Late May Farm Update

The farm news is we are in a major summer crop planting push and are working to empty the greenhouse and put thousands of plants in the ground (peppers, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, basil, other herbs etc.)   We recently  mowed down most of our cover crops, but here is a photo of the rye, winter pea mix that is still standing.  You can see that the pollinators love this planting.  The Austrian Winter Pea flower is beautiful, it looks like a sweet pea flower but is so much easier to grow here in Maryland where the summers are too hot for sweet peas. In fact, temperatures hit 90 this week and it is still May so we are worried about our lettuce going to seed.

In other farm news, I was happy to be interviewed on Greenhorns Radio, a radio show about young farmers last week and talked about Jug Bay Market Garden,  farming,  community organizing, parenting and writing.  You can listen to the interview here if you like and also follow links to learn more about the Greenhorns and a related a fun young farmer organization with big plans. They seem to be filling an important niche in organizing and I look forward to seeing what they accomplish and helping out where I can.  

We seem to be heading into summer a little faster than we expected.  I am hoping the temperatures will cool down for another couple of weeks of spring but the heat might force our spring crops to go to seed early and speed up the summer crops.   Time will tell, we are not in charge.

Big Shoes

My 16 month old girl loves shoes. She seems to love them indiscriminately – from giant mud caked farm boots, to rubber boots six sizes too big and her new butterfly sandals. She wants to wear them all. I think there is something universal about children wanting to try on all the shoes in the house and maybe that’s where expression that someone has some pretty big shoes to fill comes from.

This morning, she brought me her little pink sneakers. I put them on and she was satisfied for about two seconds. Then she toddled off and brought back her butterfly sandals. But when I tried to take off one of her sneakers to put on the sandals she was clearly annoyed. She does this little “eh, eh” noise to let the world know when she is not happy.  I think it is sort of a pre-eye roll that says, “No Mom, you don’t get it!”  She is at that difficult age where she only has a handful of words but she obviously has a lot she wants to say.

She wants her sandal on her OTHER foot and she is running head first into the natural limit that she only has two feet.  This is hard for her (“eh, eh, eh!”). I am taking my time with this one, not enjoying it exactly but feeling privileged to witness the event. I count her feet and tell her that there are two.  But she seems to think I am making a poor excuse for not putting on all the shoes.  We take shoes on and off and on and off until she seems somewhat satisfied or at least ready to move on for now.

These are the types of mini-milestones that I love to watch. I know in different ways, hitting natural limits is a lifelong struggle. Haven’t we all occasionally wanted to be in two places at once or choose all of the above when you have to choose A, B or C. On the farm, natural limits abound. One field cannot be irrigated and relies on rain; another is so sandy that only certain herbs grow there. These limits can be frustrating but they also save us from having too many options and impossible choices.

It brings to mind the old Yiddish expression that “you can’t dance at two weddings with one tuchis (tush)”. And in time, she will learn this lesson in many different ways. In the mean time, we are spending a lot of time changing shoes.

This post originally appeared on kveller.com.

Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children–including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies…and advice from Mayim Bialik.

I Need a Siren

Another Yom HaShoah or Holocaust Memorial Day came and went last week, and I found myself unprepared to mark the day.  In fact, today we are already on to Israel’s Independence Day — but I seem to be running a bit behind.

Back in high school, I probably read more Holocaust memoirs than was healthy and later I spent quality time at both the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Israel’s Yad Vashem. In those pre-mothering days, there was plenty of time for reflection. Now as a relatively new mother, museum visits and heavy reading have seriously fallen by the wayside.

Everything about becoming a mother shifted the ground beneath my feet. When I studied the Holocaust in the past, I always connected most directly to the stories of children and young people experiencing the war and the camps. My parents, grandparents and teachers did their best to help me make sense of it.

Now that my perspective has shifted, I am not sure I can bare the stories of parents losing their children. I know I cannot keep my distance from it for much longer though. I think my new mother exemption is wearing thin and I only have a few years before my children will start asking questions. Now that my generation is all grown up, I cannot wait for reminders from parents or community, it is my responsibility now, and it is daunting.

This is a moment when I long to be enmeshed in Jewish community. In Israel, you do not miss Yom HaShoah. Besides being all over the news there is the siren. The whole nation stops for two minutes while a siren plays to remember the victims. Cars actually pull onto the shoulder of highways and everything seems to stop. I never witnessed it but my husband remembers hearing the siren and as he stood outside his hostel in Jerusalem and here is a link to a video which gives a glimpse. Last week, I read this blog post on Kveller which describes the siren and it reminded me that sometimes it is hard to live outside Jewish community and outside of Israel.  I need a community to stand with and lean on as I learn to face this history as a parent. I might be grown up, but I still need mentors and reminders. And once a year, I need a siren.

