Category Archives: Farm life

Edible, Farm life

They Don’t Call it Harvest Time for Nothin’

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Yesterday, I picked 22 pounds of beans—green beans, yellow beans, purple beans. Actually Roy helped at the end, as the sun was going down—after he finished washing and packing 800 eggs. Then we sorted through 250 pears and apples that have landed in our lap. After closing up the farm stand, locking up the chickens, and eating a quick supper of cold roast pork, fingerlings and arugula, we hopped in the car and made an egg and bean delivery down to our friends at Lucky Hank’s restaurant in Edgartown. It was a long day. (I was happy to find I could stand up this morning though, as I thought I might get frozen in crouching-bean-picking position. My poor back!)

You’d think, with the crazy August tourist season behind us, that we’d be less busy. But September is always a bit of a trickster like that. A lot of the veggies and flowers are actually much happier now, and either they’re finally hitting their stride, or they sense that cooler weather is coming and they should start producing faster. In the case of the beans, the survival instinct had set in. They were ravaged by sparrows in August and subsequently responded with millions of blossoms. The eggplants are flowering and fruiting like crazy, the zinnias are soaring, and not only are we still picking cherry tomatoes, but there’s a round of ripening beefsteaks out there that looks a whole lot better than anything we saw in August. Go figure.

So there is stuff all over the place—pears in the feed shed, apples in the shop, tomatoes on every surface. And, um, pork in the freezer. Our pork. Yes.  I’ll spare you the details right now, but I will tell you it is the most delicious pork I have ever eaten.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ironically, with all the veggies and fruit around, I still don’t have time to do much preserving. (Fortunately, most of it will travel to grateful homes via the farm stand!) I did make a quick tomato sauce from odds and ends this morning, but I think farmers and preservers must be two different people as it is really hard to find time to do both.

Beyond harvesting, we’re also busy turning over a lot of the beds in the garden, planting more fall lettuce and greens. We’ve already turned the hoop house over, too. Goodbye cucumbers, hello carrots. Meanwhile, Roy is trying to get a lot of off-farm work done and I am trying to wrap my head around book promotion, which requires as much attention as actually writing the book!

Oh well, it is all good. I hear we are in for a very cold winter so soon enough we’ll be house-bound, with intermittent dashes to the hoop house and the chicken coops. And somehow winter always seems a whole lot longer than summer. Yikes, maybe I should just stop and enjoy this beautiful fall. (Truthfully, I actually like picking beans.)

 

 

 

 

 

Edible, Farm life

A Walk (or Two) in August–What a Concept!

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Normally we don’t “walk” in August. That kind of walk, you know—the strolling kind, where you let the world wrap you up in its beauty—just doesn’t happen in high season. But the other day my friend Heidi (of newly minted MV Sea Salt fame!) said she’d stop by for a quick catch-up in early afternoon, and when she got here, I suggested a short walk.

It was such a clear, bright day and the breeze was purring along, and well, why not meander down the Land Bank path behind our homestead? (The path actually squeezes between us and the four acres we lease behind us that house our chickens.)

It’s a lovely, short walk, past cornfields, over a shady brook, along a brambly old cow fence, and out onto a spectacular low grassy plain called the Square Field.

Here and there, Heidi pointed out a flower or herb or plant to me that I wasn’t familiar with. And we both got excited when we found wild blackberries tangled along the fence line.

The walk was so relaxing (and really a no-brainer since it was so close by), that I decided to go again today after the morning farm-stand rush, and bring my camera with me. I had wanted to go back with Roy last evening. I knew he’d be excited to locate more wild blackberries, since he’s been stalking them like crazy. (We now have a couple pounds of berries in the freezer, all from the fields around us.) But farm chores keep us really busy in the evenings, and now the light is closing in on us earlier and earlier.

