first pick-up day in May. We clean the barn, cup up more tomatoes and peppers that were seeded in flats a few weeks earlier, and weed the bluehouse—so called to differentiate it from the greenhouse—where lettuces are slow to grow in the cold weather. Mud is everywhere. Paul carts wheelbarrows full of wood chips to spread in front of the entrances to the greenhouse and barn. The raspberry weeders kneel in mud and when we gather in the Sunflower Room after our morning’s work, everyone’s boots drag mud onto the (mostly) clean floor. April showers bring . . . mud, a part of spring I’m always happy to see pass.
The greenhouse toad came back at the end of April. We first spotted her on the last Sunday of the month, but we suspected her presence for a week before that from the toad-shaped imprint in the muddy spot between the water irises growing in a bucket in our greenhouse pond. We call it the toad throne because she likes to perch there above her kingdom of floating water lilies. Soon she was joined by another Woodhouse toad and, a couple weeks later, we found three baby toads in the pond as well. Each spring I look for toads in the greenhouse. They seem a lucky omen, a sure sign that spring is finally here.
One spring brought another auspicious pair of creatures to Stonebridge. In April, our daughters and son-in-law were at the farm to plant a Black Walnut tree in memory of John’s dad, Noel Martin, who died the Christmas before. As we walked toward the north end of the farm with our shovels and buckets of compost, I noticed wooly owl pellets on the ground under a cottonwood tree that towers over the garden. I scuffed the pellets with the toe of my shoe to find the skeletal remains of mice and voles and birds. Realizing that the pellets marked the presence of the pair of great-horned owls that have lived at the farm for many years, I looked up into the tree to spot a large owl nest of leaves in the crook of the towering limb. “Look, an owl nest,” I announced, pointing to the tree, but it didn’t occur to me that “nest” might mean “babies,” because we’d never seen any on the farm before.
A few days later, I was showing the nest to the Thursday morning bartering crew when suddenly we realized a baby owl was on the branch next to the nest—and then another came into view. Less than a foot tall, they were so still, like outcrops of the limb itself, that it took a moment to realize they weren’t made of bark, but rather feathers, fuzzy like a puppy’s fur, the owlets’ great round eyes staring at us without movement. As their mother watched protectively nearby, we left them alone and quietly picked spinach in the shade of their nested branch. I came out later to snap a few photos of the babies, hoping I wouldn’t disturb them, but unwilling not to document such astounding creatures. I knew that once grown, their parents would drive them off the farm in search of their own food, but for now, they seemed content to venture further up the tree.
Before the subscription season officially starts the second Saturday in May, the barterers plant two big crops on our early spring Saturdays: alliums and brassicas. It takes the whole crew to transplant these crops from the starts in the greenhouse. Planting in the early spring isn’t easy because we’re not in farming shape yet—especially our knees as we bend and stoop to tuck the plants into the ground. Since most of us are decidedly middle-aged, we joke that in a couple years we’ll be making the dimples that mark our planting spots with our walkers instead of with the tractor.
In the early part of the season, getting started on Saturday mornings is a little like revving up an old engine after a sub-zero night. It takes a few turns of the crank before the gas is flowing again. As if coming out of hibernation, everyone moves slowly in a haze of deliberation, contemplating the work to come. The younger barterers arrive with coffee cups in hand; we all agree we’re not officially awake until the caffeine has kicked in and our bodies have adjusted to the sharp morning air. Kneeling next to each other in the cold fields, the conversation doesn’t start until we shake ourselves awake enough to ask, “What’d you do this week? How are the kids? How’s your shoulder/back/ankle?”
Eventually our muscles loosen and the chatter spills across the bed of tiny onions as we squat, plant, and scoot. We discuss roads not taken, our plans for the summer, money worries, and health. And then, because we’re getting close to lunch-time, the talk turns to the vegetables we’re growing and what delicious dishes we’ll make from them. As we warm up to the work, the spring sunshine, and the soil that’s perfect for planting, we’re thrilled to see such a huge job accomplished in a single morning. We’ve planted 8,000 alliums—several varieties each of leeks and onions, each as tiny as a new blade of grass.
A couple Saturdays later, we transplant the next big crop, the brassicas—broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kohlrabi. Since these are shorter-season vegetables, we plant fewer brassica starts than alliums, so transplanting goes more quickly, but they need the added step of covering with gauzy row cover to guard them from flea beetles, the garden’s earliest pest. We finish in record time and stand back to survey the fields full of plants we’ll begin to harvest in a few weeks. Now all the transplanting is done until early June when the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil go out to the fields, accompanied by the marigolds that help repel undesirable insects and attract the desirable ones. The Thursday crew has already transplanted the annual herbs—dill, cilantro, parsley, and chervil—that we started in the greenhouse this year to beat the weeds rather than seeding directly into the fields.
On opening day, rain was predicted but the sun rises strong and clear. Picking vegetables on opening day follows the same routine every year. After we stand around a few minutes saying good morning and “Here we go!”, we load bikes and bike trailers for transporting vegetables from the fields to the barn with multi-colored plastic picking baskets called trugs and the tools we’ll need for harvesting: forks for digging Jerusalem artichokes and a pocketed bucket with the horis—Japanese digging tools—and clippers.
We start the morning by observing the owl twins and their mom, who has flown off into the trees across the field, perhaps to lead us off the trail from the babies. Then we dig green garlic bulbs that have “volunteered” by planting themselves in last fall’s garden and pick spinach, taking the biggest leaves from the fall-planted bed. Picking spinach elicits our yearly debate: should it be picked quickly, pulling the leaves by the handful, or slowly and deliberately, picking each leaf individually? As always, we say, “Pick it how you’d like to eat it,” so eventually the more discerning manner wins. However it’s picked, all Stonebridge spinach is a delicacy this time of year, sweet, crisp, and very, very green. Spinach is the reason we start our season earlier than other CSAs in our area—it grows well this close to the foothills. Many of our members say they don’t care if we give anything else on opening day. After a long winter, they’re ready for spinach, and lots of it.
As the trugs are filled, the veggies are biked into the barn by the intrepid bikers with a trailer hitched to the back. We used to truck in the produce, but, years ago, decided bicycles were safer and more ecological for trips between field and barn, and the vegetables stay fresher because they’re transported more quickly. Sometimes, though, we get a little ambitious about how much a trailer can hold. You can always tell when a rider has taken the corner on the downhill side of the bridge too quickly from the spinach left in the middle of the road. Walking back to check on the progress in the barn, I follow a Hansel and Gretel trail of spinach leaves, gathering as I go. Spring spinach is so sweet and delicious, I hate to waste a single leaf.
After we finish harvesting the spinach, we dig the walking onions, pungent enough to scent the whole barn, and all the Jerusalem artichokes we can find. We like them sliced and fried in olive oil with a touch of butter, like the “fresh-fried” potatoes my mom makes, a special treat because they demand constant attention to brown without burning. One of our first shared Stonebridge recipes was Jerusalem Artichoke Soup, a response to our members asking, “What do we do with this?” It’s still an early spring favorite among our longest-standing members.
We finish up the pick with rhubarb, harvesting the red stems and slicing off the huge leaves, which shouldn’t be eaten because they contain toxins. This year the crop is a little sparse, but we give enough for a small rhubarb crisp and we’ll pick more in a couple weeks. Maybe
