We’re two weeks into our Summer Session and there are some things I’d like to share with you all. As usual, knowing that not many of us have time to read everything that is offered to us, my comments fall under the following topics; you can see what interests you.
1. How goes the season? (Comments on the produce in the first couple of weeks.)
2. What’s coming up in the next couple of weeks?
3. A word about u-pick
4. Farm Map
5. Kids activities start First Week of July
6. Wanted: “chickens” for Carnation 4th of July Parade
7. Farm Chatter
1. How goes the season? (Comments on the produce in the first couple of weeks.)
It’s been an interesting spring. The predicted drought seems to have been washed away (at least on our side of the mountains) by more than abundant spring rains. In some ways it has been a farmer’s dream. We could have used a little more sun, but the consistent and well-timed rains have kept us from packing too much irrigation pipe as of yet. My feeling is that we are off to a little than better than usual start, but that is only because of our new field down by the river. I think in our ten years this is the first that we have had broccoli the first week, and the only reason we had it this year, which is certainly not an early year, is because we started our first rotations “down by the riverside.” The sandy soil down there warms up faster, drains better, and generally gets started much earlier than the main farm. The soil doesn’t have the same level of nutrients, as it contains so much sand, so the broccoli heads tend to be smaller. But they are ready to eat in mid-June, and I’m very pleased about that.
Our flowers are lagging a bit, as those of you who have been with us for a while know. But as you’ve all seen, they are all in their places, and will soon be producing more than we can harvest. As I write these words, (I mean “as you’ve all seen”), I realize how pleased I am that you all have been here to the farm for the last two weeks. For the last two years, while we were delivering during the Summer Session, I couldn’t assume that, and that was hard for me. During those two years, we were serving two very different clienteles, and that never seemed quite right to me. I’ve probably too often quoted Kierkegaard’s famous suggestion that “purity of heart is to will one thing.” This season, I feel like we’re “willing one thing,” and that feels very good. Anyway, getting back to my point, you’ve all seen that even if a wet and not too sunny spring has delayed the flowers, they are poised, waiting (as we are) for the weather to settle down and for summer to really arrive. It will happen!
Our peas are lagging a bit too. We’ve now had a little “pick and eat,” but they may just need a week off. You can all see that they are loaded with blossoms, and those blossoms will soon be replaced with crisp, sweet, juicy pea pods. Another year—either of the last two, for example—with more sunshine would have found those peas ripe by now. But this year is this year, and with the right attitude we’ll be better for the anticipation.
Something’s that not lagging is our tomatoes. That is because, as I’ve explained before, we can get the heat-degrees we need even on cooler days by just not opening the doors and sides to the greenhouses. The first Sun Gold tomatoes are ripening now. And we even have a few ripe heirlooms starting to turn. I still think it will be mid-July (as usual) before we have the volume to distribute, but they should be right on schedule. This year I did cave in to “Member demand” and grow one variety of hybrid tomato (Sun Gold). But to avoid too much bad karma, we also planted about 40 varieties of heirlooms.
Sometimes it’s tempting to do as my neighbors (new to growing tomatoes) are doing—plant lots of hybrids and end up with tons of so-so tomatoes. But once again we’ve chosen to stick with the heirloom varieties. They don’t produce the quantity, that’s for sure. But quality it another thing, and we certainly get an amazing variety of sizes, shapes, colors, and flavors.
The greens love the cooler, wetter weather. Enjoy the spinach and spring greens now; they’re as good as they get. Lettuces are always a bit slow here, but the “down by the river” has helped here too. We’ve had a little trouble in the green house. Our population of sparrows has exploded, and we have finally resorted to covering all the lettuce (and brassica) starts to keep them from getting eaten!
In sum, I think we’re off to a slower start than hoped for. But there have been no disasters; only delays that will be soon forgotten when the sun appears.
2.
Next Couple of Weeks?
It’s always dangerous to make predictions, but I think we’re going to start carrots next week. They won’t be the big ones we’ll see later in the season, but we’re ready to start harvesting them, even if they’re a bit small. I think you’ll all enjoy them. Summer squash are blooming like crazy, and starting to set fruit. We tend to not buy summer squash during the off season, so we are really looking forward to those first tender squashes!—hope you are too. As I mentioned above, the peas may need a week to really stack up, but this time of year that happens very quickly, and surely in the next two weeks we’ll be into all the peas we can handle.
What about strawberries? Well, our early season didn’t much materialize. There are a lot of blossoms now, but we’ll have to be a little patient. We got spoiled the last two years with our dry, sunny springs. This year we had the driving thunderstorms that drove most of our blossoms off the vine before they could develop. But since we grow day-neutral varieties (“ever-bearing”), we can be hopeful for berries later.
