Compressed Spring

According to the news this morning, soil temperatures are running about ten degrees cooler than normal, or about two weeks behind their normal schedule. The same would timeframe holds true for spring rainfall, as well. The resulting compression of the spring farming season means we have to take maximum advantage of every opportunity to get in the field and do some farming.

We awoke on May Day to the distinct possibility that we could get some farming done, but we knew we had only a brief window in which to work. I jumped on the tractor, hooked up the rototiller (Our tiller resembles a garden tiller in its action, but at five feet wide it covers significantly more ground. We once covered two acres with a garden tiller, but that was no fun at all.) Up on the ridge, I tilled up the onion patch, and made my way through a new contour strip that we carved out of a rye cover crop. In our lower fields – which usually dry out more quickly than the ridges – almost everything was still too wet to till. I made a couple of futile tries at tilling, but soils tilled too wet just turn to clumps of messiness for the rest of the year, and I quite before I did any serious damage. By Thursday night we had a little rain, and Friday brought quite a bit more.

Saturday and Sunday, we took the opportunity to do some catch up work in the greenhouse. We’re running a little short-staffed right now, so a few things have risked falling behind. The majority of our summer crew starts over the next couple of weeks. Kim potted up the rosemary cuttings (with twelve year-old son Oliver’s and six year-old Isabel’s help), the peppers, and a few tomatoes; seeded our crop of Brussels sprouts; and moved a bunch of stuff outside to harden off – and make more room in the greenhouse! Our delayed spring has had the effect of shrinking our greenhouse space, as we wait to move things outside or into the field, while plantings continue to pile up. I did a major service on our mid-sized tractor, which we call the Mama K, since every tractor we own now was made by Kubota (a Japanese company that paints their tractors orange). Zane, our sixteen year-old, and his friend Justin, restacked some pallets of fence posts and tomato stakes that had sat in our front yard since we moved them for a bulldozing project at Thanksgiving; it felt good to get rid of that mess. Zane also greased up some moving parts on the greenhouse.

By Monday morning, we had over thirty-six hours forecast free of rain, and the soil was almost dry. Starting at the crack of dawn, I spread about three tons of chicken compost fertilizer on our early fields, and then grabbed the tiller to re-till the onion field. Meanwhile, we hooked up the transplanter to the Papa K (a tractor we bought last summer which is big enough, and slow enough, to handle the transplanter, which weighs about three-thousand pounds full of water), loaded the van with onion plants, hooked up a trailer with a tank of water to the van, and headed up to the onion field for a full day of transplanting. Kim and returning-employee Lucas rode the transplanter and plugged in about twelve thousand onion plants.

Tuesday dawned drier still, with some of the lower fields finally ready to work. Unable (unwilling?) to sleep, I again hit the fields before the sun comes up. Although I have a carefully-arranged rotation plan from last August, I had to abandon it more-or-less completely to organize our plantings around the realities of an exceedingly wet spring. We have to plant the carrots somewhere! So, if we move the peas up above, and move the celeriac over there, and put the shallots up above, we can squeeze the carrots into this dry spot here! After tilling, Kim and I tag-teamed two seeders and two tractors to seed carrots, dill, cilantro, spring turnips, radishes, arugula, mustard greens, chicories, snap peas, and snow peas.

When we finished seeding, I mowed down some rye and hairy vetch covers so that I can till them in at the next dry stretch. If we can’t get into the field for a while, the rye could get overly-stemmy and become difficult to incorporate. Then I put on the field cultivator, which drags shovels through the soil to loosen things up, and leaves nice ridges that dry out quickly after the rain I see coming over the horizon. Every bit of bare soil in the lower fields gets a pass before the first drops of rain, big and cold, come down just as we start to lose the light. I drive the Mama K a little too fast over the bumpy field roads, drop the field cultivator off the tractor, and drive a little too fast again up to park the tractor in the top of the barn. I dash to the greenhouse to close the peak vent and roll down the sides, then run to the house just before everything lets loose and in less than five minutes, I know we’ll be out of the field for at least two more days. Having worked from can’t see to can’t see for two days straight, I collapse on the couch to enjoy a Netflix episode of MacGyver before a full night’s sleep. On Wednesday morning, I sleep in a little bit, knowing that spinach harvest, unlike tilling, can proceed in a bit of rain.

