All posts by Susie Middleton

Edible, eggs & breakfast

Summer Farm Frittata with Fingerlings, Fresh Herbs, Greens & Goat Cheese

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Late at night, after I’ve spent an entire day fooling around with vegetables, what do I do but curl up on the couch with a book about—vegetables! My new favorite cookbook is River Cottage Veg by the unstoppable British food writer, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. I must admit, I’m fond of his pro-veg (rather than anti-meat) philosophy, because, well, it’s pretty much the point of view I offer in The Fresh & Green Table. But it’s more than that. I just plain like his food—honest and sensible but inspiring too. Somehow, this big hefty book, its thick matte pages covered from ear to ear with colorful but homey food photos and whimsical illustrations, feels like just the right thing to plunk on your lap at the end of a long day.

I only got to page six before I saw the thing I wanted to make for supper the very next day.

And I did.

Only I didn’t exactly follow Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipe. I know, I know. (Insert sheepish look here.) But I’m really in the mode of “use what we have around” so into this lovely early summer frittata went all kinds of interesting things from the garden.

I started with 9 little pullet eggs. These are the smallest eggs our new chickens are laying (many of them have already upgraded to medium and large eggs). We don’t sell a lot of them, so they wind up as house eggs. Voila, 9 into a frittata—way to use those eggs up, Susie!

Next I went out to the garden with my home gardener/home cook hat on. (Not my market gardener/professional cook hat). And I picked little tiny bits of interesting odds and ends that happen to hang around when you grow a few of your own vegetables. I get a huge kick out of these things that you never see in a grocery store—cilantro flowers, pea greens, little tiny potatoes the size of marbles, spring onions, squash blossoms, garlic chives. I picked some flowering oregano, too. A few sprigs of mint. A couple stalks of Swiss Chard. Mature pea pods. A sprig of Purple Ruffles basil. Calendula flowers. Yeah, never in a million years could I get away with publishing a recipe like this in a book or a magazine. (I can only imagine the car trips one would have to make in search of that list of ingredients.) But once in a while, it’s fun to indulge myself, and to give a little not-so-subtle boost to the idea of growing just a tiny bit of your own food. If you like to cook, there’s no better way to become really familiar with an ingredient than growing it.

The two non-local ingredients I used were fresh goat cheese (about 4 ounces) and unsalted butter (a couple tablespoons). Oops, and a splash of heavy cream. (You could omit.)

I got out my 10-inch slope-sided nonstick skillet and melted the butter over medium heat. I preheated the oven to 350°, and put my potatoes in a saucepan of water to boil. I sautéed the spring onions, then the chard and the pea greens, in the butter.

I whisked the eggs, cream, salt, pepper, and all the herbs (chopped) together. I crumbled the goat cheese and added that to the custard. I transferred the cooked potatoes to the skillet with the greens and added just a touch more butter. Turned up the heat to a sizzle and poured in the custard. I scooted everything around with a spatula to evenly distribute it, scattered on the calendula petals, and nestled the nasturtiums in last. I turned up the heat ever so slightly and waited for the edges of the frittata to set. Then I carefully transferred it to the oven and set the timer for about 18 minutes. When it was puffed, firm in the middle, and lightly golden, I took it out to cool on a wooden board. (Frittatas are tastiest warm, not hot.)

I took a picture of this concoction before it went in the oven, thinking the final product might look a little muddled or faded—or something. Well, it actually looked rather comely in the end. And it had great flavor—a big boost from the herbs and goat cheese, and those fingerlings really made it feel filling. Roy ate three pieces—and leftovers for lunch–which is saying a lot, in his language. I thought with all those flowers and herbs he might find it a bit too frou-frou.

The thing is, you can make this frittata with any greens and herbs you can find—no calendula petals or cilantro flowers needed! So take a cue from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (and a couple of budget-minded farmers who live on an Island where meat is very expensive!) and have an all-veggie supper once or twice a week. Next on my list (though I know better than to promise that I’ll follow the recipe) is his “Vegeree”—a spicy rice dish with roasted eggplant. Yum.

Animals, Edible, Farm life

Famous Farm Dog Finds Nirvana in the Garden

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There’s no doubt who is top dog around Green Island Farm. But lately, what with the addition of more baby chicks and pigs, too, Farmer has been feeling a bit insecure. (He tends to be a little clingy, anyway, having been a rescue dog.)

