Eating in Season
April 1, 2009
Eating in Season Last week I walked out to the garden to check on the progress of the peas. We have 3 rows of snow peas and two sugar snaps. They are only about eight inches tall and not yet flowering. I am getting anxious. I want to be the first to discover a pea and the first to eat one this season! The familiar bright green leaves and curly tendrils of the pea plants swept me back to harvesting with my sister, Kristin twelve years ago. We had an endless row of beautiful peas ready for harvest the day she came by to visit. Stewart and I had advertised that it was time for “U-Pick” peas with a few flyers around Tubac and Amado then hung a scale from a tree branch in anticipation, but no cars came rolling down our dusty driveway. In a day or so, the peas would be large and starchy. They needed to be harvested that day. When Kristin and I started picking, we hadn’t planned on completing the whole row! But we started giggling and joking and throwing dirt at each other while crawling on our hands and knees, picking and snacking our way down the row. We were using galvanized pails that we filled then dumped into a larger tub and it became a contest to see who could fill their bucket faster. I think we must have picked fifty pounds of peas that day and thus began my first efforts in “preserving the harvest.” I blanched and froze most of those peas and we enjoyed them all year! To be the one to notice and then eat the very first peas, beans, summer squash, etc., earns you bragging rights around here! It reminds me of when I was a kid in Maine bragging about being the first one to take a swim in the lake in late spring. My sisters were soon to follow and we could declare that summer had begun, (despite our shivering bodies and blue lips). To me, snow peas are symbolic of spring at its peak and I like to be the one to announce the arrival of the crop. It isn’t the kind of competitiveness that fosters jealousy; I just want to be the one to share the good news. Crunchy, raw peas with a tasty dip, lightly sautéed peas with butter and a sprinkling of salt, stir-fried peas with rice – YUM! When the first few appear, I struggle to fill a bucket, determined to have them for dinner that night and have enough to divide between our CSA members, but at the first harvest, there is never enough to go around. Then, five days or a week later, there are peas coming out of our eyeballs. The familiar clanging of the legumes hitting the galvanized pails begins and there is plenty to go around. This excitement does wane, however, when two days later, the crop must be harvested again, then again and again. Achy backs and sore hamstrings accompany the buckets to the field and well before pea season has come to a close, I am “over it” and never want to pick another pea in my life, or at least until next April. Eating mostly vegetables that we grow means that we often go without that vegetable when it’s out of season, so we enthusiastically welcome each food back to the table when it arrives. The celebration of the very first tender peas or baby kale or any crop begins right in the field. Squatting down in the garden or the greenhouse to nosh on veggies is a great pleasure of mine. I feel like a grazing animal sampling all the flavors right out of the ground without bothering to wash them first. Today, while snacking in the greenhouse, I marveled at the meaty texture and flavor of the three varieties of kale that we are growing. I changed my mind (again) about which was my favorite. Then I sampled some young sorrel greens that taste surprisingly like citrus! A crunchy white radish, still speckled with soil was a slightly spicy dessert. Lettuce is an example of a crop that is missed terribly during the hot summer when we can’t grow it. Summer seems to call for a cool, crisp salad, but in Southern Arizona, it’s the wrong season. Once and a while we break down and buy a bag of a mix at the grocery store, but we are always disappointed. The leaves lack flavor and have usually started to break down and are slimy before the bag is even open. In the fall, Stewart and I monitor the progress of the lettuce crop, trying to resist harvesting until the leaves are just the right size, then we stir up a dressing and PIG OUT! In the spring, we have a salad with every meal and never tire of it. We know that come about mid May, the greens will turn bitter in the heat and will bolt, or flower. Lettuce is different than most crops in that there is no way to preserve it for the off -season. It doesn’t blanch, freeze or pickle, so when it’s done, it’s truly done! Right now it is “green” season. Lettuce, kale, arugula, spinach, chard, turnip greens, sorrel, Asian greens and beet greens fill the bags of our CSA members and our evening meals. Salads, stir-fry and soup recipes accompany their bags, offering ideas of how to prepare these foods in different ways. By the time “green season” is over, many will be tired of these foods and will be pining for summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers and all the other crops of the next season, but that’s how it goes. Eating local means eating “in season”. It means that you celebrate the first harvests, embracing the foods and the memories they bring like old friends visiting. You celebrate them at the kitchen table but are ready to see most of them go and make way for the next harvests when the season changes. Soon, however, you long for that leafy dish and are wracking your brains to find one more way to cook the zucchini you missed through the winter! If you are trying to eat in season and/or local, preserving the harvest can help add variety to your meals on the off-season. For more information, visit the web site for The National Center For Home Food Preservation at: www.uga.edu/nchfp/ Our next Talk & Tour is Saturday, April 4 at 11am. The farm is open to the public Saturdays, 9am-3pm and Sundays 12-3pm. Take I-19 to Exit 42, go south on East Frontage Road
Smarty-Pants and the Brown Thumb!
March 1, 2009
I have been on jury duty the last couple of weeks in Tucson so I have been very out of touch with the goings-on on the farm. In fact, I went two weeks without even looking in the new greenhouse at the seedlings that recently sprouted. When I finally got over there, I was astonished! Neat rows of kale, boc choy, spinach, turnips, radishes and more are thriving in the greenhouse. After years of witnessing packets of brown, hard, lifeless seeds grow into a variety of edible foods, one would think I would be unimpressed, but the transformation never ceases to amaze me!
Work Smarter, Not Harder!