Farm Happenings

Weather: Tuesday’s rain resulted in about two inches of accumulated rainfall, and, while Wednesday stayed pretty gray all day, Thursday dawned sunny and beautiful. We’ll be back in the field by Friday night or early Saturday if the weather holds.

What We Did: In the midst of all the tilling and planting and harvesting, we put together most of our summer crew over the past week. High school and college students will be filtering onto the farm over the next three weeks to bulk up our labor force in time for the big push into the full summer season.

Noted: We saw a bluebird outside the office window on Wednesday morning. Three blue herons have been flying around the farm quite frequently. Kim sighted two mature bald eagles cruising the creek on Tuesday, and Chris saw an immature male being harassed by a wren. The killdeer are back in force. Oddly, it seems to have been quite a rabbit-friendly winter, as their little white tails seem to be popping up everywhere on the farm; as I write this, I can see a rabbit hopping around across the creek, where the trees are just beginning to leaf out.

In Kim's Kitchen

The leaves of this week’s Over-Wintered Spinach have grown compared to last week, but still taste so good that I came in from harvest full of spinach. Warmer soil temperatures lead to a greener crop this week as the soil nitrogen became more mobilized. We have especially enjoyed the spinach in salads of all kinds over the last week, and we also put some in an omelet over the weekend. The stems of winter spinach have a sweeter flavor than that of the lusher summer leaves, and can be left on for a flavor boost.

Wilted Spinach Salad with Dried Tomatoes

½ lb fresh spinach
4 Tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and pressed
½ cup coarsely chopped hazelnuts or almonds
½ cup dried tomatoes (or raisins)
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
salt
freshly ground pepper

Rehydrate the dried tomatoes and chop coarsely. Heat the oil in a small skillet. Add the nuts and tomatoes and cook over low heat for about five minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic near the end. Pour over the spinach, scraping in as much of the oil as possible. Toss until spinach is coated and the nuts are well distributed. Sprinkle in the vinegar and salt and pepper, toss again, and serve.

Penne with Portobellas, Spinach and Lovage
Lovage gives this basic pasta dish a blast of spring.
8 oz spinach
2 portobello mushrooms, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp minced garlic greens
1cup chicken broth
2 Tbsp. chopped lovage
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 lb pasta (we like penne)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta and drain. Heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add garlic greens and mushrooms, cook until garlic is golden and the mushrooms are soft. Add spinach and chicken broth, cook until the spinach wilts, being careful not to overcook (about 3 minutes). Add lovage, red pepper flakes, and season with salt and pepper. Toss with pasta and serve.

We packaged the cress in a plastic clamshells to keep it from getting banged around, and because it looks so nice. The small leaves have a peppery tang similar to, but distinct from, arugula, and we have enjoyed their flavor-boost in salads this week. I think it would be fantastic heaped on a fresh-from-the-grill steak or a savory sandwich.

Lovage, which looks like parsley but smells like celery, was an essential ingredient in an ancient Roman cooking. Expect a taste a little like celery on steroids—a little bit goes a long way. Use in soups or stews, or chopped finely and added to salads, as a flavor booster, akin to parsley, but don’t get carried away. Also, the fibrous stalks should be used for flavoring but discarded before serving. We used the following vinaigrette to dress our salad of lettuce leaves and spinach, as well as over some steamed potatoes.

Lovage-Lime Vinaigrette

2 Tbsp chopped lovage
2 Tbsp lime juice
¼ cup olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all of the ingredients and whisk to emulsify, or put in covered jar and shake vigorously.

