First fruits

There is just too much to write and talk and think about. My thoughts are scattered like dandelion seeds in the afternoon. It's time to just start listing things. Line them up. Broadcast the thoughts you dunce. Grow it and then eat it you fools.

We'd been growing since February and as of the second and third weeks in April had been harvesting 7 different varieties of heirloom radishes, asparagus, tyee and bordeaux spinach, mesclun, and rhubarb. Up on top of the world at the new farm in Lobachsville Dave and Tim had seeded all manners of cover crops including red, white, and yellow clover, peas and oats, and various grasses. We were also now in the business of growing interns at a rate of two for the spring and one more to come that will make a grand total of three extra humans to help us this summer and fall.

There was all the ripping and tearing and nashing to be done at the 1780's stone farmhouse. All the carpets out. New steps to last a life time. Washing away of all metal, glass, cardboard and tin excesses. There had to be moments to stare at the green. So many first things. On Saturday the 9th of May the first fruits would be taken to New York for Lucy to write about. Don't blink. We all had to eat every other Monday. How much rhubarb could one person consume?

On Mother's Day it was way past the second and third weeks of April wasn't it? Waaaaaaaaay past. Catch up. The lines had been drawn up like California vegetable rows. There was now all of the above, go back up there and see that you missed the Tyee!, and romaine, butterhead, red oak, tango, speckled, lolla rosa lettuce heads, bright lights swiss chard, red russian kale, la cinato tuscan kale, baby pac choi, ruby streaks mustard greens, and over heated fired up gone to yellow seedzzzzzzzzzzies broccoli raab. Gobs of the big leaves and the poor men. Eat it. Eat all of it!

Late April

If it keeps raining at night we'll never get the first 5000 in the ground. I kept rummaging this around in my brain, shuffling the line back and forth and all around like a loose thread in the breeze. "I could talk film all day," he said. "Yeah me too," I responded. The conversation went from Jarmusch to No Country for Old Men to Wes Anderson to Cronenberg. "Somehow the music just doesn't fit, the score doesn't quite go with some of the scenes in Bottle Rocket," he said. That brought me back from the tomatoes but not out of the soil. I continued to stare at the young Arcadia broccoli plants in the ground in front of me and kept scraping at the tiny green Lamb's-quarters weeds with my slender hoe. This was the 3rd or 4th straight hour of "cultivation" today. "Yeah," he said. I've been in the zone for about an hour and a half now.

Where the food comes from

We headed out on Rt. 143 north to Mike's place tucked down against the other side of Hawk Mountain in Drehersville, Pa. He was there dressed in long underwear and tending to the woodstove at noon. We all commented on how nice the paint job was inside the living room and kitchen. He had painted the ceiling with a high gloss exterior white and the walls were the most calming green he could find. The place was brimming with warmth against the damp Thanksgiving Day outside. Mike said, "Yeah, lets go take a walk."

The three of us headed out into the woods behind the Airstream trailer. Following the train tracks we came to a good spot to head down into the small cluster of young pines. Mike's brother was visiting from West Virginia with his blond haired 4 year old who was displaying a rare shyness that her father said was not usually the case. I told Mike I had seen a full size Doe in this spot when I waited there to "see what i might see" last Monday morning at 6am. The old tractor part must have been sitting there for 20 years. None of us were sure exactly what part of the tractor it was. Something to do with harvesting for sure.

After tromping around the estate Jen and I headed back over the mountain to make our dinner. I had gone the 1/4 mile up the road to the farm earlier that morning and gotten some stored heirloom sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, tuscan kale, and bulls blood beets. The frozen turkey in the freezer was to wait until Saturday when it would make the trip with us up north to my mother's house. I put the white potato in the oven right away and then cut the baby brussels off the stock to clean them. Jen cleaned them while i cut up the dark green kale and got it braising in the pan. She then peeled the beets to reveal the deep blood-red streaks inside. "I should have gotten more from the greenhouse," I thought.

We took our plates to the living room and put in the film The Outlaw Josey Wales. As the massacre of the southern farming family took place in the first ten minutes I could already feel a kind of food coma overtake me. Josey wept while he let the words slip slowly from his grimaced face, squeezing the wooden cross he had made to mark the area where his son and wife were now buried, "The good lord giveth and the good lord taketh away."