30 July 2009

Arugula, Lemon basil, Broccoli, Carrots, Cucumbers, Dill, Eggplant, Escarole, Garlic, Lettuce, Onion, Pepper, Radishes, Squash

They say you are never more than three feet away from a spider. Well, not a spider as in one particular spider. I don’t mean to provoke the paranoid belief that some arachnid doppelganger shadows your every move. Spiders are crafty, but not that crafty. Plus I am pretty sure most of them do not live that long. Actually, I have no idea what the life expectancy is for a spider. They did not say anything about that when they told me about our average proximity to spiders.

Whoever they are. Probably the same they who told us that 90% of people who lose weight on a diet gain it back within a year or that 12% of the population is gay or all those other catchy, media-friendly statistics that turn out to be someone’s best guess and not a statistic of any sort at all.

Obviously they have not come around, yardsticks in hand, and checked on all of us and our spider neighbors. I suppose they base the claim on an estimate of the spider population, though I would guess it is a rough estimate rather than a comprehensive web to web census. I have never tried counting spiders, but I have spent enough time around them (well, I suppose we all have, haven’t we) to recognize that trying to keep track of them for an accurate count would prove frustrating at the least. The ones that just sit on their webs are easy enough, but the world is full of peripatetic spiders, and they don’t show much inclination to sit still while you count them. They have busy lives. They are always hurrying off somewhere.

Still, the three foot rule seems about right to me. I confess that at this moment I can only see one spider and it is 38 inches away (make that about 40 now that I have disturbed it by waving a measuring tape at it). But no doubt if I poked around behind the desk I would find some more even closer. And if I were out in the field (sorry to disturb your image of me, but I do not compose these pieces while ambling amongst the crops) I would be a lot closer to a lot more spiders. A lot of different kinds of spiders too, some of which have specific habitats. There are several kinds, including a small white one and another with a red spot, that I only ever come across on the currants. The big yellow orb weavers with the distinctive lightning bolt pattern in their webs appear in long grass in August. Little hairy black jumping spiders hang out on the empty seedling trays in the greenhouse. The wolf spiders prowl amongst the leafy crops in the field houses. We have at least as wide—and colorful—an array of spiders as of birds.

We always have spiders close at hand here, but I am sure there are less spidery places in the world where one could easily get considerably further than three feet from one. A California strawberry field, for instance. Given what California strawberry farmers do to the soil and spray on the plants I doubt you would find much life at all in one of their fields other than the Mexcans pickings the fruit. Living things, with the possible exception of migrant labor, just complicate farming, and strawberry farmers are looking to make their job as simple and predictable as possible. Better to turn the dirt into a sterile growing medium much like those plastic cubes of Pro-mix at garden centers. For all the good it can do, living soil just carries too many risks.

I recognize that a lot of people feel less than complete affection for spiders. I am not entirely enamored myself. I have never felt the slightest inclination, for instance, to keep a tarantula as a pet, and I can think of many things I prefer to finding a large spider on me. But I’d rather live in a place where I run the risk of discovering spiders on me than in spot that has been rendered spider-free. And anyway, most spiders want to get close to us as little as we want to get close to them. They have much better things to do than hang out with spider squashing giants. Just imagine how disgusted spiders feel when they learn that they are never more than three feet away from us.

Anyway, right now I am a good deal less worried about the ubiquity of arachnids, who after all do useful things like eat bugs, than about that of gastropods, who do unhelpful things like eat eggplants. I would feel pretty excited this summer if I could find a spot in the fields where I could get as much as three feet away from a slug.

Fortunately, they have not quite achieved Biblical plague levels yet so we still have some vegetables. Quite an array this week actually. I had not expected to find so many eggplants, but the plants have recovered admirably from their early season tribulations. The pepper plants, I am afraid, remain less promising, but we will get some fruits. Fortunately I had the foresight to plant the garlic in raised beds last fall, so it has done remarkably well in tough conditions. We have about 9,000 heads spread out on the upper floor of the barn to dry. I don’t have high expectations for summer broccoli—it disappoints more often than not—but our first planting has succeeded well enough. I am not going to show it at the County Fair, but I am happy to get broccoli for all of you. I may be happier to have escarole for everyone than everyone is to have escarole, but I hope you will give it a chance. It is my favorite cooking green. Arugula is Liz’s favorite salad green. If I am not careful, she can do more damage to a bed of arugula than the slugs will. Lemon basil, as you may recall, plays a central role in the official farm cocktail. But you can use it for other things. Chop up some lemon basil and garlic and put it grilled vegetables. Last year we had a disastrously bad carrot crop. The weather has not really been any better this year, but so far the carrots are. I am glad to have them back. And I am always happy to have onions—in part because I like onions, in part because we put a lot of work into the onion patch. We hoed and hand weeded it three times this spring, which kept it clean long enough to give the plants a chance to grow. And now Sam and Will have undertaken the task—not entirely by their choice—of weeding the patch one last time, a slow and tedious job as I am sure they would be happy to tell you. But probably easier than carrying out a spider census, though I suspect they would rather give that a try. Perhaps they can count the spiders in the onion patch as they weed. It would give them something other than weeding to think about, and it is vital to think about something other than weeding when you are weeding.