Even in the greenhouses, crops continue to move slowly, but we have some nice looking Baby Red Oak Lettuces this week. We enjoyed a fantastic salad on Wednesday night with a lovage vinaigrette. The Baby Bok Choi has sized up nicely since last week. This tender, vase-shaped green tastes delicious raw or just lightly cooked; since the baby bok choi is a tender green relative to its full-sized, white-ribbed cousin, don’t make the mistake of cooking it to death.

We have continued to access last fall’s harvest of Yellow Onions and our World-Famous Carrots from the dark of our walk-in cooler. People always ask us how we store them so long, and the answer provides insight into the best way to store most roots and greens: we keep them in our walk-in cooler, in the dark, in a loosely closed plastic bag. Now, our plastic bag holds 2,000 pounds of carrots, and our cooler is a little over 600 square feet, but the principle is the same: cold and humid, but not wet.

Chives have been loving this cool weather, and our new planting from last summer has come up quite vigorously this spring. We find that they taste great with just a little thrown in everywhere, whether in salad dressings, eggs, or dressing up a grilled salmon fillet.

Water

I grew up in Seattle, where water was a way of life. It surrounded the city and fell from the sky. We mostly ignored it, unless we were actively trying discourage people from moving to the area. Then we exaggerated it. But even when the clouds cleared, it was the view of frozen water on the mountains that took our breath away.

It wasn’t until I began farming that water became a matter of survival. My first garden was two acres of vegetable in the high desert along the California and Nevada. There, we didn’t wait for water, we just pumped it furiously from the aquifer below our valley. It rained three times in the two years I was there.

My first summer in the Midwest I worked on the Potato Breeding Station in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. I quickly became the head irrigator, maintaining miles of four-inch aluminum pipe in twenty foot lengths, getting up at two in the morning to turn on the traveling irrigation gun. The following year, 1993, I signed on at Harmony Valley Farm in Wisconsin, a large organic vegetable farm. I started with an extra fifty cents an hour wage to account for my irrigation experience. It rained the entire summer. The Mississippi flooded. My boss threatened to garnish my wages if I didn’t stop doing such a good job of keeping things wet.

Our first year at Rock Spring Farm, after hand-watering some 2000 transplants, Kim and I ordered an irrigation system. The day it arrived we received three inches of rain. A week later we received another three inches, the beaver dam washed away, and our fields stood under water. A neighbor stopped by to ask me to turn it off.

As members of the farming community, we do have a certain obligation to complain about the weather. After all, it’s always too hot except when it’s too cold, and it’s always too dry, except when it’s raining. But this spring, such as it is, has certainly given us some cause for complaining. We’ve never been in the field this late – it’s May, for goodness sake, and we still haven’t been able to till in the fields! – but we know that spring will come sooner or later.

In Kim's Kitchen

This week’s Overwintered Spinach was planted last fall, around September 1. Over the years, we have found this to be a pretty reliable crop, although we lost it last year. You may want to chop some of the larger leaves, and ignore the yellow tips; at this time of year, the nitrogen in the soil is relativcly unavailable to plants because of the cold soil temperatures, so the spinach has a difficult time fully greening up.

Spinach-Cheese Calzone

1 batch pizza dough (using about 3 cups flour)
8 oz fresh spinach
4 oz mushrooms, sliced or chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup shredded mozzarella

Preheat the oven to 450, and lightly oil a cookie sheet. Prepare pizza dough, and divide into six equal parts. Stretch these into rounds like you would for a pizza, each between 6 and 9 inches. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a skillet, add the garlic and the mushrooms and sauté until the mushrooms soften. Add the spinach and wilt slightly. Remove from heat. Spoon equal portions of the mixture onto one side of each round, sprinkle with cheese, fold the dough over and pinch to seal. Poke a few holes with a fork to let the steam escape. Repeat until you are out of rounds. Brush each calzone with a bit of oil, and bake for about 15 minutes until the crust is golden. We sometimes like to serve this with a side of tomato sauce for dipping.

