Mei Qing choi, Fordhook or Rhubarb Chard, Lincoln leeks, Purple mizuna, Parsley, Sugar Snap peas, Peppers, Multipik and Cashflow Squash, Hakurei turnips
There may be times when you wonder why you pay someone to grow your vegetables. How hard can it be? It is not like we are doing surgery here on the farm. Or even car repair. Car repair requires training, special tools, a certain mechanical aptitude. Growing vegetables does not require much more than a little time and space and dirt. Just about anyone can grow some crops.
I took over my family’s vegetable garden when I was maybe twelve, and if I did not enjoy complete success with every crop, at the very least I managed to grow a lot of pole beans. Enough one summer to maintain a sort of perpetual green bean salad like a sour dough starter. I had no particular gardening knowledge and no tools other than a fork and spade and my hands. I knew enough to dig up my little patch of the back garden, sow the seeds in rows and pull out the weeds, and that was enough to know.
Sure, I could have done a better job if I had learned more about growing vegetables—if I had known to make compost and add it to the soil, for instance, or built a little hoop house for early and late crops or chosen the varieties that would do best in my climate and dirt. But I had other things to do, I didn’t see the need to increase my bean yield, and it was a lot harder to find good gardening information way back then. These days a kid of any age with a desire to grow some food can get on the internet and get all the knowledge and supplies needed to create a productive garden.
I won’t pretend that if you did it yourself it would turn out to be better or cheaper or easier. Guys who get paid to grow vegetables often have a few advantages, like owning tractors or employing a farm crew or having nothing else to do all day. But that is not the point. It is the fact that you could easily do it yourself that matters. You are unlikely to be able to replace your own hip or even figure out why your check engine light keeps going on. But you could definitely grow some beans.
I recognize that this may be a farmer thing, the idea that because you can do something yourself you should do it yourself. Farmers are an independent, obdurate, cheap bunch. We would gladly sacrifice efficiency and quality and free time in the name of self-sufficiency. People often hope I can offer some tale of spiritual awakening or moral purpose to explain my career choice. But the simple fact is that I started farming because I like eating and figured I might as well grow the food myself—well that and because I am not much good at working for other people.
I would suppose that most normal people do not suffer quite so seriously from this pig-headed desire to make do without help. Indeed, the common idea of luxury is to have other people do just about everything for you. Still, farmers are not the only people with a do it yourself instinct. Even if you don’t actually intend to start a small farm in your yard (and some of you have already done it), you can still from time to time entertain the notion that you could easily do what we do.
Perhaps not so frequently this week, though. This is the sort of weather to make you feel good about having had the sense to leave the pea picking to someone else.
It is also the sort of weather to make you feel good about farming somewhere that rarely gets so beastly hot. We have suffered through a few sultry days, but we have not had a heat wave like this in several years. We could be farming in Rajasthan, where our high would be the average temperature and it would not count as a really hot day until it go up to around 115 degrees. No wonder so many Indians end up working in call centers. As miserable as it must be to spend one’s day talking irate Americans through pointless troubleshooting procedures, it is probably better than being outside in that climate.
I cannot imagine that many of our crops would enjoy that climate either. They all look a bit sulky by the middle of the afternoon, even the allegedly heat-loving ones. Only the weeds thrive in these conditions. They grow like bamboo in this heat.
As you can see, we and the vegetables have not completely given in to the heat yet. And as bad as it is, it is certainly better for the crops than the rain and cold of the past two years. Just for a start, the slugs are gone so we actually have a pepper crop. The chard certainly prefers this weather—we could have picked everyone a second bunch and still not made it all the way down the row—and the squash continues to do its things, its thing being to produce more than we need. Even the leeks have prospered. They are supposed to like moisture but they have sized up far faster this year.
Sized up may seem an odd way to put it given that the leeks are hardly bigger than scallions, but this is their intended size. At least, it is the size we intended. I don’t actually know what the leeks had in mind. They should be tender and tasty—though like leeks of any size, not so tender you would want to eat them raw. You could grill them whole along with slices of squash, toss them with a vinaigrette and chopped parsley and eat them cold. Or chop them up and sauté them slowly in butter with the turnips.
If you are just too hot to think about food you can enjoy the mizuna’s decorative qualities. Or you could use it in a salad.
As for the peas, you don’t have to do anything at all to them—other, that is, than eating them. I do prefer them quickly (and I mean quickly—absolutely no more than two minutes) steamed, but given that we are all being steamed already you might want to skip that. Just sit in front of an air conditioner and munch on them straight from the bag and enjoy the fact someone else picked them.
If for some strange reason having us do the work leaves you feeling a little unfulfilled, you can come out to the farm and pick something. No, I am not suggesting that you join us for the next pea picking. But we do have a lot of black currants right now and if you would like to have some you can come out to the farm and pick your own. Just let me know if you are interested (thomastheallegedfarm.com) and we can arrange a time (I would recommend early or late in the day unless you are a mad dog or Englishman).