You’ve probably noticed the dahlias are about the bloom, and the sweet peas will, in the next week or two, start blooming in profusion. We’ll all be glad, I’m sure to be picking bouquets of flowers.
We also notice that some of the “precocious” members of our raspberry crop are already putting out berries. Our main crop is a late crop. Actually, we could have gone for two pickings, but we elected to prune the raspberries to the ground this spring, and go for one big crop. Nevertheless, we are getting a few berries now, and we may need to put them on a “pick and eat” in the next couple of weeks.
3.
U-pick—what are “pea vines”?
We want to remind you all to be sure to read the u-pick guidelines in our CSA handbook. We’ve sensed a fair amount of confusion, and most of it could be cleared up by reading the questions regarding u-pick. There is a copy in the market, and a copy on the web page.
The other source of confusion is that not everyone knows what the u-pick items are. It should have occurred to us, but it didn’t, that some members would not know what pea vines are. I will clear this one up, as we’ll probably do pea vines again.
Pea vines are, quite literally, the vines that peas grow on. But they are “baby vines.” We have a fallow area between our two rotations of strawberries that we put into field peas. The field peas are legumes (nitrogen fixing) so they are good for the soil. They also produce a very tasty vine tip that has become a trendy and expensive gourmet food item. Usually just the tips (the top 3-4 inches) of the vine are harvested and steamed, stir fried, or used in salads. After the vines get large enough to start flowering and producing peas, they are too tough to be eaten, so the pea vines are only harvestable on younger plants. We will have them on the board again this week, so go ahead and try them if you haven’t yet. But the trellised peas that are tall, flowering, and starting to produce peas are not the pea vines we’re talking about—it’s the ones between the two rotations of strawberries.
4.
Farm Map
Ok, so where’s the farm map? Well, I have to admit that after feeling quite virtuous about finishing the Summer Session CSA Handbook (it’s on the web page—http://jubileefarm.org/handbooks/summer.html) before the start of the Summer Session, we have taken a bit of a fall. Another goal was to have a Farm Map on day one. It didn’t happen, but we are working on it. Please be patient, and don’t hesitate to ask any of us, or any member who looks like they might know, where things are that are on the u-pick list. So far we haven’t had much u-pick, and I’m optimistic that in the next couple of weeks we’ll have a map.
5.
Kids activities start First Week of July
Kids activities will be starting the first full week of July. That will be the 5th for Tuesday. As published in our Summer Session Guidelines, the time of the Tuesday Kids Activity will be 12:30. The time of the Friday Kids Activity will be 3:30. Saturday we will not have a formal Kids Activity, we will attempt to do something with the kids at noon.
Members have always asked us to provide a schedule of the Kids Activities in advance. The main reason we have not done that is because the Kids Activities revolve around the life of the farm, and the life of the farm is not very predictable. It is quite weather dependent, and no one knows in advance what the weather will be. Nevertheless, we’ve decided that this year we’ll publish a “tentative” schedule and hope we can stick to it.
6.
Wanted: “chickens” for Carnation parade
This is kind of a long shot and something that could probably only happen if it happened in a relatively spontaneous way. But this year the 4th of July happens to be on a Monday—one week from today. Monday is meant to be our day off, and we’ve had this idea that may be we’d do a last-minute entry in the Carnation 4th of July parade. If we do, we’re going to drag our Egg mobile (somehow—I’m not even sure if it can fit over the bridge!) to town as our entry. The theme will be “Comin’ Home to Roost at Jubilee Farm.” We need chickens for authenticity (can you imagine and angst involved in registering an inauthentic Egg mobile in the parade?), but we can’t use real chickens. What to do? Wendy and I put our heads together and decided that only the kids of our CSA could save us from a potential existential crisis. We need kids—well, we need kids that are dressed like, um, you know, chickens.
Maybe that’s too tall an order, but surely our creative moms and dads could figure a way to mount a couple wings (and maybe a beak) on their little angels. I’ve only talked to one Member about it and she said she’d be thrilled to have her kids be chickens in the parade. Who wouldn’t? But it’s going to take more than two “chickens” for us to call down and get on the parade list; we need at least a dozen for a respectable showing. So, if your kids would like to do this, and you’d be willing to help them “dress” for the event, please drop us a note. The parade starts at 11:00. I’ll go early with the Egg mobile and get in line; the kids wouldn’t have to be there until 11:00. We’d also need at least one parent to accompany their children (he or she can walk behind and pretend they are with another entry). We could also use a little help on Friday afternoon painting some signs for the “float,” so let us know if you’d like to get involved in this escapade. (jubileefarm@hotmail.com)
7.