So I wandered off today alone while he was resting, and just as I was changing my camera lens to get a close-up of a blackberry, I heard a faint whooshing noise and then a decided splash. It was Roy at the little bridge over the brook behind me. He had untied his sneakers and stepped into the water. All along, I knew he wasn’t far behind me.  (What was he doing in the water? Maybe looking for the troll under the bridge?)

We sat together quietly for a while on the bridge, looking for trout in the stream. Then we continued on the walk together, spotting wild cherries and a patch of once-cultivated raspberries, admiring the field of goldenrod and Joe Pye weed, and then heading back up the bank and along the corn fields, past our chickens and up to the back gate of our market garden.

I took a few last photos of our first pumpkins (Yay! We’ve got one already ripe and quite a few on the way…)

 

and I took in the best fall flower show I know—sunflowers and cosmos.

 

When I was sitting quietly with Roy on the little bridge over the brook, watching for life under the water and squinting at the sunlight glinting across the surface, I thought it was the most perfectly peaceful moment of the summer. And one I might not have experienced but for my friend Heidi.

But of course, being one of those people who can never get enough of a good thing, I am thinking I may have to go back again tomorrow. While this weather lasts….

 

 

 

Animals, Edible, Farm life

Blue Ribbons, Burgers & Blackberry Ice Cream

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A light rain drizzled down on us tonight as we trudged back across State Road from the Fair grounds to the farm. Looking back, Libby noticed our feet left a pattern on the rain-glossed blacktop. It’s almost as if we’d worn a path in the road with so much criss-crossing. You could even see Farmer’s paw prints. (Yes, Farmer got to go to the Fair—three times. French fries—yes; cotton candy—no.)

Now we are all a little comatose, having eaten ourselves silly for four days. Because of these darn free passes the Fair folks give us every year, we indulge ourselves ridiculously and eat nearly every meal at the Fair. This year we made a habit of trying as many different things as we could—barbequed ribs, chicken tacos, steak tacos, pizza, burgers, veggie tempura, sausage and peppers, French fries, corn on the cob, strawberry shortcake, fruit smoothies, ice cream, fried dough, cotton candy. Yes, you read that right—it is not the healthiest list of food. But we had a blast and took Iphone pictures of most every dish to document the extravaganza.

Back at the farm, at least Libby and I added some veggies and fruits to that list, since we were harvesting (and snacking on) tomatoes, green beans and blackberries together in between Fair forays. But then we had to go and make ice cream. I know, I know—what a crazy weekend to make homemade ice cream. The problem was, I had promised Libby that we’d make our annual batch of berry ice cream while she’s here on this visit. A promise is a promise. And this year, we are overflowing with blackberries, and I’ve been picking and freezing the ripe ones every day.

Fortunately, making ice cream happens in small steps which you can squeeze in between Fair visits. You make berry puree. Chill it. Make custard. Chill it. Combine puree and custard. Chill it. Put mix in ice cream maker (the old ice cream maker that doesn’t freeze very well). Put ice cream maker back in freezer and stir every once in a while. Give up on getting anything that’s really completely frozen. Eat soft-serve blackberry ice cream: The absolute most delicious stuff in the whole world. I promise. Libby promises. Even Roy raved.

And speaking of raves. We’re voting MV Ag Fair 2013 our fave so far. Not that winning a blue ribbon for our eggs, our green beans, our cosmos, and Libby’s plum tomatoes has anything to do with it, mind you. But it did put us all in a dandy mood Thursday. And then the sun shone bright in a picture-perfect blue sky for three days. There was a soft breeze and there were stunning sunsets. We saw lots of friends. A mommy sow had 10 piglets in the animal barn Thursday night. (We went to look at these little tiny creatures maybe 12 times after that.) Roy won stuffed animals (a pig and a frog) for both Libby and me. Farmer made new friends and ate his first onion rings. He and Libby are passed out on the couch, side by side. Exhausted, stuffed, happy.

Edible, Farm life, Sustain, The Recipes

The Fair, the Farm Stand, and all the Festivities

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There’s barely a minute to breathe and yet I am practically hyperventilating. I’ve never been good at containing my excitement, and this year, I seem to be more excited than ever about Fair Week.

