Tag Archives: Farm life

The Fair, the Farm Stand, and all the Festivities

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.

Where the Wild Things Grow

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.

 

Famous Farm Dog Finds Nirvana in the Garden

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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!

 

Two Little Piggies Come Home to Green Island Farm

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.

My 40-Carrot Parents

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.

All the Signs are Pointing to a Great Season

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!

 

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

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!

 

 

 

From One Farmhouse to Another—and A Foggy Morning Walkabout

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!

 

 

 

 

 

Small Wonder: Spring on Green Island Farm

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!