Farm Chatter
There is so much I’d like to tell you about what we’ve been doing. There have also been some really interesting articles in the paper lately on the topic of the “politics of food” that I’d like to comment on. I was planning on doing that, when I learned today that the father of a close friend died yesterday. There will be a service in Eugene Oregon at 10:00 on Wednesday, and I plan to be there. That leaves Wendy to hold down the fort—something she can very ably do. I’ll have to leave tomorrow afternoon, and with harvest tomorrow morning, I’ve only got a short time to get this newsletter together.
So, I’ll ramble as long as I can stay awake (it’s already 11:30), and then send it off to Joe.
This is a watershed moment at the farm. That makes it easier to leave for a day, although I probably would have gone anyway. But right now is a significant time because every crop we’re going to plant this season is now planted. We will do more rotations of some crops (lettuces, brassicas, carrots and beets, greens, spinach, herbs, etc.). But yesterday we planted the last of the second rotation of cantaloupes and watermelons. We also planted out the last of the peppers. Wendy seeded the basil on Saturday. The beans are all planted and in various stages of maturity. The tomatoes are not only planted, but are starting to ripen. The potatoes are flowering. The garlic is growing daily and soon to be harvested. The corn, white, yellow and bicolor, is all coming up in stages. And all the rest—raspberries, strawberries, tomatilloes, onions, summer squash, cucumbers, winter squash, pumpkins, flowers, artichokes, edamame, grapes, apples, and whatever else I can’t remember—it’s all in. It’s now too late to go back and replant these crops. It’s done.
So, what do we do now? Sit around with our feet up? Hardly. Although I must say that seems to be the dream of corporate farmers in America; it’s even the dream of some smaller, independent farmers. We’ve had a little taste of that in our Valley this year. A person we know planted “Round-Up Ready” corn. In case you don’t know about this, here’s how it works. First you prepare the ground. Then you need to add enough synthetic fertilizer to provide all the nutrients the corn will need to mature. Then you plant your GMO corn seed. This seed has been genetically modified so that it is resistant to Monsanto’s patented product called “Round-Up,” which kills anything that is green (except corn seed that has been genetically modified, which Monsanto also holds the patent on). After your corn is six inches tall, and hard to even see because of the weeds that you don’t have to bother to pull, you spray the field with Round-Up. Now the only thing left living in the field is the GMO corn. The weeds are dead. The microbes in the soil are dead. The ground is completely sterilized. Only the petroleum-based synthetic fertilizer keeps the corn going. And what does the farmer do? He sits around with his feet up. And the rest of us feel a kind of nausea that Sartre’s world knew nothing about.
The justification for this sort of assault on our home, the earth, is that only with this technology can we can feed the people of the world. I can’t adequately express the disgust and antipathy I feel about this kind of facile “reasoning.” It saddens and angers me that we live in a climate that rewards those who sell not only their own soul but the soul of future generations for the “right” to exploit and destroy the beautiful, miraculous, but delicately balanced earth.
No, we don’t sit around with our feet up. We try as best we can to preserve and enhance the life of the soil, the diversity of microbial, plant, insect, aviary, and mammal life. That takes work—good work. I call it “good” because it humbly recognizes that we are not masters of the earth, but stewards of the earth. And work that preserves and enhances “being” in all its multiplicity is, I believe, “good work.”
Anger isn’t the right response to those who undermine the precarious thread by which the human species will continue to exist in this and (possibly) future centuries. I don’t think these people know what they are doing. And whether their ignorance is culpable or not, I can’t know for certain. And not knowing for certain, I must yield to the benefit of doubt. What I want to do is sublimate that anger into creative energy. And what would I do with this creative energy? Three things: First, I would try to educate others about the fallacy of thinking that we need to pollute the earth and compromise the balance of nature in order to feed people. Second, I would try to effectively demonstrate that on a small amount of land one can raise large amounts of food without resorting to chemical poisons, without the use of non-renewable resources (particularly petroleum), and without depleting the fertility of the soil. Third, I would try to develop workable, sustainable systems that could be carried on here on this farm, and be emulated by others in the future. Because there will be others; many, many others. It’s true that the economic and political climate of today rewards those who destroy, exploit, and extort their wealth from natural “resources.” But unsustainable practices will prove to be what they are. When the age of the technological barbarian wanes, many will come to their senses. I won’t be here to see it happen, but I am committed to the good work of this farm, to developing sustainable techniques to live in harmony with the earth, and to the belief that good work is never in vain
Thanks for hearing me out on this. And give some serious thought to that 4th of July Parade “chickens.” It’s unlikely, you know, that we’ll change the minds of many adults. But the little chicks may be coming to their senses before our eyes.
Thanks too for your forbearance of my typos. My eyes are heavy (though not as heavy as Wendy’s, who usually proof reads for me), and everything is looking just ok to me.Farmer Erick