeded. Behind the bale of soil are 2 plantings worth of lettuce getting ready for the field. The mound of green on the far right are actually 6 enormous potted rosemary 'trees.' On the left (out of camera frame) are all the 2nd round tomatoes and a load of basil inching toward their day of transplanting.
Cantaloupe are on their way. In the foreground are the ones NYU and I managed to weed around-- those in the back 2 rows are in desperate need of some plucking.
A lot has changed since the last picture day, here's a shot from the horse's edge of the tomato fields-- a sea of green. They are healthy as hell, and boy am I ready to get picking them-- just 3 weeks to a month till harvest time starts.
Little green tomatoes are pushing out. This will become a Rose tomato one day soon. The roman tomatoes are supposed to be overgrown with budding fruit, but I didn't think to take a picture.
But nothing is ever perfect. Found little worm-maggots like this guy chomping at a few plants. Deep maroon slugs with black spotting and stripes. I might mention them to the boss.
Down at the cherry rows. These are the posts I bashed in with immense help from NYU and the foreman. Bah and Old Rudolpho ran the wire and staked the lines down. All the work crews joined forces to string each tomato plant up to the guide wire. The line will shoulder the plant weight so they wont break beneath the heft of the many tomato clusters.
Turn a little to the right from the last picture and here's the view. Sea of tomato plants cooking in the sun-- its gonna be a good year if the heat and sun keeps.
Here is a close up on how we tie up the cherry tomatoes. Loose knot at the bottom then spiral among the branches up to the wire. Tying knots is surprisingly therapeutic.
Over to the lower fields. This jumbled mess is actually a vaguely organized jumble of snap peas (on the left), sweet peas (center) and fava beans (the plant mound on the right). Picking has hit full stride on the peas last week up till now-- and more are mere days from ready. Bah and Old Rudolpho's family have been very busy.
The Fava Beans. Yes, its no trick of the lense, the bean pods are enormous and meaty. I dissected one with the boss, his wife and Viking this afternoon. Inside the tough exterior pod, is a fibrous short white hairs packing in the beans shells. The beans shell have a thick wall, but once these are removed there's a soft bean within. Uncooked, they have a bitter zip taste-- but the boss says once cooked they take on a sweet flavor. Picking hasn't started yet on these favas, but soon very soon. My Italian friend at the pizza shop is ready to explode. In years past he has bought the entire harvest-- hundreds of pounds-- outright. This year he has some stiff competition so there might be a 20lb per purchase limit.
The Sweet Peas. Within the jungle you can make out some pea pods left to mature. These are pretty straight forward, peal the pod and there is a neat row of peas. As you might guess, they taste sweet.
The Snap Peas. The plant is very similar to the sweet pea, short vine structure curls in on itself-- allowing pods to sprout up everywhere in the tangle.Unlike the sweet pea, the pod isn't tasteless-- it's crisp and clean. You eat the pod/peas whole. We pop 'em like candy when walking the lower fields.
Rows of string beans. These plants have a ways to go before letting out their veggies.
Big beds of Swiss Chard (left), a half bed of 2 kale varieties (center) and a bed of beets (right). At the far end of the field, half the kale bed and beet bed has a planting of bok choi. The beets aren't ready yet, but we spent a lot of quality picking time here today (explaining why the chard/kale/choi looks so thin/non-existent).
3 beds of young lettuce. It takes these plants about a month to mature. They were transplanted about a week and a half ago. The CSA gobbles this stuff up, so we plant many cycles of lettuce co-currently to meet the demand.
3 mature lettuce beds. Left and center are the ragged left overs of romaine after today's cutting. The right bed is gone now. We cut all the loose leaf-- nothing but weeds remain.
A few rows of corn. These field shots follow the lower field's road edge chronologically- peas at one side-- corn at the other. The corn has shot up to 3 1/2 feet, growing a foot a week. The boss walked NYU and I through the corn today, explaining-- if everything goes right, just these 10 rows should produce ~900 dozen ears. I had it explained to me forever ago, but I still have trouble realizing the numbers-- one stalk really only yields one sell-able ear of corn. The rest are typically too underdeveloped. Also-- the corn lesson continues-- the silk strands on the ear? Each one is connected and develops with each kernel on the corn ear. The silk only browns when the ear reaches maturity and the strand becomes unnecessary to the plant. We have many (many) plantings of corn-- but this is the one planted first. Harvest should come sometime mid-early summer.