Normally he lies outside the back door on his lede, where he can watch all the activity and greet the farm stand customers. He is especially fond of the ladies (lots of tail wagging, no barking), but can be skittish around certain large men with deep voices and lots of facial hair! And the ladies love him. In fact, a woman I had never seen in my life got out of her car the other day, rushed over to him and said, “Hi, Farmer!” Turns out she’s been reading the blog for a long time and knew who Farmer was, only this was her first visit to the farm. Lots of regular customers greet him by name and regularly coo over him. He loves it. (Joannie, Sarah, and MJ all bring him biscuits, too–so spoiled.)

But he doesn’t like losing site of Mom and Dad, so lately he has started whining when he can’t see us. Usually I am in the garden harvesting or working.

At some point, it became clear to me that Farmer wanted “in” to the garden. I was pretty hesitant to bring him in there with me, because when I’ve done this in the past, he’s started running around in circles, tearing through beds willy-nilly. But, you know, he is two years old now, very mature. And with the raised beds and paths clearly delineated, he has pretty much learned to go up and down the paths in a polite manner.

Besides, I soon learned, all he really wanted to do was lie on a nice soft bed of hay mulch and rest, keeping one eye on me and one on the sparrows swooping everywhere. Occasionally he’ll get up and sniff around a bit (he likes the strawberry plants), or move to the shady side of the pea trellis. If a customer comes right up to the garden fence, he might get a little excited and trample something (nothing too major), but mostly he is happy to be leash-free and in the thick of things.

For a real treat, Roy will come get him and take him out the back gate (leash back on) to visit the piggies. He desperately wants to be friends with the pigs and will stand up, his paws on the edge of their wall, and whine. He and Wilbur reach out to each other, nose to snout, and seem to be saying a pleasant hello.

Back to the garden Farmer goes, where from a particular vantage point, he can also keep an eye on “his” 500 babies—the chickens. All is well in Farmer’s kingdom. As long as he doesn’t get left alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

Three Peas, Two Piggies, One Baby Skunk & A Farm Update

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We’ve entered that zone—that zone where time disappears and you simply move from one thing to the next on the farm and wind up at the end of the day exhausted and dirty (and eating a hot dog at the picnic table)—but happy. And ready for the bliss of the outdoor shower.

The summer visitors have reached the Island (how they get here so fast, I’ll never know), and all day folks are coming and going down the driveway to the farm stand.

And now, all of a sudden, with the summer light-switch flipped on, all kinds of things are happening in the garden. I don’t want to miss anything, so I took a break from salad duty this morning (right) and did a farm check.

The America rose (above) that Roy gave me for my birthday last year is blooming. Stunning.

The blackberry plant that my friend Cathy gave me (also for my birthday last year) is shedding its rosy blooms to make way for huge berry clusters. The blueberries are fattening up too. At least the ones that I managed to cover up before the birds got the blossoms. I thought you were supposed to protect the berries from the birds—I had no idea the birds ate the blossoms, too.

In the hoop house, the first of Roy’s early tomatoes are blushing red (and we’ve got 80 more planted outside in the garden). Also in the hoop house, we’ve got cucumbers coming up, and some patty pan squash plants that look like they’re on steroids. And the basil couldn’t be happier.

Just north of the hoop house is Roy’s potato field—the French fingerlings are blooming and it won’t be long now before we can dig some plants up.

Over at the pig pen, the two pigs are as happy as can be. They eat, root around, make mud baths, and mostly sleep in a nice comfy hay mulch bed. They always look very relaxed. (Update: Libby did name them this weekend, and I’m sorry to say that she did, in fact, pick Wilbur as one of the names. The other (bigger one) is Dozer, short for Bulldozer. Feeding them apples, cereal milk, Ritz crackers, and pasta was a big activity this weekend.)

 

In the garden, the first row of green beans is flourishing and two more are germinating. Forty eggplants are in the ground; a new variety called Orient Express has gorgeous purple leaves.

I’m growing three varieties of shell peas this year to compare. The first is called Coral and it delivered on its promise of being early. But these short vines bloomed all at once and produced a very low yield. (This sort of defeated the purpose of having early peas, as I didn’t have much to sell every day.) The second variety—a gorgeous deep-green plant with a profusion of tendrils about 2 feet up—is delicious and sweet. Called Easy Peasy, it is definitely yielding more than Coral, but still looks like it will end production without anywhere near the yield that my Green Arrow gives. Green Arrow grows very tall (vines curl off the top of the trellis as in the photo at top left) and blooms all up and down the vines, not just in one spot like the others. And it blooms over a longer period of time. The pods are extra-long and the peas delicious. I think I’ll go back to just this one variety next year.