You could get really cranky around here during the third week in August when traffic tangles up and thousands of people descend on the Island. And I must admit, after an onslaught of farm stand customers—and traffic jams in our own driveway—yesterday, I was just plain exhausted. But I woke up to the clear air and blue skies today feeling giddy.

This year the President’s family vacation overlaps directly with Fair week, making things even more exciting (or more frustrating—depending on your point of view) than usual. We happen to be on the excited end of the spectrum on this one, too. Friday we were given the opportunity to contribute to a gift basket of local food heading directly to the chefs who will be cooking for the Obama family this week (at a house only a couple miles up the road from us). We sent cherry tomatoes and eggs, and a pint of Fairy Tale eggplants, too, which apparently the chefs especially liked. Roy is really hoping that the President is waking up to a breakfast of Green Island Farm eggs—but who knows?!

Across the street, the carnival rides on trailers are lining up at the Fair Grounds. Tents are popping up; the hall doors are open wide while workers set up the display tables inside. Hay for the animals is moving in to the barns, bleachers are lining up, and the fireman’s burger booth is already in place. Best of all, two people on bicycles came down the driveway this morning to give us our four free tickets, which we receive for being abutting neighbors to the Fair Grounds. (The best part about this is that we get to smell the pigs smoking all day. Um, other pigs, not our pigs. Who are really big, by the way.)

Wednesday, we’ll all go down to Oak Bluffs, pick up Roy’s parents at the Island Queen ferry, and spend the evening at Illumination Night at the Camp Grounds. After an old-fashioned sing along, at exactly 8 pm, thousands of paper lanterns will light up on the front porches and walkways of every gingerbread cottage in the Camp Ground. It is breathtaking and stimulating and enchanting all at once—even if you do, once again, have to negotiate the crowds.  (If we can pull it off, we’ll go back to Oak Bluffs for the big fireworks Friday night, though the Fair may keep us away.)

The Fair begins on Thursday, and our friends will come and park at our house and join Roy, Libby and I to walk over for dinner. By then, we will have already raced over once in the afternoon to see if the Hall has opened and the vegetables have been judged. I don’t think this is going to be a big year for us, ribbon-wise, but you never know.

We’ll still have to gather, wash and pack 500 eggs every day. And harvest tomatoes, eggplants, beans, zucchinis, peppers, cucumbers, kale, chard, flowers, and basil every day for the farm stand (and set up the farm stand every morning.) But we’ll squeeze in all the time we can over at the Fair. Roy and Libby love the rides, and we all love the animals, especially the oxen, and the um, piglets. (The theme of this year’s Fair is going hog wild!) So by Sunday we will be exhausted. But I don’t care. Did I mention I love Fair week, that we wait all year for this excitement, that this is one of the reasons I love my life and my farm and my family and my Island? Yep.

Animals, Edible, Farm life, The Garden, The Recipes

Where the Wild Things Grow

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I swear, the garden (and the hoop house, too, for that matter) have a strange and wonderful life all their own. Who knows what goes on behind the gate when you’re not there?  Start with bees, birds, butterflies, moths, spiders, beetles, chipmunks, crows, sparrows, slugs, crickets and frogs. Add blossoms, shoots, vines, suckers, spores, weeds, seeds, fruit. Then Water. Wind. Sun. Pollination. Photosynthesis. And all that above ground—you can’t even begin to name the players down below.

Now throw in some man-made stuff. A trellis, a fence, a rope, a pot, a stake, a spade, a cart, a bench. At night, the wild things secretly romance and spar and dance and croon and sidle up and tangle over and generally do what they do. Because you’re not looking.

It’s only in the morning when you shuffle across the dewy grass and open the gate…or in the evening when the light is dying and you finally remember to check on those hoophouse tomatoes…that you see. And even then you must be paying attention or you will miss something great or weird or funny. But you will always find something satisfying, something that’s grown another foot or finally started to bear fruit.