February 4, 2009
Farming for 2009 has begun! The goal for this new growing season – uniformity and mechanization. We have determined that in order to reduce the outrageous labor costs we endured last year is to utilize our tractors more and our backs less. The first step in making this happen is to create rows in the fields that are all the same size. This way, we can set our implements in fixed positions to do most of the seeding, cultivating and even some harvesting with the help of our John Deeres! This may seem obvious, but it has taken some time to get to this place. Some crops do well in narrow rows spaced wide apart. Others can be seeded 2 or 3 rows to a bed, making the best use of the space. Problem is, if we can’t drive down the rows with the tractor, all work is done by hand.
December 2008
December 1, 2008
Finally a much needed break from the hectic pace of the last several months. To Stewart and me, fall marks the end of the year on the farm and December, the beginning of a new one. The end of the season was clearly defined this year with an early frost, abruptly freezing the summer crops we usually enjoy well into the fall. The we experienced an Indian summer as the temperatures warmed back up to the 80’s and grasshoppers continue to thrive! For the past several weeks we have been so busy with field trips of up to 300 students and their parents Monday through Friday and our Fall Festival which saw 300 cars full of families each weekend and private weddings on the farm, that we have barely had time to share stories of our days. “Did you see that father petting the bull with his toddler? ” I finally asked Stewart. He had. The man was with his little girl balancing precariously on the cattle-guard reaching through a gate to pet the neighbors 1,500 pound bull! Unbelievable! It blows my mind sometimes at how out of touch people are when it comes to safety on farms. Some parents let their kids pet horses and pigs without supervision and are surprised if they get bit. I actually put up signs that say; “Have teeth. May bite. ” (I wanted to add, “duh! ” but resisted.) Some folks are so accustomed to the clean, dust free conveniences of urban life that they are very uncomfortable in the country. One lady this year was mad that she had to carry her pumpkins too far. I told her that we provide free hayrides back from the pumpkin patch. She didn’t want to take a hayride and walked off in a huff that the garden was not close enough to her car! Another man was angry that the parking lot was in a different place than last year. I explained that we are organic and need to rotate our crops every year which means moving the parking lot. That didn’t seem to make him feel better. Another customer asked why the hayride was bumpy and another wanted a guarantee that there were no snakes in the garden. While doing pony rides I overheard a mother explaining to her child that ponies were actually donkeys mixed with regular horses and I saw at least five women here for the day in high heels! I am assuming that most of you are equally appalled at these behaviors, but maybe you’re not. Maybe I am much more of a country bumpkin than I thought. I wonder. I wonder how completely clueless I would be living in a city.
October
October 3, 2008
When I started college at the University of Arizona in 1990, I had not decided what my major would be. I had decided what it would not be, though. After years of witnessing my father and his co-workers complaining about the politics of education, I was sure that I would never be a teacher. Two years into core coursework, however, I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I went to see an advisor in the Old Main building on campus. I was ushurred into a cubicle where a computer was waiting with a program to set me on the right path. I sat down and answered all the questions and pressed “finished” at the end. The program put all of my information together and told me that I should be… a teacher! NO WAY! That night I sat down and made a list of what I wanted out of a career. I was very honest with myself and this is what I came up with (in order of importance, by the way).
Waiting for Rain
July 1, 2008
The month of June was unbelievably hot and filled with drama and excitement here on the farm. As we move into July, we are all glancing to the south and east with hope as the clouds start to build promising relief. I spent all winter complaining about being cold and pining for summer and now, here I am, complaining about the heat. Not good.
Spa Agua Linda
June 1, 2008
Imagine, if you will, a day of yoga, mud baths, a steam in the sauna, muscle toning, sun tanning and a healthy meal of organic vegetables.
Agua Linda Farm Journal
May 1, 2008
Last month, we shifted into high gear here at the farm. We have over 100 CSA members (Community Supported Agriculture) who are receiving a weekly portion of the harvest. That’s up from only 35 last year! Since we are also participating in farmer’s markets and supplying stores and restaurants, we have been putting in some very long days. Wednesday is our busiest day. Last Wednesday we harvested, washed and bagged 130 pounds of spring mix, 100 bunches of radishes, 60 pounds of braising greens, 100 bunches of cilantro, 120 heads of Asian cabbage, 200 heads of lettuce, 60 pounds of spinach, 40 pounds of arugula and 160 garlic tops! Stewart and I started at 7:30. Adam joined us at 11 AM, then, two FFA (Future Farmers of America) students from the high school arrived with my own kids on the school bus to help out. We worked in the packing shed until 9:45 that night! We have been looking for more help.
Agua Linda Farm Journal
March 1, 2008
Yesterday afternoon, Stewart, Jesse and I worked together cultivating the fields. We were using push plows to scrape the surface of the soil and lift out tiny weeds that had sprouted along the sides of the crops and in the furrows between the rows. Seeing the pesky little seedlings crumble and then looking back at a well groomed row after each pass is very satisfying. Jesse had a three-pronged rake that has a large bicycle-like wheel on the front (high wheel cultivator). His job was to push down the furrows, a less delicate task than mine, as I had to get as close to the plants as possible. Soon he had passed me and was very proud of his speed. He is not the most willing worker in the family to say the least, but he was pretending that he was racing on a motorcycle – and winning! That was satisfying for him. I had reflective moment while catching my breath at the end of one row. The sun was setting and here we were, my husband, my son and me beneath the view of the Santa Rita Mountains and Elephant Head, tending our spring fields by hand. No tractors were running. I heard only the sounds of lambs calling their mothers, and the scraping of the push plows across dirt. In fact, other than the occasional “motorcycle revving” noises coming from Jesse, this could have been a scene on a farm from 100 years ago. Then my blackberry hummed to let me know that I had received a text message from my daughter. The incongruousness of this did not escape me.