Hey Everyone old and new!

Just cut our grass for the first time,as it was starting to resemble a tropical rainforest,not a yard.Getting to the clothesline was starting to feel like Burton and Speke looking for the Nile's source.The smell of fresh mown herbiage will forever remind me of those glory days of summer.When all I cared about was which swimming hole I would frequent and which girl I had a crush on.............................anyway,now it's here again.After an early spring filled with perfect growing weather,peepers peeping and all things growing downright voluptuously.No other way to say it,when overnight,the green of the carrot tops goes from an okay green,to a bone jarring intensity.Broccoli glints in a grey ,blue ,green forest.Lucky,since when we planted it out we got the truck high centered on the only boulder on the farm.Rain pouring,ourselves drenched and grinning like the eternal optimist fool farmers we are.Somehow we managed to push,pull and mudhog our way out of the field,a dramatic start,now a footnote compared to the broccoli sure to grace your plate in the near future.Sometimes after a good shower,the sun shining again,I like to sit on that pesky boulder and I swear you can hear the thrilled calls of the crops as they photosynthesize and reach upward.I hope you all are ready to get it on in the kitchen.Every year, due to that psychotic symptom called optimism that we suffer from,I tend to laud this year as THE YEAR!But in all reality,each year has its enormous successes and abject failures.THIS IS THE YEAR.For what I am not sure yet,but the peas are looking sexy,basil is smelling fine,tunnel maters are flowering and those andean  miscreants the taters are poking lustily from the loamy soil.If you cant already tell,I am excited to be here again,sharing our lives and bounty with y'all.For those in Asheville,pickup is tomorrow at the Montford Market between 2 and 6pm.Celo folks,Friday at the barn,4 to 6pm.Here are your A team members!

arugula

spinach

lettuce

bunched greens

onions

radish

turnip

See you soon!!

peace

gaelan

 

Rain has been gracing us with its magic these past few days.Now of course the ground is saturated and the creeks running full tilt.Hard to envision those dust filled afternoons of midsummer when rainy times like this seem obscene and surreal.Peas and fava beans are in full bloom,reminding us that fruit is just around the corner.Pastures and forests are electric in there greeness.You can tell the pasture grass is growing well, when the sheep don't greet you with a chorus of baaing every time you enter the back field.Lambs are bulking up,no longer worried and skittish.Gerda our milk cow is expanding exponentially,her calf is due in July or August.The new piglets root their way around their pasture,discovering a whole new world from the concrete jungle of their early days.

Down in the main field,the soil sits ready for the onslaught of planting that will happen this week.Rye cover crop slowly melts into the soil,releasing clumps of fungus and masses of wriggling worms.Fecundity,decay,the anticipation of the unknown yet familiar.The broccoli and cauliflower have started to button up,carrots are sizing up,beets look delicious if only the deer didn't think so too.Taters have sprung through the brown loam with alacrity and show good vigor in a field hitherto unused by us.This spells good news for y'alls stomachs and plates,palates too.Just looking at the cherry tomatoes dangling temptingly in the high tunnel ,while still green, they hold the promise of summer.Here are the characters for this weeks farce.

spinach

lettuce

onion

greens

radish

turnip

perhaps something else as yet to be decided.Enjoy these greens,for the heat shall soon be upon us and they will be a mere figment.Peace

gaelan

 

Nicole DelCogliano
Gaelan Corozine