22 July 2010

Jade or Carson beans, Farao cabbage, Olympian cucumber, Hercules dill, Eggplant, Lettuce, Pepper, Indigo radicchio, Squash

I am thrilled to report that the raised bed maker I purchased this spring is working like a charm. Literally like a charm. Not that it does not also function perfectly well mechanically—perfectly well, of course not meaning literally perfectly, merely as well as one might reasonably hope a new piece of equipment would work. One, in this case, being a farmer who has bought a number of pieces of equipment over the years with increasingly modest hopes for them. In other words, the new bed shaper functions roughly as advertised with a few minor glitches, irritations, and the occasional breakdown.

It certainly works better than the old bed shaper, which required multiple passes to make anything resembling a usable bed, resulting in terrible soil structure in the beds and some pretty terrible language on the tractor. And no doubt some of the new bed shaper’s failings, such as they are, are entirely due to operator error—to my inability, for instance, to drive a tractor in a perfectly straight line while look back over my shoulder, or my failure to buy a farm with acres and acres of rock-free, dead flat, well drained, deep loam. And I certainly cannot blame the bed shaper for my decision to unhook it—well, almost completely unhook it—from the tractor and drive off with the electric cable still attached to the tractor battery—or at least attached until it snapped in half. Though come to think of it, I could blame the bed shaper. It is unlikely to declare its innocence so nobody will know I caused the damage.

Whatever its and my shortcomings may be, working together we can fairly reliably produce a good looking raised bed half a foot tall with a firm, level planting surface. Sometimes the beds even come out straight and parallel—or close enough to it that someone driving by and not paying much attention would hardly notice the difference.

But we don’t just make these attractive raised beds to impress passing motorists. They also happen to serve a purpose. Planting our vegetables on these beds keeps them warm and dry—and vegetables tend to appreciate that. Especially in cold wet growing seasons such as we have had the past two years. The rain washes away nutrients, the cold soil slows down germination and growth, the constant moisture creates a fertile breeding ground for all sorts of diseases. If the soil stays fully saturated—meaning all the spaces between the soil particles are filled with water—for long enough, the plants drown.

None of which has really been an issue this year. Our raised beds have stayed remarkably warm and dry right from the start of the growing season, and we have the bed shaper to thank for that. But not because of the beds it has shaped, which have of course proved more or less beside the point. It is the mere fact of its existence on the farm that caused these conditions. Given the weather’s deep sense of irony, on which I have remarked often, it was more or less inevitable that any serious effort on my part to counteract the effects of the cold and wet we have battled the past two years would result in a year like this. You might think that knowing this I would have spent my money instead on an irrigation system, but of course that would only have prompted an epic flood. And if I had tried to be especially crafty and get the irrigation system and the bed shaper at the same time, in addition to bankruptcy this would surely have called down upon me climactic catastrophe.

To be fair, the weather could be treating us worse—and probably would be if I had had Herbie put in a lot more drain tile this spring. The lack of consistent water has stressed some of the crops—especially the cucumbers and beans and broccoli—and made it a bit harder to get some direct seeded crops to germinate consistently. But the cabbage certainly does not seem to have minded too much, and the eggplants seem to be having a fine old time out there in the dust. Plus if we had more water we would just have more squash. Not that I think of having a lot of squash as such a bad thing. I cut up a pile of them into stick the other night and sautéed them in olive oil with some cubes of spicy sausage. They were good hot and cold. You could add some eggplant too, though I still think it is best grilled—or turned into eggplant mush (see the recipe on the web site). You can also grill radicchio, though it is probably just easier to have it in a salad with the lettuce or shred it with the cabbage for coleslaw, for which you could make a dressing with some of the dill.

The crops may not mind growing in this weather, but they enjoy it less after they have been picked. We hope they feel better in a box. We hope you like the box too. In fact, we hope you like it enough to look after it and make sure it gets back home safe and sound. To increase the chances of that happening, we ask that after you have removed the share you pull the bottom apart carefully, making sure not to rip off the tabs that hold it together, and flatten the box. To get the box back to us you could return it to the site if possible and leave it for us to retrieve (we will see if can figure out places at the various sites to leave boxes) or of course come out to the farm and drop it off in person. This Sunday would be a good opportunity to do that since we are having our second Farm Day of the season from 10 to 2, meaning that in addition to shepherding the box back to its pasture, you can also meet the people who grew the vegetables that were in it and see the crops in the fields that will turn up in future shares. In addition, you could join us in harvesting some garlic and hanging it to dry in the barn, except for a few heads that I might use while showing you how I make a dishes, such as that eggplant mush or marinated grilled vegetables. Feel free to bring along a picnic, including any vegetable dishes you would like to show off. We will provide drinks and snacks. We hope we will see—with or without a box—this Sunday.