 

The chicks in the barn are getting really big—which means that Roy has to build another coop! The brooder is now the entire length of the barn, because we had to add two additions for two chicks that we separated out from the rest. (One of them has been living in a box in my office, the other in the living room.) Here is Polly, the Polish Crested. Her other nickname is Don King.

Yes, it is Animal-Central around here. In fact, this weekend we cared for an ailing baby (and I mean baby—a few weeks old) skunk that stumbled into the driveway. Libby took to little Skunky in a big way and did her best to nurse it along with milk and cat food. But most likely it was not going to make it from the start, and Libby understood that. No, the little skunk did not have a functioning sprayer, and truthfully, it was the cutest darn critter you’ve ever seen. But I never would have taken it in myself. Leave that to my two National Geographic nature/animal lovers who also had a snake in a bucket this weekend and a collection of sand crabs in sea water.

We got Libby’s garden planted, too, with two tomatoes, one pepper, a row of green beans, sunflowers, cosmos, carrots, and two squash hills—one of pumpkins and one of summer squash. I can’t wait for Libby’s school to end and we’ll have her out more. Because any “work” we do with Libby is always fun. The only problem is that the days fly by even faster. Pretty soon, it will be August and time for the Fair!

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

Two Little Piggies Come Home to Green Island Farm

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There we were, breezing down North Road in Roy’s truck yesterday, Farmer between us hanging his head out the window in the cab, looking back and whining at the cargo in the truck bed—two pink pigs in dog crates. Never in my life. Okay, so we have talked about pigs for a long time. And I love pigs. But now that we have them, I just can’t believe it. Roy and I are both kind of wandering around chuckling to ourselves —and going down to the pen to check on them quite a bit.

And listen, I have news for you. Pigs are only tiny little cute piglets for a very short time. We saw some newborns yesterday (those are the ones you just want to pick up and cuddle in your laps), but our two weaned pigs are a good 50+ pounds and wicked fast and strong. How strong? Well, we found out yesterday.

The owners left us alone to load our two pigs onto the truck. We corralled the first guy into the crate, lifted the crate, and the crate came unhinged. Out came piggy and off he went to run God knows where. Roy managed to steer him back towards the barn, but once inside, he wasn’t so interested in getting back in the crate. After a lot of squealing and darting on his part—and wrestling on Roy’s part—back in he went. (I took one stab at grabbing him and decided I will never enter a greased pig contest.)

All this Farmer watched from the truck with much concern.

Once we got the piggies home and into their new pen, they were fabulously happy, immediately rooting around in the compost-rich dirt.

It took them only a matter of minutes to dig a trench big enough for them to lie down in and cool off.

And all that before a delicious meal of hog mash.

Then I got to take pictures of Roy communing with the pigs. He was so cute.

Neither Roy nor the bigger pig who did the run-about yesterday seem to harbor any ill-will towards each other!

Roy is very proud of his pig pen, too, which he should be, as it is located in a perfect spot.

Little by little we have been clearing brush away from around an old stone foundation that once supported a big barn decades ago. The foundation was built into the side of a hill and three sides still remain. The eastern side is open at ground level, so after a last round of clearing, Roy built a low wall from railroad ties that a friend gave him.

For covered shelter, Roy re-erected the Ladies’ original outdoor (chicken) pen, which had a tin roof.

A bed of shavings and hay mulch is a comfy spot for napping (which is pretty much all they’ve been doing since yesterday afternoon), and a canopy of shady trees will make this a great place for pigs in the heat of summer.

Eventually, we can turn them out to a slightly bigger area that will have a cattle-wire fence. But I’m not in any rush. For now, I am happy that they have a secure spot. I’m not looking to chase any pigs, greased or not.

Edible, Farm life, The Garden

My 40-Carrot Parents

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By now, I doubt my parents are surprised by anything I do. I’ve dragged them along through three (maybe four) different careers, from North Carolina to New York City to Newport and Newtown. Surely this latest venture—farming on Martha’s Vineyard—has given them a chuckle (and a wrinkle) or two. But they’ve never been anything but supportive.

Still, I don’t think they realized that Roy and I were going to put them to work as farm hands when they came to visit last week.

We didn’t have a choice. I don’t get to see my parents much, and I didn’t want to miss spending time with them. But the farm stand has been hopping and there are a zillion plants still to get in the ground (not to mention the daily farm chores of harvesting and egg collecting and washing), and no matter how early you get up, half the day slips by in a heartbeat.