I baked my own Mother’s Day Cake

Mother's Day Cake, Strawberries and Whipped Cream

Ok, I admit it, I baked my own Mothers Day cake.  But I like baking and the baby was napping and my son was out planting tomatoes with Dad, so it was easy. And the strawberries were hand picked for me and left washed and shiny on the counter.

After a bit of searching a couple of years ago I found my “house” yellow cake recipe which I used for this cake.  It’s called “Natural Yellow Cake Mix” from the Whole Foods website.  There are a few things I love about this recipe. First, the cake tastes great as is and and people always ask for the recipe, so I know others like it too.  Also, it is easy and a blank slate, you can add orange juice and it is breakfast cake, chocolate frosting for birthday cake and fresh whipped cream with strawberries for Mother’s Day Cake.  I also like that it doesn’t call for shortening, since I am still not sure what that is and I am pretty sure it is super unhealthy.  And finally you don’t need to “soften the butter” which can be the bane of my existence since I live in a microwave free house and for several months of the year our heat is turned down way too low to soften butter on the counter. You just have to cut the butter and drop it into the food processor as if you were making scones or pie crust. Easy.  And whipping cream and chopping strawberries is pretty self explanatory.

The picture above only half disguises that I let my son have a piece while we waited for the cream to whip.  But he deserves a lot of Mothers Day credit too, since it was his birth that turned me into a mother in the first place. Plus this year, he has wished me a Happy Mother’s Day about 30 times and made the awesome suggestion that we turn it into Mother’s Week because he wants more cake.  Sounds like a plan to me! Happy Mother’s Week.

Now Starring (drumroll please) the Cover Crops

rye grass

On a farm, cover crops usually play supportive roles at best.   Unglamorous crops like clover and vetch never get the shiny magazine spreads reserved for trendy heirloom tomatoes or the newest hydrangea cultivar.  They just quietly hold down the soil, fix nitrogen, provide food for the pollinators and create biomass to enrich the soil.  It sounds like enough to me for a starring role, but cover crops are almost always considered second fiddle to the crops.

Vetch and Austrian Winter Pea flowering

But right now, the cover crops are having their moment to shine. The crimson clover is topped with dramatic red blossoms, the vetch is covered in purple flowers and the rye is five feet tall, a lovely blue green color and will sway in the slightest breeze.  All the pollinators from miles around are feasting on the flowering vetch and clover and for added drama, all of these crops will be mowed down soon before they go to seed.

The first food crops of the season are a huge treat, but before we turn our attention to the expected spring stars — like radishes, green onions and dozens of kinds of lettuce — let’s give the cover crops their moment in the sun.  It is well deserved.

P.S.  I have a piece on the Jewish parenting blog Kveller today with Jewish (farming) view of Mother’s Day. Check it out and leave a comment, here and or there. Thanks for reading and happy Mother’s Day.

Stormy Skies and May Day Strawberries

The first day of May is cold and rainy in Maryland and the sky has a stormy look that gives me the creeps after our week of dramatic weather.  While the storms turned out to be non-events by the time they reached Maryland, we still found ourselves under a tornado warning for about 45 minutes on Wednesday evening and a watch that continued much longer.

During the warning, we gathered in the interior room of our house listening to the radio and preparing to pile into the closet if we heard the sound of an approaching train. I busied myself emptying out a closet and making a little nest of jackets to sit on and wondering if I should leave our little shelter to grab bike helmets for the children.

Thankfully our tornado watch ended without incident, but the stories from Alabama and surrounding states are heart wrenching. I find myself listening more intently to the stories of parents who acted as physical shields for children.  Could I have managed that?  We feel lucky to have been spared and hope May is a quiet month for tornadoes.

very first strawberries

Despite the stormy skies, Spring is advancing on the farm.  The peas have reached knee high already, the potatoes are sprouting and the first cut flowers are blooming.  We will bring a few bouquets to a friends non-royal May Day wedding today.

And this morning during breakfast my husband brought in the very first strawberries, which were gone in moments but I did manage to snap this picture first.  You can almost taste the vitamin C in fresh picked strawberries and these were perfect.  I hope the rest of the crop is strong and that we are spared extreme weather as we move out of pre-season into the main farm season.