Hi all,

Though you may not be thrilled with this weekend’s forecast, you have to admit that the rainy weather makes it prime time for cooking. I’m not implying it has to be fancy like braised lamb shank with pickled radishes and endive foam. Though that could work, there’s also a lot to be said for simple stir-fried vegetables with rice or noodles. Regardless of what you cook or eat, this weekend, as with any weekend, is a great time to connect and give thanks over good food.

Speaking of good food – we had a busy day harvesting loads of different veggies. I’m talking garlic scapes, head lettuce, scallions, sweet white turnips, baby bok choy, spinach, salad mix, arugula, pea tendrils, micro greens, and radishes. There’s nothing more we’d like than to see you at either the Easton or Hingham Farmers Market tomorrow (Saturday), from 10am-2pm, and share our abundance! I know the weather forecast calls for rain, but we’re under tents and so long as you don’t stand in that awkward small opening between the two tents where rain falls through, you’re going to be dry and rich with vegetables!

So far, the exceeding amount of daylight is keeping up with the exceeding amount of activity happening on the farm. This week entailed a lot of second plantings – basil, chard, summer squash, and scallions. You may be thinking that you haven’t even seen the first planting of summer squash or chard at the market yet, which is precisely the point. We always have to be one or two steps ahead of what we’re harvesting or about to harvest, so that when the first planting of summer squash peters out, we can start picking the second one. Last year I talked a lot about the importance of consistency, and staying on top of our planting schedule will help us have your favorite foods each and every week.

This week we also planted out a few new items: quinoa (first time growing it, excited to see the results), celery root, and chickpeas. Next week we’ll seed parsnips as well as parsley root (like a parsley-flavored carrot, used in soups or in salads to amaze your dinner guests) because those have a long road to maturity.

In other farm news, the farm’s been having quite the battle with wild turkeys. Though not an issue last year, they seem to be out in abundance this year, and not only do they easily pass under our solar-electric deer fence, but they also have a penchant for pea tendrils! When it became apparent that our fence wasn’t keeping them out, I tried rationally talking through the issue with them, letting them know that while the tendrils were off limits, there was this great grass around the edges of the field, but it was a tough sell and they declined. So now I’ve resorted to intimidation, and chase them into the woods whenever I see them. We’ll see if my threats of an early Thanksgiving convince them that our fields are not the safest place to be. I’ll keep you posted on how the plot evolves over the next couple weeks!

Thanks for reading and we look forward to seeing you at the markets tomorrow,

Adam and Megan

Chillin’ in the house

Field #2 starting to fill up

Hi all,

First a correction to the last newsletter: There is no Easton market tomorrow – the start has been postponed to next Saturday, May 26^th from 10am-2pm. The market is located in a field on Depot St about ¼ mile from 5 corners.  There should be good signage directing you to the market once you’re in the general area.  We’ll still be at the Hingham Farmers’ Market tomorrow from 9-1pm, so if you’re looking for fresh veggies (or some time at the beach!) head down to 96 Otis St in Hingham and say hello.

We’ve been busy the past couple weeks trying to schedule farm activities so that they coincide with the varying weather. Generally, there are certain items you save for sunny days and others that wait for cloudy ones. Sunny days often mean weeding (or as farmers say “cultivating,” which makes it sound more glamorous). When it’s hot and dry, turned-up weeds don’t have a chance to re-root and so perish in the sun. Sunny days are also a great opportunity for working with the plants themselves since disease has a much tougher time spreading from plant to plant when the foliage is dry. Cloudy weather offers other benefits – both harvesting and transplanting are easier and more successful if the harvested items or young plants aren’t contending with the sun’s drying-out power. And rainy days are great to water-in what was previously seeded or transplanted. When I direct seed salad mix, arugula, or other crops, I try to time it such that it precedes a rainy day so that I know the seeds will be watered in a timely manner and so more uniformly germinate. Now on any given day you can look at the weather forecast and figure out what we’re doing!

So what’s happening on the farm? This week we transplanted over 400 heirloom and cherry tomato plants into the field. They’re all sitting tight under rowcover for now (it’s been dropping to the low 40s at night) but soon they’ll be uncovered and begin to take over their section of the field. Some of the cherry tomato plant foliage smells fruity and it was a pleasant day imagining the first tomatoes ripening on the plant and then landing in my mouth. This week we also transplanted our field cucumbers and expect the first fruit come the end of June. Last but not least, we’ve been pruning the flowers from our everbearing strawberries. Though the tiny plants want to set fruit, the small leaves won’t be able to photosynthesize enough energy to both produce fruit and grow as a plant. We’ll prune the flowers until the 4^th of July, and by then the plants should have grown enough to be able to handle the serious fruitloads we’re expecting.

Thank for reading, and remember no Easton market tomorrow!

Best,

Adam

Nick pruning in our big tunnel

The crew “cultivating” some beets

Hi all,

The first Farmers’ Market of 2012 is under our belts! This is our fourth year attending farmers’ markets and we still get that nervous tinged with excitement feeling before the first market begins. On Friday night, Megan and I reviewed our packing list to make sure we had everything prepared and ready to be loaded in the morning (you don’t want to find out right before the market that you’re missing your pouches filled with money for making change - not that it’s happened to us…) After 6 months off, we returned to the familiar routine of packing up tables, tents, and crates of produce and heading off in anticipation of reconnecting with regular customers as well as meeting new ones. And now, a day afterwards, it’s fun to think about the people who will sit down to lunch or dinner this weekend and eat our food. 