So we had family farm time. This is a most excellent concept, I tell you. Now I know why farmers traditionally had big families. Lots of help! Help that already speaks your language, knows your quirks, and can interpret instructions without a lot of explanation.

Granted my parents, though they are not exactly young anymore (they don’t want me to embarrass them, but they’re probably used to that, too, by now), know their way around plants and fresh food. My Dad is a talented landscape gardener and long-time plantsman, so asking him to turn over soil was like asking him to put on his socks. (And turn over soil he did, de-weeding a huge bed and making it tomato-ready in only a few hours.) My Mom is a great cook and vegetable lover, so asking her to help wash and pack greens was a no-brainer.

Even better than all their physical help was just having them here at the farm to meet friends and customers as they came to the stand. One morning I asked my dad to set up all the tomato plants for our sale (we’ve sold more than 125 tomato plants in the last week or so), and customers started to arrive while he was doing this. He was awesome with the ladies, and convinced one woman to buy five plants!

So he asked me what his commission was, and I handed him a freshly picked English shell pea—the first pod to plump up on the vine. Absolutely delicious, he mused. And each morning I set aside little baby carrots for Mom, who loved these sweet and crunchy treats that are now coming out of the hoop house.

They were plenty happy with the peas and carrots, and even happier with the fresh salads we ate at night from the garden. Cheap help, yes, but still the most precious kind. At this point in my life, I feel lucky to have two healthy parents who are willing to drive hundreds of miles to see me (and bring treats, too, like a chest freezer and a table saw!). So what the heck, today I think I’ll call them my 40-carrot parents.

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

All the Signs are Pointing to a Great Season

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You never know what’s going to pop up next on the list of farm chores this time of year. Actually, there isn’t enough time to make a physical list, as we start working the minute we get up and don’t stop until the sun sets. So we just juggle priorities in our heads and move from one thing to the next—transplanting, seeding, mulching, watering, harvesting, egg collecting, packaging, checking on the baby chicks, setting up the farm stand, mowing, raking, staking, fencing, you name it. So when Libby was here last weekend, a chore bubbled to the top of my brain that I thought might actually double as a fun activity. Kind of a Tom Sawyer trick—sign painting.

We spent the better part of the afternoon painting signs for the chicken coops (each one has the name of a town or place on the Vineyard) and various signs we need around the farm. We even painted a bench. We laid newspapers on the picnic table, opened every half-used can of paint we had, and set ourselves up near the farm stand so we could greet customers, too. I think Libby enjoyed this, though the best part of the whole day was the laugh she got when I toppled over the Adirondack chair while backing up to take a picture of her. For a 10-year-old, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Later in the week, I sat down at the picnic table and made up more signs—this time for our tomato plant sale this weekend. Roy has a most excellent scrap pile of shingles and odd pieces of wood for making signs, so there’s no lack of material. Talent is another thing—this kind of crafty stuff is not my forte, although I sure enjoy the relaxation of sitting down and doing it, and it has to get done. (Better that than say, fix the lawn mower or build nest boxes like Roy was doing!) The signs are important too—the chalkboard sign by the side of the road has brought in lots of tomato plant customers in the last two days. (Today it is covered in plexiglass because of the rain.)

 

Yesterday, in fact, was an excellent day for farm stand business, and Roy and I are feeling good about all the improvements and additions we’ve made for this season, because we can already see our goals being realized. It doesn’t mean there aren’t setbacks, but after three years of doing this, we’re finally hitting our stride. There are good “signs” everywhere—from blossoms on the peas in May to gorgeous basil and fledgling tomatoes already in the hoop house. So it’s good to stop the chore frenzy for a minute, plop down on the farm stand porch, and look around at everything the work has produced. The satisfaction doesn’t last long though, because our eyes always land on something that needs fixing. Oh well! There’s always winter for relaxing.

P.S. Checking up on the baby chicks is not such a bad farm chore!

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life, The Recipes

Will it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3? Only the Hens Know

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Our 300 new pullets arrived yesterday. That makes a total of 540 chickens for us. The pullets are 16 weeks old and will begin laying small eggs in about a month. By high summer, we will be collecting more than 3000 eggs a week. That’s 250 dozen, plus.

Should be interesting.

The delivery came a week early (of course), with a few days warning. So Roy has been working like mad to get the three new coops built and the fencing up. When the girls arrived at 10 am yesterday, we took them directly out of their travel crates and put them right in the coops to get them used to their new homes.

After setting up the farm stand this morning (above)  and eating my breakfast (Green Island Farm eggs of course!), I went down to watch Roy let the girls out into their lovely grassy field.

