It was a good day to be a duck.

Though yesterday was a fine dry day, in the morning we had to fulfill some large plant orders -- over three thousand units.  The crew didn't get out in the fields to plant most of the onions until later in the day.

This morning, as we prepared to plant the last bed and a half, the rain started, gently at first, then more steadily. The sky thundered a couple of times, but not close enough to send us for cover. We put on our rain gear and kept planting, which was fine. If I can stay dry, I don't mind being in the rain. (But, once I'm wet, I get cranky fast.) It's a quiet and peaceful way to work. Just as we finished the last bed, the rain really started to come down, ending the fieldwork for the day.

Michael had been gone much of the morning running errands, and, when he returned at lunchtime, he brought with him a cardboard box of ducklings. Tractor Supply Company was running a clearance sale, two bucks a duck. He figured that, since we were already set up for chickens, adding a few ducks to the poultry mix wouldn't be much more work. He bought six.

They're lively, inquisitive little things. At the end of the day, we let them out for a while to explore the wet world. They took to it ... well, like a duck takes to water.

Stalking the wild leek.

Over at Mark Bittman's blog, a couple of guest contributors are extolling the virtues of ramps. A member of the allium family (along with onions, leeks, chives, garlic, and scallions), ramps are a wild, native perennial that appears in the woods around here this time of year.

I'd never heard of ramps until I started working at Trillium. Though some may think of them as haute cuisine -- ramps often appear on the menus of tonier restaurants and on cooking shows of celebrity chefs -- their culinary roots are quite humble. Which is what you would expect, as country people scoured their local woods and fields for something green to carry them through the lean early spring.

When Michael and Anja started farming here, ramps grew naturally in a few spots in the woods. They've since planted several more patches, with an eye toward developing them for sale as a specialty crop. We're waiting for them to become established so they can be harvested sustainably. I don't know if we'll harvest any this year, but I hope so. I'd like to try them.

Or I could just plant my own. As an experiment, Michael bought a box of ramp starts from a farm in West Virginia. We've been planting them in four-inch pots to sell along with our other vegetable plants. It's been a bit of a trick learning how to grow them. We planted the first batch too soon, and now they're past their prime, so we'll plant those in the woods. But the next couple of rounds are looking pretty good. Look for them at the market. 

This is what vegetable gridlock looks like.

As soon as I say the weather is cooperating, it doesn't. Of course. All this rain -- over three inches so far -- is keeping us out of the fields. Not that we can't work in the rain. We'll stay out so long as there isn't lightning, and sometimes even then. But if the fields are too wet, moving tractors and wagons and feet through them only compacts the soil. So we're waiting for the fields to dry out some. And waiting.

To make room in the greenhouse for more seeding, we've been moving seedlings that are ready for transplanting out onto the wagons. Well, all the wagons are all full now, and the greenhouse is still filled wall to wall. Muck fields drain pretty quickly, though, and today was a dry and sunny day, so there's a good chance we'll but putting a lot of things in the ground tomorrow. If the weather cooperates.

Suddenly, we're in the fields.

At least, that's the way it seems. So far, activity on the farm has consisted mostly of greenhouse work with the occasional construction project. This past week, though, we started transplanting. The crew was ready for it. Thursday, we put in the first round of lettuce, radicchio, and endive. About a quarter of the onions went in on Friday. Next week, we'll plant the rest of them, as well as the kale. The weather seems to be cooperating, with gloriously warm and partly sunny days at the end of last week and now a solid rain this weekend to water in what we transplanted.

The first plants are on the road.

Today we made the first delivery to our distributor, Luurtsema Sales. It was a smallish order, only about a thousand plants or so -- a good warm-up, just the right size for us to remember how the process goes. The new truck was a big help. Last year, we ferried the plants to the warehouse several small batches at a time in Michael's pickup. Now we can take all of them at once. Throughout the month of May, we'll spend part of each morning shipping plants. And that's a good thing, since the greenhouse is packed full and the plants are tall and green.

All these plants are certified organic and marketed under the "Harvest in Harmony" brand. Why are our plants certified while our produce is not? Because, with the produce, our personal relationship with our customers serves as its own certification. In contrast, since most of the plants are shipped throughout the Midwest and we never meet the people who buy them, organic certification becomes a more important designation.

Delivering those plants was a bit of a wake-up call to me about how quickly the season is progressing. It's hard to believe that, in a little less than two weeks, we start selling these plants at the Fulton Street farmers' market. If you're planning this spring on putting in a garden, or even just a couple of containers of tomatoes, you might want to browse our plant list and stop by the market the morning of May 2.

The other day, I took a walk through the farm to see where things stand.

Though it's too early for the trillium in the woods, the honeysuckles are leafing out and the trout lilies are blooming. In our permaculture plot in the five-acre field, the rhubarb is pushing through the soil, and the chives are thick and green.

On the drive in, there are a number of houses with forsythia bushes, all in full bloom. Many old-time gardeners use this blooming to time their seeding, as it's a sign that the soil is warm enough to plant early crops, such as peas. We haven't put any peas in, but we did plant the fava beans last week, and Michael has been preparing the fields with the disk harrow. Soon, we can begin transplanting.

And that's good, because the greenhouses are bursting at the seams. It makes me nervous to see them so full, because there is still a great deal of seeding to be done. We've already moved the onions, scallions, and shallots outside, since they're fairly frost-resistant, but we still need more room.

Last week, we started building the new greenhouse. By Friday, we had raised and braced all the hoops. Our plan is to enclose it as soon as we can. Even unheated, it will be a good place to move plants to harden them off before transplanting.