 The Hingham Market (at 96 Otis St) continues every Saturday from 10am-2pm until mid-December, so for those who live in Braintree and are waiting for the market to begin June 16^th, you’re cordially invited to mosey over to Hingham and say hello. Also, for those who live closer to the farm, the Easton Farmers’ Market kicks off Saturday, May 19^th at it’s new location near 5 Corners on Depot St. I’ll be there to welcome you all back form 10am-2pm!

 What’s happening on the farm? For one, our greenhouse tomatoes are really starting to take off. It’s interesting to note how slowly plants emerge and develop, and then how they shoot forward once they reach a certain stage of maturity. I was looking at the picture of spinach I took in the field 2 weeks ago, and the spinach we harvested on Friday looks completely different, as their leaves were so large that the plants overlapped each other to form a dark green blanket. Additionally, we’ve planted basil in just about any open space we could find in between the greenhouse tomatoes and peppers, so hopefully we can start harvesting baby basil shortly!

Thanks for reading,

Adam

 Nick flaming the small weeds

Looking over our rows of tomatoes interplanted with basil. The tomatoes will climb up the hanging strings as the season progresses. 

 

The goods

Hi all,

The farm has entered its “treading water” stage, in which the day’s accomplishments are quickly replaced by an ever-increasing list of new demands. A great aspect about farming is its physical nature, which allows you to immediately appreciate your progress. It was an awesome feeling this week to transplant the last onion seedling, stand up, and look over the 6000 plants erect in their straight and tidy rows. Similarly, it was great to look over the 900 everbearing strawberries starts we planted on Friday, and envision the plants loaded with fruit in July. And while we’re pleased with the progress we’re making (and seeing) there’s no time for idling or complacency – the tomatoes need to be repotted, the drip irrigation lines set-up, the greenhouse watered, the watermelon seeded, and the seed potatoes cut up and planted. And by the time this is done, the carrots need weeding, the tomatoes need trellising, the spinach fertilizing, etc. And we’re not even harvesting anything yet!

We’ve finally finished building and putting the plastic over our self-bent hoophouses and so this week we’ll start filling them up. Tomorrow we’ll fill one hoophouse with new potatoes and another with a mix of summer squash and basil. Next week we’ll fill the remaining houses with peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, and baby ginger. This will allow us to start harvesting these crops weeks in advance of when they’re usually ready from outdoor plantings. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

In CSA news, there are 10 final spots remaining in our summer CSA, so you still have the opportunity to join if interested. The CSA form to fill out and mail in is available to download on our website’s CSA page. Also, a huge thanks to HealByMike Massage Therapy in Easton for continuing to keep me in good form! Though I appreciate you all equally, maybe I appreciate him a bit “more equal” as he’s been pivotal in keeping my muscles relaxed enough to complete the farm’s long and vigorous work days. His rates are inexpensive and his schedule flexible – visit www.healbymike.com or email him at info@healbymike.com for more information. 

Thanks for reading,

Adam

Spinach growing

Intern Nick busy planting onions

Our 5 new hoophouses in the background, freshly seeded beds of radishes and turnips in the foreground

Ginger’s finally sprouting!

“This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane”

-       Thomas Keller, The French Laundry Cookbook

This idea of maintaining a passion for something despite its monotony has been stuck inside my head all week. Though Keller here talks about cooking, the quote is also quite pertinent to most professions, and was especially pertinent to our farm this week. The past seven days have not been glamorous  – removing rocks from our fields, driving metal stakes in the ground for our five tunnels, covering our many beds of directly-seeded crops with acyclic row-cover. Most would view these tasks as tedious, if not unpleasant. Yet with an attitude informed by the above quotation, these tasks prove meaningful and significant.

In the introduction to The French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller relates how a cook may eye a bushel of artichokes and think with despair, “look at all these artichokes I’ve got to clean.”  But to Keller, trimming the artichokes is not a chore to be accomplished before cooking begins, but cooking itself, and as such, one of his favorite things to do.

Applied to the farm, removing recently unearthed rocks from our fields is no longer an evil predecessor to farming, but farming itself. Picking up rocks is farming. Driving ground posts is farming.  Shoveling potting soil into a wheelbarrow is farming. And if you’re truly a great farmer, a passionate farmer, you’re going to remove every single rock your can find, drive every post as straight and deep as you need, and not waste any potting soil as you shovel it to the wheelbarrow. Seen this way, each task is not only significant but also an opportunity to improve as a farmer. I’ll farm with this in mind, and know that you’ll taste the results!

Enough with the philosophy – here’s the practical: This week I was featured on a local talk show called “The Wrap with Aimee and Clara.” Each week the hosts interview a guest, and it was awesome to join them and talk about farming. You can view the episode online here: http://vimeo.com/39848530 (I’m on at 10:45 into the recording). We’re continuing to seed new crops like cucumbers and summer squash, and next week we’ll transplant our first planting of beets, lettuce, and scallions. Look for more exciting and colorful pictures to come!

Thanks for reading,

Adam

Garlic steadily growing

Field tunnels nearing completion