An absolutely gorgeous week on the farm! Spring is Springing everywhere, the days are getting longer still and the Peonys, irises and roses are in blossom all around our home. The vegetables look lush and young and filled with potential. This Spring has been like one from a dream. We started out cool and Spring felt late, but now we’re enjoying weeks of mild and pleasurable working weather. The June bugs are tossing themselves like sacrifices against the storm door glass. They’re so big and klutzy and they act so confused. I’ve always wondered how they’ve managed to procreate in such large numbers with such behavior! The June bugs actually came in June this year, whereas I remember them coming in March, April and May the last few years. Happy Radish Harvester. We have a lotta fun out here!
June is exhilarating on the farm. The rains still come in June and the ground knows it needs to drink and store it up because we’re bound for a few long weeks of drought in July. In June the grass grows quickly and eagerly. The trees are dropping their little helicopter seeds, snowball cottonwood seeds and fuzzy willow tail seeds. The Birds begin singing at 4:30am, long before the sun actually rises. The farm sounds like some kind of bird sanctuary. I swear that every bird in Vernon County is in the trees outside our bedroom window at 4:30am in June. The only person I have ever knows that wakes up at 4:30am is my father. To this day he still does! He learned that from his father, who also still rises for the day at an unseemly hour. I consider myself to be an early riser, but 4:30 is just too early for me. Maybe someday I’ll become like them. The wasps are building their nests in the soffits on the barn, around the doorways of the shed, and in the hedgerows. The honeybees fly from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollen and water, returning home with bee-bushels of the stuff to transform into honey.
There is still just a modest 10 days left before the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and day length begins to wane. June leaves the scene as the brightest month of the year. The long days influence day-length sensitive crops and animals to get their reproductive move on. The photosensitive chickens lay their peak numbers in eggs. The onions revel and begin to bulb, taking advantage of every minute of daylight. The long days bring warmth and light to our heat loving crops like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and sweet corn.
Your farmers are keeping pace. We’re working like there is no reason to stop, taking advantage of long days and the warm weather to keep up with the planting, tilling, cultivating and mowing. We are rewarded with beautiful crops like these perfect radishes and succulent Spring greens. We are filled with hope and anticipation for a bountiful Summer and Fall harvest Season. We behave almost as the animals do, busily working and moving quickly in the warm weather to raise food for the long winter ahead. Our bodies feel limber as we do our work. We feel our muscles toning, our hands toughening, our minds attuning, our skin darkening. Our work feels wholesome and genuine and fulfilling as we are nourished not only by the work itself but by the fruits of our labor that now fill our bellies and tabletops.
I remember being worried, and down right warned, by other farmers and other guiding influences in my life when making the decision to become a farmer, that the passion for farming would fade. The work would be too hard and too long and too heavy. The realities of what this life would be like would reveal themselves over time and the appeal would diminish leaving only endless work to do and an achy body. I feel fortunate to have found all of that to be true, but to still love what I do with a renewed passion each season. It is in June that I look around the farm and I see fertility in everything around me. I see life and beauty and I feel that we not only made the right decision, I know that we are blessed with the fortune this life offers.
NOTE: After heavy rains, you may notice that your head lettuce or radish greens are a little dirtier than usual. We do hydrocool everything and do the best we can with the time and help we have, but please understand that your fresh greens that grow close to the ground can get soil splashed up and inside them in heavy rains. We’re sorry about that! A little extra cleaning on head lettuce and radish greens might be in order this week! 
Mid Radish-Harvest Focus. It’s like plucking red teeth from the earth!
Asparagus- The final giving of Asparagus this season. Sadly all good things must come to an end. We have been buying the Asparagus from another Asparagus farmer who has acres of it that he can afford to share with us. We’ve been loving it!
Dutch Yellow Shallots- These little gusy look modest, but they’ve been in storage all winter long, waiting for the opportunity to arrive in your home. Shallots are sometimes called multiplier onions. They’re great when used in homemade sauces and salad dressings. With all of the lettuce coming up, it would be a great idea to make some home-made salad dressings! Since they’ve been in storage all winter, we sugguest eating them up sooner rather than later. Keep them in your fridge in a cold, dark place if you want to keep them a little longer so they don’t sprout on you!
Pac Choi- These crunchy heads of deliciousness make a wonderful raw asian salad, are great in stir fry or even good made into a slaw. Be sure to use the whole plant, the delicious crunchy stems and the nutritious greens attached! One member said she used her pac choi like she would use celery in her cooking since it’s texture is similar. A little more riping and tearing on the leaves this week from the hail on Saturday afternoon. But we thought they still looked good!
Lacinato Kale or Red Curly Kale- We were harvesting Kale on Monday morning and were getting a little carried away making generous bunch sizes, we ended up stripping the young lacinato plants clean and needing to move on to a different variety of kale. Some of you may have recieved Red Curly Kale. Strip kale from its stems and use the greens in any way you love to cook with greens! I’m not a big raw kale fan myself, but I do know some people like to chop it up raw and mix it with sald.
Spinach- More cooking greens! Spinach is great raw mixed with your lettuce as well. These spinach leaves are so young and tender that they will melt in your mouth. We had about 5 minutes of hail on Saturday afternoon that came with a fast-moving severe storm which shredded a good percentage of our spinach harvest and our swiss Chard that we were planning to give this week. So our spinach yields were down a little, but we managed to pick some even younger leaves for you. It took a little longer, but we felt it was worth it!
Cherry Bell Radish x2- This variety is called Cherriette. The Cherriette is wonderfuly resistant to bolting and we have really enjoyed the flavor of radishes this Spring with all of the rain making them more crunchy and mild rather than spicy. Don’t forget to use your radish greens in your cooking as well. Radish greens are more healthy than the radishes themselves. Toss them in a fritatta or sautee them with some onions and garlic and serve with pasta and parmesan.
Thyme Plant- There is nothing like having a couple of your own fresh herb plants growing in the house or yard. If when you’re cooking you want some fresh herbs, we’re hoping you’ll have fresh basil and thyme this summer. Thyme likes full sun and plenty of water. You can plant the whole little biodegradable pot into a larger pot with some fertile organic soil mix, or in a sunny, fertile spot in your garden.
Lettuce Heats x2– Two nice heads of lettuce this week! You may have received a green oakleaf lettuce, a red buttercrunch lettuce or a green romain lettuce. A little ripping on the leaves of the romaine from the hail. The lettuce heads were very dirty this week from the heavy rains on Saturday. We did the best we could to give them a good rinse, but once you cut the butts off, you’ll have to do a little deeper cleaning, I’m sure! But two nice heads per memer this week! Yee Haw!
Quiche with Beet Greens (or any kind of greens, really!)