In the meantime, we'll just have to start transplanting. The crew is itching to do so. As much as I enjoy the greenhouse work, it will be good to get out into the fields and put things in the ground. The kale is ready, as well as the endive, radicchio, and the first round of lettuce. We'll have to be careful, though, because our official last frost date is still a month and a half away. If there's a chance in the meantime that temperatures will drop below freezing at night, we'll need to cover any of the more tender crops.

The Sparrow answers your questions: House music.

Mary Jane writes:

You should add a post for music recommendations -- you know, which veggies respond to indie music, the blues, bluegrass. My instincts say that the eggplant will respond to Zeppelin.

I wish we could play more Led Zeppelin. I do love me some classic rock, but there's no better way to provoke intern rebellion than by cranking up Houses of the Holy. Alas.

In fact, when the greenhouses are vacant, we do play music to the plants -- mainly Blue Lake Public Radio. When we're in there, though, all bets are off.

Of late, Michael has been on a Daisy May bender. He gets that way sometimes. Last year, he played Carla Bruni until all of us could speak French. But I shouldn't talk. A couple of days ago, John cried out in dismay, "Not Steve Earle again!" Other artists with a lot of airtime so far this spring are Sigur Ros and Neko Case. When we tire of music, we listen to NPR podcasts. Aaron is a big Radiolab fan. I like Krista Tippet's Speaking of Faith.

Each season, one album gets under our skins. Two years ago, it was Regina Spektor's Begin to Hope. Radiohead's In Rainbows was last year's soundtrack, and now "House of Cards" is forever connected in my head with the memory of those awful marathon Friday nights, the moon rising and night settling over the fields and us with still more vegetable washing to do.

Got questions? I've got answers. Oh. My. Yes. E-mail me at sparrowinthehall(at)gmail.com, and I just might answer them.

Work in the greenhouses continues apace.

Lately, we've been spending most of our time working through the schedule for our certified organic seedlings -- seed, pot, water, repeat. The house is about two-thirds full, and it's nice to see all that new green. The first shipment to our wholesaler is due April 27. We should be at the Fulton Street farmers' market with our share of plants shortly after that.

As activity in that greenhouse levels off, work in the house for the CSA ramps up. The onions, leeks, shallots, and scallions are all up and growing and should be hardy enough to move outside soon. The kale, chard, and bok choy are just starting to sprout. We've seeded the first round of lettuce, as well as celery and celeriac. We've also started a couple of rows-worth of early tomatoes and peppers, as well as some extra potted herbs for sale at the market.

In the organic house, all our plants are started in plastic trays and grown in plastic pots -- a pretty standard way of doing things. In the Trillium house, our method is a little different. For many of our plants, rather than plastic pots, we use soil blocks. We make these blocks by moistening the soil mix, then working it with a special tool that presses out the blocks onto broad trays (like Aaron is doing at right). Once we seed the blocks, we place the trays on the greenhouse benches. Then, at transplanting, we load the trays onto the wagons to take them to the field. 

The main advantage to this method, aside from minimizing the use of nonbiodegradable plastic pots, is that the plants don't ever get rootbound. In a pot, when the plant's roots reach the pot's sides, they keep growing. Left too long in the pot, the roots will form a thick mat. Such a rootbound plant has trouble creating the kind of healthy root structure that allows it to thrive.

Soil blocks, on the other hand, are formed in a way that leaves an airspace between them. When the plant's roots reach this airspace, they simply stop growing, and the plants can be held that way for some time. Upon transplanting, those roots are poised to push down deep into the soil, and the plant will be therefore healthier. And a healthy plant better resists pests and diseases than a stressed one.

By the end of today's work -- seeding cabbages, fennel, and more lettuce -- we neared the Trillium house's capacity. This is the earliest I've seen it this full. It's good incentive for us to start the work of erecting a third house, one of the bigger construction projects Michael has been dreaming of this spring. Well, now we are compelled to start. Tomorrow's plan is for us to plot out the foundation and see if we can't get one or two hoops raised.

But we'll have to get moving, for the soil is now warm and dry enough for us to start the fieldwork.

Overcoming Vegetable Fatigue.

In less than two months, Trillium will host its first CSA pickup of the season. At first, it's exciting getting all that fresh green produce after the long, lean spring. But, soon enough -- often with new members and especially after the more unusual vegetables go online -- the panic sets in. What does one do with all that kale? (Or dandelion greens? Or Chinese cabbage? Or, God help us, celeriac?) I know, because I've experienced it firsthand myself.

So has Catherine Price:

It's a problem that affects anyone who tries to eat seasonally or consume a wider variety of vegetables, as an increasing number of Michael Pollan-ated Americans are trying to do. But it becomes especially acute when you're faced with a new delivery each week, whether you're ready for it or not. One friend confessed "utter panic" at the sight of tomatillos. When I asked another what he did with his mustard greens, he responded, straight-faced, "I take them home, put them in my refrigerator, and wait until they rot." Cabbage, kohlrabi, collards, bok choy—everyone, it seems, has their problem vegetables. And, like me, many feel guilty about it.

Her solution? Call in some experts, namely Mark Bittman and Deborah Madison. The upshot:

I realized my problem was not that I had lost my creativity but, rather, that I was trying too hard, as evidenced by my attraction to any recipe containing the word gratin. Rather than covering my vegetables in béchamel sauce, I should be making recipes that complemented and highlighted their natural flavors.

My wife and I underwent a similar inversion of thinking our first year as shareholders. Instead of planning a week's worth of meals and then buying the produce to prepare them, we needed to learn how to look at our share and figure out how to make meals with what we had. Such cookery takes audacity and a little panache, but it can be done. And, remember, should you get stuck, we're all here to help.