Posts from — May 2009

The project I started a couple weeks ago, when the dream team came to town, has pretty much been completed, and we have a fully functional processing area. A shady, sheltered place to wash and weigh vegetables, bunch flowers, sit around and drink. Just a couple of details left – gutters for under the sink, some shelves. I’m considering painting the underside of the roof with something bright and inappropriate, unexpected, but that’s a lazy day project, and there haven’t been many of those around here lately.

I loved this project because we made something big, something we really needed, without buying anything. We pulled things from all corners of the farm. The shelter itself was previously used for the sheep. The cement blocks it sits on were leftovers from a chimney construction project. The wood chips Allen hauled in from behind the barn, where he’s clearing some land for pasture. Bit by bit, it all came together.

And of course, no major project around here would be complete without something from the dump. Good lord, the things you find at the dump. This organizer still had the price tag on it from Home Goods.

I spend at least a little time at the wash tub every morning, rinsing produce that changes almost every day – spinach, leaf broccoli, broccoli raab. At a loss for how to describe the multiplicity of green things we have going right now, Caitlin made a sign that says:

Delicious Green Leaves

And put it out by the road.

That seems to be working out ok.

In the beginning, we planted many many peas, flat after flat flying out the greenhouse door – sugar, snap, shelling, even this weird purple-pod kind Caitlin got from Italy.

Then, in the night, like so many locusts, the rabbits came. And feasted. Digested that a little, and feasted some more, nibbled on a beet green or a lettuce leaf here or there. But it was the peas that really took the hit.

We have maybe fifteen or so survivors, and they’re flowering now, white and delicate on the fence by the driveway in the rain. Peas are supposed to get lots of water when they flower, to get juicy peas! What timing! Maybe it’s meant to be? We watch them like hawks now, day by day.

The best.
peas.
ever.

The kids getting their last digs in on the kale, before the bolting plants come out. Yes, they are eating it raw. Yes, it really was that good. But we’ve got some other stuff in the pipeline….

Yesterday, Andy the sheep shearer came over from Vermont in his cherry red Chevy and made the rounds on the island. I took a break from planting cosmos for a while to watch, take pictures, and act in the very important role of barn-door-opener. Here are some scenes from the day. If you make it to the end, you get to see some hilarious and unfair naked sheep pictures.

Andy would start on the sheep’s belly, move on to the back legs, and then move along up either flank, periodically rotating the ewe on his plywood work surface. He held them in particular ways, controlling their shoulders, and in all but the most feisty girls it had the effect of making them oddly docile, and they slumped like rag dolls as the clippers buzzed over their bodies.

The clippers were incredibly sharp, and Andy used one hand to smooth and tighten the skin he skimmed over, to get a close clean cut. A few of the ewes got little nicks here and there, especially around their joints, but nothing that wouldn’t clot up quick on its own.

The white sheep were sheared first, then brown, then black, and all the fleeces were piled unceremoniously in the driveway. For reasons that weren’t entirely clear to me, the spring shearing gets tossed. I think some people are going to take it to use as mulch in the garden.

Although it must feel a lot better to be rid of all that heavy fiber, the sheep now look HILARIOUS. Seriously extremely funny. The poor things. This Shetland in particular, who is very small to begin with, looks rather like a bobble head doll.

The shearing also revealed interesting color patterns on some of the Icelandics, which had previously been obscured and blended by their fleece. The skins beneath are covered with quirky blotches and spots. In what was so recently very much a flock, it’s now very easy to single out one ewe from another.

This morning they all loaded back onto the truck and rattled across the road to pasture. I enjoyed being able to peek in at them in the barn, but it’s probably just as well that they get to go eat some nice grass and regrow their fleece without me watching and laughing at their expense.

If I could have this group of clowns out there with me all day, every day, I’m pretty sure we’d never stop laughing. That being said, thanks for a sweet sweet weekend.

On Saturday we started setting up a processing area near the greenhouse, by dragging an old a-frame sheep shade shelter down the driveway towards the greenhouses. It’s solidly constructed and deceptively heavy, but we made it work, and hauled over a few tables and a big metal sink as well. We need to jack up the shelter a few more feet, to make it more human scale and less sheep scale (we’ll probably use concrete blocks), and I’d definitely add a radio to the mix, but I’m pretty excited about how it’s shaping up. Especially once the summer comes on strong, it’ll be really important to have a shady, sheltered area to do washing, bagging, all of that stuff. I foresee it being the locus of many conversations, water fights, flower bunching sessions….let the games begin.

This week, Caitlin and I opened the stand and stocked it with greens and tomato plants. I get some sort of cheap thrill from watching our little cooler empty of bagged kale throughout the day, of seeing which tomato varieties are the favorites (sungold is, of course, a winner). Harvesting and stocking is a big addition to an already full slate, and I’ve been getting up earlier and working later, trying to keep up. Sometimes with two people I just feel so puny. May and June are rather tricky in that you often seed, transplant, and harvest all in the same day. You have different varieties at a wide range of maturities, all needing immediate attention, and the switching from task to task takes time. August may be exhausting, but it’s rather straightforward – go harvest, and when you’re done with that, harvest some more, maybe check on the irrigation, or once in a blue moon pull a weed or two.

That being said, I am no longer bereft, without a harvest. We are producing, in the true sense of the word.

I took a long weekend and went off-island, for a few reasons – to drive my little bro home from college, to pick up my pet rabbit, to spend Mother’s Day with my family, and to generally take a deep breath before the season picks up.

In a fortuitous stroke of timing, my family finally found a new dog in the days I spent at home. You can’t tell in the picture above, but he’s got the oddest proportions – a long daschund body, stumpy little legs, a foxy pointed face. But he’s also got a gorgeous coat and a winning personality to boot. The shelter days are over, Rennie.

Just this week, the trees on Music Street are budding out, as are the blueberry bushes, the scrub oaks, everything tufted with brilliant chartreuse against the perpetually gray sky.

All those summer things I am excited about – zinnias, Armenian cukes, these dorky little dwarf sunflowers – are all getting long and leggy, making like it’s the fourth of July and it’s time to put on a party dress. I’ve been spending a lot of time in there lately, bumping plants up into progressively bigger pots, trying to buy more time. Sometimes it feels like every time I turn around, there’s yet another plant, amaranth or tomatillo or tassel flowers, fixing to get up and run right out the door.

I think the cold-stunned bumblebee I found among the basil flats this morning has the right idea. It’s cloudy and cool outside. How about we all leave the growing for another day, and take a freakin nap.