But the girls were not in a hurry. We watched and waited a bit, then went back to work. It took the first birds until 2 pm to get up the courage to go out (even though they could see their big sisters in the pen right next to theirs.) And even then, one entire coop stayed put for another hour. It was the funniest thing watching them all standing in the doorways. Which ones would come out first? All I could think of was the “The Price is Right.” Would it be Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3? Well, the group behind Door #1 were definitely the brave ones, out and about first. (Top photo.) Group 3 (bottom photo) followed, while Group 2 (middle photo) must have had something pretty interesting going on in the coop, because they didn’t budge for quite a while.

It’s a beautiful day for the girls to be settling into their new digs. Let’s just hope they don’t get too adventuresome too quickly. Their big sisters found an opening in their fence yesterday, and about 60 of them went strolling down the Land Bank path right about the time the pullets were arriving. (At least there weren’t as many escapees as last time.)

And fortunately the pullets don’t have to worry about being the new kids on the block for too long. Our 25 baby Aracauna chicks are due to arrive at the post office on Monday. Yes, you heard that right. But they won’t start laying (blue) eggs until September, so that’s two dozen we won’t have to think about for a while!

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

From One Farmhouse to Another—and A Foggy Morning Walkabout

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I am, quite famously, a homebody. For years I had to travel a good deal in my job, but I never really loved it. I was born under the sign of Cancer (with a rising Cancer moon) so I am all about hanging out in my shell, well-fed (of-course), and warm and cozy. If I do go somewhere, I like to stay for a while. It was such a big deal for me to come spend a few months on the Vineyard five years ago that I never left! These days, there are just a couple places—and people—that can pull me off this rock.

One of those places is York, Maine. And one of those people is my best friend Eliza. Who happens to live in York. And there just happens to be a cooking school in York at the famous Stonewall Kitchen complex, and every year they ask me to come teach a couple classes. (Last weekend was my annual trip.) Truthfully, as a cookbook author, I am required to do some travel to promote my books. So I always say yes to Stonewall Kitchen because it means I get to go see Eliza, her husband Chip, her kids Nathalie, Katie, and James—and, Double Bonus Points—our other childhood best friend, Liz Gray, who lives in Maine as well.

Though it’s not just my friends who make me feel so comfortable in York. There is a place—Eliza’s grandmother’s house, which has now passed on to the grandchildren—that I visited almost every summer as a kid. It hasn’t changed at all in the 50 years I’ve known it (except that it is very well-maintained) and my memories are extraordinarily vivid of the happy times I spent there with Eliza and her family—in the house, in the barn, in the fields out back. Old foundations, an old cemetery, a vegetable garden. And my first encounter ever with a rhubarb plant. I remember the rhubarb at Grandma’s house so enthusiastically that I had to go back and take pictures of it last weekend. Eliza’s father Jim told me he thinks it was probably planted in 1932.

For some reason (many reasons probably), during all the years I worked and lived in cities and suburbs, I held Grandma’s house in my fantasies as the ideal home. I always wanted to live in a farm house. I think that’s why I fell in love with our little place as soon as I saw it (even though it is teeny and rustic)—it just felt familiar. Or at least felt like a place this little crab would want to find shelter in. It had lilacs, an old stone foundation, a giant maple tree and rolling fields. But no rhubarb! I thought every farm house had at least one rhubarb plant, but what might have been here is now gone. We resorted to planting our own and have been busy trying to kill it ever since. Most recently Roy rototilled right over the dormant plants. Miraculously, they are up and thriving.

 

Amazingly, I woke up at 6:18 this morning, my body finally adjusting to the seasonal farm schedule I will need to keep. Thinking about how much I love this place and looking at the dense fog outside, I grabbed my camera and did a walkabout, just like Eliza and I used to do as kids in Maine.

 

First, I went out to the fields behind us. Roy is all excited about his mower attachment for the tractor and he’s been making us hay mulch for the garden—yay! I checked on the chickens. I imagined the field with 300 more chickens (they’re coming next week), and saw the progress Roy is making on new coops.

Along the way, I encountered some wild creatures. Pepe Le Pew was waiting for me at the far compost pile. Tom Turkey was busy trying to catch himself a hen. The black shadowy figure in the mist was Farm Dog himself.

Next, I checked on progress in the garden. Peas thriving. Lettuce waiting for me to harvest. Potatoes sprouting. Radishes harvested.

