Posts from — July 2009

One of the things I love about the island is how the height of the growing season dovetails with all the fun stuff – beach parties, birthdays, potlucks, whatever. At some point, things in the field start galloping away, and you just let them go. The weeds get tall, the mulch rots. We still work hard, we’re still tired. But it can’t be all business. There are some very important cakes to be eaten.

The first of many, for sure.

Any farmer can tell you about the irony of the field workers’ in-season diet. Strung out on long hours and manual labor, we often bypass the gorgeous nutritious produce we spend our lives slaving over and go for the sugary jolt of a quick fix – curly fries at the Chilmark Store, pizza from Back Alley’s, ice cream from anywhere. At the end of the day, there’s no leftover energy to turn on the stove and pick up a knife. Your body takes over – you want food and sleep, preferably in that order.

But when I go off-farm as a guest, I try to bring something special, and I fall in love with produce as food all over again. As a farmer, I often start to see it as money instead. That pint of cherry tomatoes? I’d rather have the five dollars thanks. I’ll have something else for lunch. It’s joyless and bad to view it this way. I know. I’m working on it.

The salad I made the other night? Sungolds, supersweets, brown berries. Tossed up with pea shoots, sorrel, purple basil in a wooden bowl I found at the thrift store in Vineyard Haven last week. Simple, special. Maybe I’ll even make a habit of it.

Summer has definitely come at the stand, spinach and turnips giving way to flowers, zucchini, and tomatoes. With vacationland in full swing, the wooden crates empty out easy, and some days I spend most of my time just harvesting to keep up. Not that I’m complaining. It’s a good rhythm, one familiar from farming seasons past, and it’s not so hard anymore to figure out what to do, how to prioritize. You just harvest and try to make money. That I can do.

Because of Obama, I feel somewhat patriotic for the first time in a long time, so I wore my patriot dress to market, and spun red wool. We sold a lot. It was a good market.

Word on the street is that Obama’s coming to the island with the whole first fam in August. I’ve met the man twice, shook his hand twice, but for some reason I really want to see him out here. He’s just so magical.

My new camera arrived in the mail on Friday – a Canon Powershot SD1200, for all the camera nuts out there. I started playing with it immediately, and I love it. It’s compatible with all the accessories from my old Powershot, but it’s way better, and takes sharp images. I took this shot of a fallen sparrow with Joshua when I went to pick up Chelsea for a potluck on Friday night. The mother flitted around the tree above our heads, calling loudly, and as Joshua built a little cradle of leaves around the nestling I told him to leave its beak free, so she could feed it. We stepped back and waited to see if she’d do it in front of us, but too shy, she declined.

Finally with a couple of days of sun under our belts, they’re all putting on their party dresses – zinnias, cosmos, dahlias, bachelor buttons. Just a handful here or there, enough to make a few bouquets. But I love how in the beginning, every one seems the sweetest thing.

I got particularly into stalking the arrival of the first dahlia. I’ve never grown them before, and hauling the heavy tubers out of the basement and burying them in cold trenches in the damp gray spring is not my fondest memory.

But I do think they’re spectacular. There’s nothing quite like a dahlia.