{"id":4330,"date":"2013-04-26T14:56:48","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T19:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/?p=4330"},"modified":"2013-12-09T16:48:09","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T21:48:09","slug":"small-wonder-spring-on-green-island-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/2013\/04\/small-wonder-spring-on-green-island-farm\/","title":{"rendered":"Small Wonder: Spring on Green Island Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>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\u2019t blame these folks for snatching up the radishes\u2014honestly, 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\u2019ve got radishes in April\u2014yippee!<\/p>\n

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 \u201cwarm and sunny\u201d was some mirage I\u2019d never quite reach. (I should say it is \u201cwarmish<\/em>\u201d here\u2014high 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\u2014over to the neighbor\u2019s 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\u2014and chickens happily back in their pen.<\/p>\n

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Also, this morning I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Finding Your Soul, and in his post today, \u201cEverything We Need Is Right Here,\u201d <\/a>David Anderson talks about all the wonder that\u2019s right in front of our eyes while we\u2019re off seeking something better somewhere else. So I thought to take the camera and snap a few other things I\u2019m marveling at now that spring is actually coming to Green Island Farm.<\/p>\n

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Chartreuse maple flowers unfurling on bare branches against a Carolina blue sky.<\/p>\n

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Big fat healthy tomato plants in the greenhouse. We started our \u201cearly\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>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> (a stir-fry; my friend Joannie says this is the best!) and here’s another<\/a>\u00a0(my friend Eliza’s favorite–Spicy Noodle Hot Pot!).<\/p>\n

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The pea plants germinated beautifully and are ready to come out from under cover, where they\u2019ve been hiding from the birds.<\/p>\n

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Basil seedlings are healthy and we have hundreds of them!<\/p>\n

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Beautiful Pirat Butterhead lettuce is \u201ctoo pretty to cut\u201d my friend Mary says. Alas, I\u2019ve already tucked into it and pulled heads for the farm stand.<\/p>\n

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Last year\u2019s everbearing strawberry plants already have blossoms.<\/p>\n

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And yes, the grass is green. I know, I know but this is a big deal to me. We\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

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And when it comes to being excited about springtime and fresh grass, no one\u2019s happier than Farmer. We\u2019ll 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!<\/p>\n

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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\u2019t blame these folks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[115,103],"tags":[42,153,152,58],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4330"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5119,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4330\/revisions\/5119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixburnersue.com\/cooking-fresh-eating-green\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}