The mating dance of corn. Each stalk has both male and female reproductive accoutrements. The grain looking stem inching from the stalk's top is the male bit-- it will release its pollen down onto its female buds or the wind will carry to other plants in the field. Looking good and green.
The forest field-- the scene of last week's grisly vermin-day-of-reckoning. On the left are the long rows of summer squash, zucchini and patty pan destroyed by the vermin. You can see the field cloth we staked into place over the 3 rows. The summer squash and zucchini were in rough shape, but salvageable. The middle patty pan row (center of picture) was eviscerated-- only 20 ft of plants escaped alive (490 yards of waste). To the right, the shiny rows that kinda look like field cloth-- aren't. Those are 2 rows of cucumber planted in a new style the boss learned from his buddy's farm. The jury is still out on its effectiveness. I could go on forever but real quick-- not all plants (obviously) appeal to the vermin. But a plant's chemical make-up plays a major part in the vermin's choice. Young squash varieties offer a sweet smorgasbord-- but once they reach a certain developmental stage (according to the foreman), their chemical make up changes and animals are no longer enticed by the taste. It's just a matter of getting the plants to that point of maturity.
The peppers are developing more leaves. Bah, Old Rudolpho, NYU and I planted these around the same time as the tomatoes, but just look at the difference in their growth rate-- these are much slower. Slowly they'll come.
I can remember
planting these guys well. The double rows on the right and part-way down the center are all basil. The single plants in the center and on the left are all the egg plant varieties. The basil is certainly a bit taller and the egg plants have more leaves-- but they've a long way to go.
Let me take you on a berry tour of the farm:
The blueberries are just day/week away. Almost all the berries have started to take on their blues and purples. I missed these last year-- the harvest hardly lasted 2 weeks due to the hot weather. This year looks good, very good.
The gooseberries. I sampled some right after taking the picture, and their bitterness has given way to a nice clean bite. We hardly ever get to pick these guys-- the old russian ladies come down and clear the field on their own.
The currants are coming. These I know-- they take on a bright fiery red when ripe. These berries have a tart zip similar to the gooseberries, but even smoother.
I realized that I haven't posted any ripe raspberry photos-- so here they are, in all their glory. Even in the late day lighting you might be able to tell the slight difference in red-shade between the ripe berries and the ripe-about-to-drop berries. I wouldn't mind picking a lot more of these tomorrow.
The blackberries are in bloom. The most of the other berry photos came from the lower fields/rows near the onion field, but these are on the way up the hilltop. They have a long way to go.
A close up on the blackberry blooms-- you can see some of the berries developing in the cluster.
The hearty surviving strawberries of the hilltop fields. These are not an ever-bearing strawberry variety, so their end is approaching. The summer sun has started to take its toll on the plant's leaves. But here's hoping for another week or two.
Not berries, but here's the view in the orchard-- the peaches are swelling nicely. NYU had money riding on them staying tiny and inedible-- looks like I might get to collect. They wont be ready till Fall, but I got my eye that one with some color in the center.
End of berry/peach tour, on with a few more pictures.
View of some hilltop fields. The foreman has been busy laying periodic rows of corn rounds. If you zoom in and look close, you can see where the one round is just starting to peek out of the soil and then the dirt where more corn rounds will be planted in the upcoming weeks.
The heartbreak fields at the hilltop, where my boys work crew nearly met its match. On the far left are the 2 beds of beets, then the 3 beds of spinach, then the arugula, the bok choi and the broccoli rabe. The weeds used to be pretty thick around here, that is until yesterday.
The potato rows are unrecognizable. They are thriving up here.The boss pulled out a plant to check their development and gave me a look/lesson. 5-10 potatoes are developing in each plant's root system. The soil up here is perfect, we can just plant them and forget them (with only occasional weeding). The Fall harvest will be immense.
Turn left from the potatoes, and as you can see-- the foreman has been busy in his tractor solitude. The big summer sweet corn planting is creeping along at a serious clip. I'm looking forward to the return of the corn forests.
Last photo, the view from the orchard. Freshly mowed by the foreman, the peach trees and their fields are looking good. The farm has definitely entered the front door to summer.
