I love strawberries. They are usually the first fruit after a long winter. And I don’t mind picking a limited quantity bent over or on my hands and knees. The Germans, I am told, call them ground berries – and for good reason. Finding strawberries grown without chemicals is challenging. They are usually one of the top crops listed on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen crops with pesticide residue. Strawberries are …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad greens, braising greens like kale or chard, green onions, asparagus, herbs, and snap peas. Field Notes. Ken is busy; that seems to be a common spring theme. He is wrapping up the full season plantings with sweet potatoes (they came late) and next season’s strawberry plants, and starting fall plantings of root crops like beets and carrots. In between rain he cultivates. And when …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has lettuce, salad and braising greens like beet thins, endive, and Napa cabbage, the last of spinach, asparagus, sun chokes, green onions, radishes, herbs, and the first of the snap peas. Field Notes. This is one the year’s busiest times for Ken. He is juggling so many things: planting the sequential crops like lettuce, planting the last of the “full season” crops like potatoes, …
The days are lengthening; summer approaches. Ken has been excited that we have been getting rain; the same rain has kept him busy keeping his crops ahead of the weeds. Once the soil is no longer wet and gummy, Ken cultivates; it is easiest when the weeds are small, not once they are large enough to require bending and pulling!. Most sunny days, he announces, “It’s a fine day for slaying weeds!” He continues to …
The spinach season varies each year with weather. Spinach, like most greens, does best in cool damp weather. With the sharp weather changes in spring, there is a time when the plant leaves get thinner and smaller as the plant starts to shift energy from making leaves to producing seed. When growers say bolt, this is what they mean. The plant has shifted its energy, and it is only a matter of time until the …
The denim rugs are finished! Ken got this rug loom at an auction – a story in itself. It has a sectional warp beam so I can do long warps easily. this reduces time spent setting up the warp. This was my first sectional warp, and I have learned a lot. The sections need to be the same number of revolutions. I discovered near the end that I was at the …
Each year about this time I start freezing green vegetables for winter. This week I froze some asparagus. Asparagus is a great boost to kidney function – like a cleanse. I like to make cream of asparagus soup in the winter when we start to feel sluggish. When friends come who do not eat dairy, I use oats as a creamy thickener instead – an old trick of Ken’s I blanch most vegetables …
Greetings from the Garden! This week’s CSA box has greens – lettuce, spinach, salad and braising greens, beet thins, potatoes, parsnips, sun chokes, onions and potato onions, cilantro, dill, and asparagus Field Notes. Ken has been busy on several fronts – mowing rye in the field, cultivating established beds, planting in field, transplanting by the mobile high tunnel and garden. Spring is a busy time Often I am in the house preparing meals or helping …
Pigs here are sequentially grazed. Once they dig up one space they are either moved to a new space or their area is expanded to include new space. Ken plans each season so that pigs get new space and are not back in an area for at least three years. This year the piglets started east of the garden. About a week ago it was time for what I call the big pig rodeo – …
Although I have been weaving over a series of years, weaving takes a back seat to most things – selling pottery, picking beans, making lunch, etc. So I don’t really have much experience. Years ago I got a rug loom at an auction. the bid was going just a bit higher than I was willing to spend when Ken stepped in, bid, and the other fellow quit. It had a sectional warp – the ability …
