Saturday, July 18, 2009

As if the cool summer wasn't enough.

Now we have this to worry about -- though, truth be told, we do experience late blight in our tomatoes from time to time.

One interesting aspect of this story is how the disease seems to be especially widespread in plants purchased from garden centers of the big box stores -- another good reason to buy locally and to know your farmer.

Also, note how this outbreak highlights the danger of monoculture farming. As the article explains, late blight was also responsible for the infamous Irish potato famine. Again, I'm glad Trillium's success or failure doesn't hinge on only one crop.

Friday, July 17, 2009

I've got autumn on my mind.

This morning, we all bundled up in sweatshirts and knit caps, as though it was fall. With the cool temperatures and the sky a clear, crisp robin's egg blue, it felt to me more like mid-September than mid-July.

It has been an unusually cool summer -- though nothing like 1816, I suppose. Still, I fear this year won't be a good one for heat-loving crops like peppers, eggplant, melons, and (alas!) tomatoes. But that's all right. Since we grow over fifty different kinds of vegetables, something is bound to do well. Our lettuce, for example, is thriving this year, the broccoli is beautiful, and the potato plants look quite robust. As Michael likes to say about such things, we shall see.

Since we've taken a sabbatical from the Fulton Street Farmers Market and moved our Forest Hills Foods delivery to Thursday, Fridays are now wide open. With the week's harvesting behind us, we were able to make good progress on the last big push of seeding and transplanting -- such good progress, in fact, that we emptied the greenhouse of plants ready for the fields and then filled it again with newly seeded trays. All were fall crops: cabbages, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, and cauliflower in the fields; collards, kale, and more cabbages in the greenhouse. It's a good thing, too. We have only around seventy days until the first hard frost and the end of our growing season.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

On throwing things together and calling it good.

When it comes to my farm share, sometimes I fill the week with thoughtfully considered meals that efficiently use the week's produce. More often than not, I look in the refrigerator the day before the pickup and realize I have a sack of vegetables I haven't even thought about using.

This week was about to be like that. Then I happened on the latest "Minimalist" column from Mark Bittman. The frittata -- like the quiche, the stratta, and the stir fry -- is one of those staple dishes in which you can throw a bunch of vegetables, use scattered leftovers and remnants, and generally clean out the crisper drawer.

So into a pan went last week's broccoli, scallions, frisee, a leftover roasted red pepper, and some fresh tarragon from the pot on my front porch, along with a couple of eggs and some grated Parmesan cheese. It turned out more like a scramble than a frittata (next time I think I'll use one or two additional eggs), but it was still delicious. What's more, I had a nice empty place in the fridge to put this week's share.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

The test of scalability.

Emma Slager, a Trillium intern during the 2007 season, is this summer helping to run the new community garden at Calvin College. And she's writing a blog about it. Here's how she describes their project:
The Calvin College Community Garden is a new garden for students, faculty, staff, seminary families, and alumni of Calvin College. We’re in our first year and we’re still pretty small (18 6×4 foot raised beds) but learning as we go. We’re committed to sustainability, healthy living, education, and community. We want to celebrate God’s creation and learn more about how we can be responsible earth-keepers.
It's a good blog and a fine garden. And I like seeing how she's putting her Trillium experience to work, using the same methods we follow at Trillium, right down to how she stakes her tomatoes.

It strikes me that this business of scalability is important. In contrast to conventional agriculture -- where the only methodology is bigger, faster, and more -- our basic principles and practices can be scaled up or down depending on the local circumstances, whether a half-acre market garden or a 1,400 member CSA.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Kale: the vegetable that helped defeat Hitler.

As the farm's members may be noticing, kale is one of the staple vegetables of the share. I asked Michael about this the other day, and he explained he likes kale because it's easy to grow and a reliable producer throughout the season. What's more, due to a clerical error in the greenhouse, for which I have to be responsible, we planted more than we intended. So our shareholders can expect to see a lot of kale this season.

This is a good thing. Really, it is.