Today was one of long hard picking, so I left many of the raspberry rows and fields up to the imagination (but as a hint: they're overflowing). On to the day itself.
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63 Strong and His Lobster Necks
Full sun all day through. The temperature stuck at the mid 80Fs.
NYU, Stretch and Rhode Island were out behind the farm store when I arrived, they were lathering up their sun burns with a communal tub of lotion. We've all become attached to our specific knives-- NYU has a long fillet knife with a wood handle, Stretch has a short razor blade with a long rubber handle, Rhode Island has a kitchen knife with a duct taped grip, mine's a kitchen knife-- its handle held on with wire, electrical tape and rubber bands. We sharpened the knives, grabbed a sack of elastics and carried a few pick crates up to the onion fields. The boss had left a note-- all the rabe and spinach by the onions needed to be cut.
Rhode Island and I took the rabe, NYU and Stretch handled the spinach. I carried up 12 extra crates as we needed them. The boss's wife was preparing for a day at the dump, so she walked out to the field to get some help. NYU, Rhode Island and I loaded her SUV with a few old TVs and odd junk. Then back to the field. The boss's daughter showed up at the farm store during our water refilling. She was showing off her 'newest accessory', a terrified kitten that clung to her with all its claws as Lucy darted around. Back in the field, NYU convinced Rhode Island that the boss's daughter carried a secret flame for him. The subject of conversation varied depending on pick-your-own families proximity. But money was a safe topic-- NYU had enough of the 'bougy' folks who shop at Wholefoods complaining about eggs and papayas and their supposedly 'frankenstein-free' fruit. He talked with me about wealthy people who disguised their wealth well, and those who didn't-- and the difference that makes. First haul-- 8 crates packed tight with rabe, 3 tight cases of spinach.
The boss came to pick up the crates and we headed down to the lower fields. A tower of empty crates waited for us by the chard. Rhode Island and I started at one end, NYU and Stretch started at the other. We picked 8 crates by lunch time. Before taking off, we hosed off all the chard/rabe/spinach. The boss's wife swung by to pick up any final items bound for the dump. She revealed that today was the boss's 63 birthday-- we sang to him as we carried crates into the packed cooler. He couldn't have been happier.
After lunch, the boys lathered their burns and we headed back out. As we worked through the remaining chard Rhode Island turned his attention once more to his hatred for Jockey. Apparently Rhode Island overheard his enemy verbally abuse the boss, and that just couldn't stand. He wanted us to run into kitchen and ride the kid out on a pike-- instead we finished the chard. The boss picked up our catch and we started picking Kale. Rhode Island and Stretch took the dinosaur Kale. NYU and I covered a purple Kale variety. We pulled 4 crates of each type. Next up was the bok choi. Stretch and I started at one end and we finished the 12 crates in less than an hour.
Once again the boss rolled by to pick up the crates, but this time he dropped off many more empties and a bunch of big cardboard boxes. The lettuce was next-- as much as we could pick before close. Loose leaf has been in high demand, so we picked the entire row before turning to the Romaine. Rhode Island revealed the intimate secrets of his grooming habits. NYU was horrified to hear that he didn't have a pet name for his manhood-- so he orchestrated an elaborate naming ceremony in the middle of the field. Rhode Island decided he'd take the name of his car-- Jeep-- and double entendres filled the afternoon. Stretch shared his relished image of Rhode Island joining a furious boss at the breakfast table after a clandestine night with his secret love. Everyone decided that Rhode Island was the savior of the field-- he might not work particularly fast, but his conversation makes any job a pleasure. 20 crates of lettuce (18 loose leaf/ 2 romaine), then 10 big cardboard boxes of romaine.
Closing came around-- we were out of crates and time, but plenty of lettuce was still in the field. The boys took off immediately. I helped the boss wash the lettuce and move it into the cooler. Chatted a while with Viking-- she's concerned about Jockey, after all he's human too. The boss gave us a fava bean lesson, when his wife came back from the dump. She's an avid dump picker and scored quite a catch today-- a heavy steel dolly with one flat tire, 3 steel shovels, an iron grub hoe with a solid oak handle and three perfect rakes. The foreman returned from another day tied behind the tractor wheel. Everyone went on their ways home-- I took today's photos then followed suit.
Tomorrow is the first double market and CSA day-- its gonna be a madhouse.
Onward to it.
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