Here are a few surprises from this week on Green Island Farm. (Admittedly, not all of them are nature-made. There are two farmers working on this farm, and very often one is doing something that the other doesn’t even know about it. Until stumbling upon it.)

This is definitely the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a while: A Patty Pan squash plant on steroids, I guess. I have no idea why this happens, but where one or two blossoms are supposed to be, there are literally hundreds–and dozens of fruits already forming. This surfaced beneath the UFO-Saucer sized leaves (right) of one of the hoop-house squash plants.

Also seemingly overnight, the cucumber plants climbed up to the top of the hoophouse, unleashed a shower of little yellow blossoms, and began to spit out little spiny cucumbers.

By sunset, the cucumbers were full-grown. Okay, maybe not sunset of the same day, but it really seemed that way.

 

Out in the garden, there were strange going-ons everywhere. One day I found Farmer meditating by the bush beans. Or perhaps he was praying, I don’t know. But the next day, I collected our first nice batch of beans. Farmer might have some special communication powers I don’t know about.

 

Weird balloons, fake birds, fake snakes, and other puzzling man-made objects also began to show up in the garden this week. Then one day, the plastic falcon moved, presumably to protect a ripening Early Girl from a sparrow attack. He knows his job.

The balloons with the eyeballs are just plain creepy (wait until Libby sees these), and I do a double-take every time I see them. They seem to be working though; nothing goes near them. Go figure.

Of course, there are some pretty accidents, too. (Or maybe they’re not accidents.) This year, the daisies, coneflowers, and daylilies made friends, completely unintroduced by us. Who knew they would get along so well?  (About as well as the eggplants and green peppers, which are neighbors, too.)

And finally, there are just some things that happen on the farm that you really can’t explain. If you remember, we brought home two pigs a few months ago. If you look very carefully in this photo of our pigs, there are three heads. I couldn’t get them all to look at the camera at the same time, but trust me, we’re feeding three fast-growing, mud-loving, root-grubbing pigs. Which is why their pen doubled in size. (How that happened, I’ll never know.)

 

 

You really have to keep your eyes open around here.

 

Edible, Farm life, Vegetables

Summer Veggies Have A Mind of Their Own

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Harumph. I am so not very patient, and just cannot believe that the summer vegetables are on their own schedule, not mine. I mean, really. Hurry up, already!

I am all disgruntled partly because while I did a good job on my spring planting, I once again under-planted for early summer. Peas and carrots are all gone, lettuce has bolted, bok choy a distant memory. And I apparently have still not mastered the art of controlling insects that eat chard and kale—argh! So I am putting undue pressure on the squash, beans, peppers, eggplants, flowers, and yes, tomatoes, to hurry up. (Fortunately, we’re getting a great yield on our potatoes, which Roy has been harvesting every day, and eggs are flying out of here as fast as we can gather and wash them.)

Finally this week we started to harvest a little of each of the summer veg. But am I grateful? Noooo, of course not. All I can do is complain (to myself) that there aren’t more. It takes a while for everything to really start producing, but I can’t wait! To make myself feel better (Roy does not seem at all concerned about this), I’ve been madly weeding and replanting the open beds with carrots, turnips, fall squash, more kale, more summer squash (to foil the squash borers) and whatnot. And, um, lecturing the eggplant. (“Could you try to produce more than one fruit at a time please?”) The poor eggplant—it’s a new variety called Orient Express, and it’s already providing fruit three weeks ahead of last year. (Apparently my patience gets shorter and shorter every year.)

At some point I realize that these conversations I’m having with myself and the vegetables are not very productive. And that, in reality, we have more of the summer veggies planted than we’ve ever had, so we should be overflowing in August. So when I start complaining about all the time we’re spending harvesting beans and tomatoes, you can just kick me. Or something.

In the meantime, I’m offering a few pics of this week’s goodies. They do make my heart sing!

 


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.