11 September 2008

Beans, Eggplant, Garlic, Lettuce, Melon, Onions, Peppers, Anaheim peppers, Potatoes, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes

  Getting through a farming season is not unlike running a race.  A long race.  A very long race.  Uphill.  In the mud.  And rain.  And thistles.  With wet socks.  And pests.  And an aching back. 

If you are not careful you will find yourself spending most of the race, after than pain has settled in, asking yourself why you keep going.  Why not stop for a while and find a comfortable spot to sit down and stretch your legs out and enjoy the sight of all the other racers wheezing past.  Just get a little rest, catch your breath, let the pain subside, and then you can run some more. 

But if you have ever been in a race you know that stopping in the middle is a big mistake.  At least, if you are planning on finishing.  Obviously, if you have truly had enough, then stopping makes sense.  There’s no good reason to inflict more pain on yourself once you have decided you don’t need to get to the end. 

If you are a pigheaded farmer, however, you don’t like to quit, even if you no longer have any idea what made you start in the first place, if that lunatic moment has faded from memory. So you answer that voice, telling yourself you will go a little further, a little further before you rest.  And bit by bit you go on. 

You go on because, as much as it hurts to continue, you know it will only hurt more to stop and rest and start again.  Bodies and minds just don’t seem to take well to that.  Once at rest they wish to stay at rest.  I am not sure it is true that once in motion they wish to stay in motion—hence that pleading, wheedling voice in your head reminding you this could be your last step.  At best, they stay in motion grudgingly.  So if you give in to that voice and take a break, which is frighteningly easy to do, and then announce that it is time to set out again, your body and mind will put up strenuous objections. 

You can, with a sufficient degree of stubbornness and pain tolerance (two specialties of farmers), drag yourself back into action, overcoming all your body and mind’s considerable and ingenious efforts to root you to the spot.  But it never feels the same.  You cannot find your rhythm and you are constantly and painfully aware of the effort.

Unfortunately, that is the point at which I find myself this season.  Not that I took a break from farming just because it seemed like a good idea.  It was not so much some querulous inner voice as a shooting pain down my right leg that convinced me to pull over and lie down.  But the effect is much the same.  I thought that having the pain go away would give me such a sense of relief that I would launch myself back into farming with renewed vigor and enthusiasm.  And anyway I had things to do.  But I find I have even more tasks to do than I realized  (though I suspect that is a universal condition) and less energy to do them than I hoped (quite possibly another universal condition). 

In other words, things are a bit of a mess on the farm right now.  We brought in the last of the onions this week but have not found time to pick a single winter squash.  The greenhouse tomatoes have long since grown over the top of their trellis but the outside tomatoes are dead.  We are getting a second crop of green beans off the first planting but the deer are mowing down the shell beans.  We have a lot of rows of potatoes left but the yield is below average. 

Of somewhat more concern, though, is the fact that I did not get a chance to plant many of the fall crops until quite recently.  I sowed radishes and turnips over the weekend and we were still transplanting broccoli this Monday.  If we have decent fall weather most of things I have gotten in the ground the past few weeks will have enough time.  But they still won’t be ready to pick until some time in October, and with most of the summer crops petering out we could use a few other vegetables sooner.

Or maybe not.  Perhaps eating a CSA share is like a race too and your head is telling you you could  use a break from fresh vegetables just about now.  Nothing permanent.  Just a week or two of Big Macs and Pepsi to get your energy back for those odd late season root crops.

In case you are too stubborn to give in to that siren song, here are some more vegetables.  Mostly more tomatoes, which I don’t ever consider a bad thing.  I have not had many tomato-free meals for well over a month and I am not sick of them yet.  They will be gone soon enough and we will be left to stare disconsolately at the sad, spongy tomatoish objects in the grocery store.

If you have had enough of tomato salad—though who has?—you could make some salsa this week.  Those Anaheim peppers (which are straighter and smoother than the pointy sweet peppers) would work well roasted, peeled and chopped up with onion, tomatoes, garlic and lime juice.  Or you could roast and mash the eggplant with lots of garlic and lemon juice and add the chopped peppers (and some diced tomato) to that.  Or you could try making a melon salsa with the peppers, grilled onions and lime juice.  I say try making in this case because I have never made a melon salsa myself.  I just invented it on the spur or the moment (though I would guess I am not the first person to think of it).  There’s a small chance it would not be any good.  But somebody ought to give it a try.   And if it proves inedible, well then you have a good reason to skip the fresh stuff—just for a meal or two, of course—and head out for fast food all the sooner.