Kale is a member of the brassica family, which includes plants such as brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage. In fact, it is considered to be the closest relative to wild cabbage. It has been cultivated for over two thousand years and was grown in the gardens of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Up through the end of the Middle Ages, it was one of the most common vegetables in Europe.

Kale is also nutrient dense. It contains high levels of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as important antioxidant and anti-inflammatory compounds. In addition, it is relatively high in dietary fiber and calcium. Kale's high nutritional value made it a staple vegetable in British victory gardens during World War II. "Those raised on a wartime diet," one study suggests, "were considerably healthier and fitter than their modern-day counterparts."

To store kale, wrap it in a paper towel, place it in a loosely sealed plastic bag, and put it in the vegetable drawer of your refrigerator. Stored this way, kale should keep well up to a week. For longer-term storage, it can be blanched and frozen. (You can find a helpful tutorial, with pictures, here.)

How to eat it? I tell people to memorize this formula: kale + potatoes + pig = deliciousness. This formula is very traditional, and variations include the Irish colcannon, the Portuguese caldo verde, and, my personal favorite, the Dutch stamppot.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

The farm at sunrise.

Back in February when things were gearing up, this job was pretty much a nine-to-five gig. Since then, the start time has been creeping forward steadily. Michael gave word last week that harvest days would now start at six-thirty. That makes for a long day, but mornings like this morning compensate for it.

When we arrived at the farm, the sun had just risen, slanting across the mist-shrouded fields and firing the trees along the fencerows all golden. The cottonwood tree by the swing set in the yard was full of birds -- I couldn't tell what kind -- and they flew in and out of the branches in clusters and sang as they flew. The early coolness yet promised a hot afternoon, and, all around us, the fields rested, waiting for us to fill them with our work.

That's how my day started. It ended with me nearly tipping half our irrigation pipes and their trailer into the ditch. Sometimes, that's how things go.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Blogging the invincible summer.

Shane Folkertsma, a photographer and farm shareholder, has been running a photo blog of Trillium over at A Season in the Sun. His magnificent photography captures the farm's story far better than words. Be sure to check it out.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Apologies for the hiatus.

Over the past month, my weekdays have been full of farming and my weekends full of traveling here, here, and here. But I'm back now, at least for a little while.

In the time since my last post, the operations here at Trillium have become significantly more complicated. Aside from a handful of succession plantings for vegetables like scallions and lettuce, work in the greenhouses slows down at this point in the summer. All our attention is in the fields, as it better be by this time of year. We still have some transplanting to do, as well as some direct seeding. Though almost all the tomatoes are staked, they'll need to be strung as they grow. There's always cultivating and weeding to be done somewhere on the farm. And harvesting. Lots and lots of harvesting.

Since we're no longer working in the greenhouses on a large scale, my responsibilities have shifted from there to the wash station. I'm responsible for cleaning the produce as it's harvested, packing it in crates, and stacking and organizing it in the cooler.

The final touches have been put on the new, larger produce cooler that we assembled last winter, and we switched it on a couple of days ago. Glory and hallelujah, it's nice to have it up and running! Since I started working at Trillium a little over two years ago, the number of our shareholders has doubled. We've felt the growing pains of this increase each year. First, the trailer was too small to make the delivery to the Fulton Street pickup. That problem was solved when Michael bought the new delivery truck. Then, we maxed out what we could fit in the old cooler. That made the farm pickup tricky. At the high point of the season last year, everything simply wouldn't fit, and I had to get creative with keeping the vegetables cool by spraying them with water now and again as they sat stacked in the wash station. Again, tricky to do in the heat of August. Now that the new cooler is on line, there's plenty of room to keep the produce organized and accessible, and that makes things run so much more smoothly.

Managing the wash station also means that I get to help run the on-farm pickup on Thursday afternoon. This is the high point of my week. It's been great seeing the returning members and meeting the new ones. I also enjoy answering folks' questions about some of our goofier vegetables. Everything we do is oriented toward these pickups, and it's satisfying to lay the fruit of our labor out on the tables for the members to receive. It closes the long loop of the week's work, and it makes me immensely happy to be a part of it all.