Archive of Past News of the Farm:
"Rainy Day Guests" May 28, 2007 |
May 28, 2007
Rainy Day Guests
Greetings Friends of the Farm,
The Marias -- their shirts and everything else dripping wet -- looked more pitiful than professional harvesters typically do, as they sloshed through the front yard, on their way from the front field to the salad shed. Each carried a basket full of haricot verts, equally wet and muddy, which they had picked in the second downpour of the day. They looked at me, puzzled to see my water hose spraying a strong stream of water against plastic vegetable bins. Didn't the "seño" realize that it was raining?
They were, ironically, off to wash the beans of their mud, drain them and store them in the cooler. The beans have no sense of timing once they start to produce. Like blackberries, they must be checked every other day, or we risk the slender haricot verts becoming regular ole beans, the kind whose tendency to toughness must be tamed....
The more-or-less perfectly-sized beans will go into the walk-in cooler, in which I had just superstitiously risked my life (by turning on the electric light) to broom out some of the flood water. One more good rain, I told The Marias, and the cooler would stay flooded, along with the salad shed. We should have built the process area and cooler on stilts, long ago. We didn't though, pouring the thickest slab we could afford at the time, and with the first flood year, we found out that the complex sits on the lowest land of the farm.
To relieve some of the flooding, Larry and his men dug a deep arroyo to the street -- and it does divert some water, when we're washing salads in a dry year. But with rains like these (over thirty total inches since the year began, more than we usually get in an entire year), the water that currently covers the farm is too much for the ditch.
There is even a new diversion to the arroyo in the farmstand, as water cutting vigorously through the mulch, swept a large swath clean, down to mud. That darn tin roof, I thought, as I surveyed the new development. It dumps water with such wild glee that the force of the water carries an incentive to travel...to the lowest point. And so, water gathered at the door way, at the edge of the slab of the salad shed, a bare quarter-inch below. Waiting, waiting, for one more cloudburst, to ooooooze over the threshold and spread silently across the floor, searching for something to soak. Alas, we have raised every rot-prone thing beyond its grasp, except for the junctures of walls and slab, so the water contents itself with the promise of eventual decay. Perhaps one day, the entire structure will just sit down suddenly, crushing the soaked wood, mashing the lower areas of the walls flat upon the slab, like a building implosion. If it all happens evenly, I guess it will be ok, but if only one side fell down, well, we'd have a bit of a problem.
Somewhat cruelly, the sun came out briefly, as The Marias began washing the "Salad made from leaves from all over the farm," which they'd picked early this morning in the first torment of the day. Now the ladies were under a roof, but probably horrifically to them, they were involved with more water; in fact the salad would need at least three changes of water. I entered the shed, looking for towels to dry the bins I'd just ridiculously washed in the rain. The Marias said they had to pick from the edges of the field, as all the beds' footpaths had a foot of water in them. I replied that they were brilliant and I knew that they had compiled a wonderful salad. (Actually, I didn't know the Spanish word for "compiled" so I had to use the more ordinary word, "encontraron" or "found." My Spanish, you see, is fifth grade or so.)
Under the farm stand roof, straddling the new arroyo, I loaded the bins with cushioning newspaper, and then with the first of the hard squashes that I'd picked on Sunday. The problem is where to store these squashes for "curing," a period of storage that sweetens them. The storage must be dry and cool. Well, that eliminates every single structure on the farm (which are, all, warm and WET), except for the farm house. I installed the six now-heavy bins on the floor in the guest room, the "Pioneer Room." Named for its wide-board walls, chimney with exposed brick, and anti-fly-blue paint, the room holds the first and last small -- thus important -- harvests of tomatoes in the summertime.
If only the Pioneer Room were larger. I'd rather not stack the bins, as it's prudent, as one passes through the room, to cast a critical eye upon the guests residing in such luxurious (dry) accommodations. These guests will have to stay far longer than three days, and who knows, maybe some worm or some bug, unknown to me, causes leakage or rot, or worse. I think hard squashes need a three-day fishy-guest rule too. For sure tomatoes do. They'll juice out on you before morning!
If the squashes don't rot in the watery field, it looks to be a good harvest. A success, however, means that the guests will likely take over the living room too. But, that's ok, as we do most of our living outside, on the farm. The inside is just for collapsing at the end of long days. And, since we aren't guests, we can stay as many nights as we like. But we do have to abide by the farmer's rule: during daylight hours, it's outside -- no matter if it's rain or sun, cold or hot, it's outside with y'all! The hard squashes in the guest room are probably sneering right now, in their comfortable, cool, dry bins -- at their erstwhile companions still in the mud, and at us, there, too.
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For market, at the farm, Wednesday and Saturday, 9-1:
SWEET CORN ("Fantastic" finishing on Wednesday & "Silver Queen" debuting on Saturday); Although I probably need not list anything else: Blackberries (if they escape drowning); some Strawberries to pick; Summer Squashes; Oriental Cucumbers; Various Greens (winter/summer); Salads (The Salad from the Edges of the Farm, Arugula, Chicory); Radicchio; New Potatoes; Haricot Vert (green and purple beans), etc....and the wonderful condiments in the farm stand barn (Pure Luck and Wateroak goat milk delights; Miles of Chocolate; Swedish Hill Bakery<Sat>; White Mountain Tofu/Wheat Roast; Local grass fed meat (Alexander's, Loncito's, Thunderheart); RainWater; etc....
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Yes, Fantastic, the first corn crop, came on very fast, and it will leave on Wednesday, like a conscientious guest, with Silver Queen visiting right behind it. Such a crazy spring. Farming is like that of course: nothing is certain, but those two guests could stay all summer if they liked.
Carol Ann