We’ve been working  hard. Blueberries are pruned and mulched. Perennial and herb beds tidied up. Garden beds tilled and planted one by one, paths weeded, transplants in transit. We even have our first cosmos from the plants I started months ago inside.

It’s lovely here—now if we just had a big barn like Grandma’s! (Well, a house like hers would be nice, too.) But there is one thing we have that Grandma’s doesn’t—a farm stand. Here’s a sneak peek at our new farm stand structure—more on this soon!

 

 

 

 

 

Edible, side dishes, Vegetables

Pretty in Purple—Pak Choi for the Plate and Palate

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It’s only May 1 and already we may have grown the prettiest vegetable we’ll see all season. (You can remind me I’ve said this when I start waxing on about peas and cherry tomatoes and Fairy Tale eggplants.) But honestly, this little purple pac choi (aka bok choy) is simply stunning. We can’t keep it at the farm stand for a minute, and I’m hoping I’ll get another round transplanted before it gets too hot. If you’re interested in growing this ethereal veggie (sweet, crunchy, tangy and light), you can still order seeds from Fedco and plant it in the fall.

Me, I think I’d better start eating more of the stuff. The purple color is the result of anthocyanins, which supposedly improve memory. I could use that, since I  completely forgot to make time for the blog post this week (a lot of farm work going on around here!) and now I am off to Maine to teach two classes at the fabulous Stonewall Kitchen this weekend. Wish you could all be there to join me!

Edible, Farm life

Small Wonder: Spring on Green Island Farm

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I was heading out to the farm stand with this bowl of radishes the other day when a friend intercepted me and bought one bunch straight out of the dish. After that, I rushed in to get the camera before the next bunch disappeared (which it did, very shortly thereafter.) I don’t blame these folks for snatching up the radishes—honestly, is there a cheerier harbinger of spring? Well, I guess you could name quite a few things (flowering trees, singing birds, green grass), but in the vegetable world, radishes are as cheery as it gets. And thanks to the hoop house, I’ve got radishes in April—yippee!

I am celebrating the small stuff all around the farm today as it happens to be warm and sunny, and I was beginning to think “warm and sunny” was some mirage I’d never quite reach. (I should say it is “warmish” here—high 50s.) On Monday it blew so hard that the latch on the gate to the big chicken pen popped open (which it hasn’t done in previous storms) and all of the 200 chickens in it went for a walkabout—over to the neighbor’s woods, through a pine grove, around the future pig pen, and just generally anywhere they could disappear. It took us the better part of the day to get them all back in. Argh. Not to be snide, but I have to say that one of the things I am celebrating today is no wind—and chickens happily back in their pen.

Also, this morning I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Finding Your Soul, and in his post today, “Everything We Need Is Right Here,” David Anderson talks about all the wonder that’s right in front of our eyes while we’re off seeking something better somewhere else. So I thought to take the camera and snap a few other things I’m marveling at now that spring is actually coming to Green Island Farm.

Chartreuse maple flowers unfurling on bare branches against a Carolina blue sky.

 

Big fat healthy tomato plants in the greenhouse. We started our “early” tomatoes in February and have managed to bring them along nicely, letting them hang out in the hoop house by day and stay snug inside the house at night.

 

Copious amounts of bok choy to sell at the farm stand. We grew the first batch in the hoop house. Batches 2 and 3 (including the pretty purple stuff) are coming along in a long raised bed outside the hoop house (where the early tomatoes will be transplanted in a few weeks.) Get some of this delicious veggie into your kitchen soon–here’s one recipe idea (a stir-fry; my friend Joannie says this is the best!) and here’s another (my friend Eliza’s favorite–Spicy Noodle Hot Pot!).

 

 

The pea plants germinated beautifully and are ready to come out from under cover, where they’ve been hiding from the birds.

 

Basil seedlings are healthy and we have hundreds of them!

 

Beautiful Pirat Butterhead lettuce is “too pretty to cut” my friend Mary says. Alas, I’ve already tucked into it and pulled heads for the farm stand.

 

Last year’s everbearing strawberry plants already have blossoms.

 

And yes, the grass is green. I know, I know but this is a big deal to me. We’ve been looking at mud for months. This is the pine grove at one end of our back field, where Farmer and I go for walks.

And when it comes to being excited about springtime and fresh grass, no one’s happier than Farmer. We’ll be walking along and all of a sudden he just gets down and does a roly-poly in the grass. He stands back up, shakes, and then skips off, happy as can be. We should all be so carefree. Maybe if your day isn’t going so well, you could try rolling in the warm grass!