Searing Heat – Nature Bats Last

So I never should have laughed at the heat wave and thought I had it covered with my cucumber water, nature bats last.  The heat has been unrelenting, overpowering, nerve fraying and exhausting.  Screen time in the house has gone up, creative play has hit rock bottom.  We are counting the hours until the heat is supposed to break.

On the farm, first our chard and lettuce fried.  That was reasonable, it’s summer.  But than it got personal.  Our cucumbers, the cooling, abundant, gazpacho powering cucumbers — withered in the heat.  They are a summer crop, they got some water, but this is too much heat.

Honestly, I have been inside way too much and I am not sure about the rest of the damage, sometimes my sweet husband protects me.   But I know he has been irrigating, a lot,  and hopefully most other crops are withstanding the heat better than I am.

Since I search for the bright side, I will say that my first pickles have fermented nicely in record time — two days!  I spoke to pickling hero Sandor Katz  earlier this year for my own personal fermentation pep talk and I was happy to see a batch of my own finally work out.   We don’t have central air so the kitchen is pretty toasty.

The heat is supposed to break a little tomorrow, here’s hoping.  I wish anyone reading this a lovely cool day.  Here is our farm in winter, it looks so refreshing!

yes, this is my farm too, winter 2012

Why Toddler Picked Flowers are the Best

My children brought me these beautiful flowers this morning when I really needed a lift.  I was trying to finish a giant writing project on a deadline (a grant proposal) and I was feeling stressed and exhausted when they came bounding in with a great sampling of every single thing blooming in the front yard from tiny to large.

I love how young children pick flowers — they go right for the bloom and pull off the very top. They  have zero interest in the things that stress out flower farmers like getting the right stem length.  And once they pick a blossom, they kind of shove them into their palms so they can grab another.  They arrive a little rumpled and without stems but they are still a joy to arrange and look at.

I sometimes think about all the sweet lovely flowers that are overlooked and unknown because they do not fit into the floral industry — which always seems to be a bit more obsessed with stem length, size and vase life than beauty.  So the tiny flowers don’t get much attention — except when the young children burst on the scene.  They  have their eyes on the prize — its about the pretty flowers and that is all — and with that focus they find so many of them.   One of these flowers, the “pink” is actually what the flower breeders created carnations from — making them bigger and far fussier (and in my opinion a lot less lovely).

Today, at around my one month anniversary of starting to sell lots of flowers to a big commercial flower wholesaler, I am happy my children brought me this tiny rumpled bouquet ….which for this mama is prettier than anything in the entire commercial flower warehouse!

By the way, below is another toddler flower image — it is my 2 year old’s honest interpretation of my instruction, “please put the flower back in the vase.”  Again, by the way the stem was tossed aside since it is so not the point.

Shabbat Shalom and/or have a peaceful weekend.

Compostable Toys and Farm Photos

Again, I am guilty of not keeping up with the farm blog now that the farm is kicking into the real season.  We are so busy with the CSA, selling flowers to a wholesaler and trying to connect with more chefs that writing has been falling by the wayside, and so many writing ideas are slipping away! That’s OK, I will keep trying.

I have to share this photo I took of a project my two year old did with the newly harvested baby squash.  She spent a long time moving them around and arranging them until she was happy with the organization. I think she tried to get the most of the smallest ones together and she was also talking about some different family combinations as she worked (daddy squash, sister squash).  I was happy to see her enjoying the novelty of something new in the house and it made me wish more of our toys were this ephemeral and compostable because just like a new toy, they will not hold interest for very long. But with squash, that’s perfect because we can just eat them or compost them.

 

I want to share a few more images of where we are in the season right now.  I was happy to get to sample the first of our potatoes.  These were just dug as samples, they are really not ready yet and will hopefully produce lots more before we dig them for real.  They were such a treat!

first potatoes – purple, pink, yellow

Here are the last of our summer crops hardening off outside the hoophouse. Last night, I moved all these trays inside in advance of a major thunderstorm and today they are back outside.

 

Our main seedling house (below) is now half overtaken by peppermint.  This perennial did what I always dream a perennial will do when I buy a  new one — established itself and became a big part of our life.  I use this peppermint all the time and I even want to start calling this hoophouse “peppermint house” since  we are always asking each other “which hoophouse” and they really need names.

Tomatoes in another hoophouse that are still green but look so promising.

And finally, my Nikko Blue Hydrangea, a plant that I love so much, even though they are everywhere.  I hope to propagate this plant and get a commercial sized planting in, right now there are just two plants.

And on the farm, we have had a nice long spring season.  We are still harvesting lettuce, spring onions and radishes and we are sliding towards our summer crops.  I can’t wait for those tomatoes to ripen!