A mainstay of the spring garden, and the first herb to green up in the spring, Chives have a delicious, mild onion flavor.

It’s been a cold spring, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon. Lentils always seem like a warming food to us, and the chives in this recipe provide just enough of a hint of spring for this not to seem like a heavy, winter dish.

Lentil Salad with a Spring Twist

2 cups lentils (we like the little French green ones)
¼ cup lime or lemon juice
½ cup olive oil
4 Tbsp chopped chives
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the lentils in enough water to cover until al dente, about ten minutes. Drain and set aside to cool a bit. Meanwhile, whisk together the remaining ingredients. Toss with the cooled lentils and serve.

Some gardeners refer to Red Russian Kale as a “Salad Kale” for its extra-tender leaves. It’s really nothing at all like the hardy kale of late fall and early winter. When this crop gets a little bigger, we enjoy the greens cooked as you would spinach; when small and tender, we really really enjoy it sliced into ribbons for a salad.

Vase-like Bok Choi is one of the prettiest plants in the spring greenhouse. A Chinese cabbage, Bok Choi is thought to be the oldest of all the Asian greens. It has a mild flavor, and the stalks have a crunch like celery. We enjoy serving the leaves and spoon-shaped stalks together as a scoop for any sort of vegetable dip.

May 17—28 is Be Nice to Nettles Week in the UK, so we are a little early here but the time is right to take advantage of this delicious spring treat. Like asparagus, nettles are a true product of spring. They can sting, so be careful handling them; you may want to wear gloves. We know three ways to get rid of the sting: swish vigorously in cold water; boil; or chop very finely. Grasping them firmly and without fear also works, but it is not for the faint of heart. All of these will burst the oil glands that contain the stinging formic acid. Nutritionally the nettle is an excellent source of calcium, magnesium, iron and numerous trace elements as well as a range of vitamins. The young shoots can be used in soups and stews and in place of spinach, or along side it to provide a bright, very “spring” flavor. Even our Norwegian farmer neighbors delight in this spring treat!

Nettle Omelets

For four medium omelets
8 eggs, whisked together
6 oz. Nettles
2 tablespoons chopped garlic or chives
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Oil
Salt and pepper

Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil. Using tongs or wearing gloves plunge the nettles into a bowl of cold water and swish. Drop the nettles into the boiling water for two minutes. Drain and chop, leaving out any large stems. Sauté the nettles in oil for about 2 minutes. Turn off heat and add garlic, salt and pepper to taste. Prepare omelet in your favorite way, adding 1/4 of the nettle mix and 1/4 of the cheese to each omelet.

The Carrots, Beets, and Onions in this week’s box all remain from last year’s harvest; we save a few to help us get started in the spring. Don’t try to store these too long; the onions, especially, are ready to start their spring round of growth if they get too warm.

Farm Happenings

Weather: OMG

Heard Recently: “It’s raining, it’s snowing, there’s no corn growing….” It did snow here on Monday. The sun came out on Tuesday, after a long hiatus.

Worthy of Note: From Wendell Berry: “Don’t pray for the rain to stop. Pray for good luck fishing when the river floods.”

Activities on the Farm: The greenhouses are chock full of stuff. We are holding a whole bunch of plants outside until the ground dries out. Cleaning and prepping equipment continues apace. The tomatoes went into the unheated greenhouses just ahead of last week’s cold snap, but they seem to be doing fine. We repaired most of the barn doors, many of which have spent way too much time flapping in the wind. The Singing Hammers crew also widened the doors to the upstairs of the barn where we park the tractors, so that we can now park every tractor we own in the barn (if you had told me twenty years ago that I would ever say something like, “every tractor we own,” I would have said you were crazy.).