It's June now!

It’s been a fairly easy week – the rainy afternoons have kept us from hoeing which has been a nice reprieve, but come the next sunny day and our bodies will be paying for it! 

Stacy harvesting the first kale of the season!

 

Yesterday we harvested kale -all you do is snap the leaves at the base of the stalk and rubber band them into a hefty bouquet! Ashley made us some ‘massaged kale’ for lunch – raw kale cut into ribbons ‘massaged’ with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and salt! It’s really, really good, you should all try it! The lemon juice breaks down the proteins (as cooking it would) so that the body is able to absorb all of the vitamins and minerals (that are otherwise unabsorbed when eaten raw).

Everything that we harvest goes straight to the ‘packout’ area, where it is ‘watered-in’ (gently sprayed down) until we are ready to wash it. After it is washed, the food is packed into either CSA boxes, wholesale boxes, or boxes to take to the farmer’s market. The veggies for CSA and wholesale are harvested on the morning of the delivery; the farmer’s market veggies are usually harvested a day prior and stored in a walk-in cooler. This means that we are harvesting at least 4 times per week! The goal is to finish all harvesting by 10:00am – this is because: #1. We usually have deliveries to make #2. Harvesting later in the day means the sun is brighter and hotter, which can stress the vegetables, causing them to wilt or decay more rapidly. So far, I enjoy the salad harvest most. I love falling into a rhythm of cutting and moving that feels like a dance or an art of some kind.

The woodpecker is still going strong. I really can’t believe it. I thought for sure that it’d last a few days, maybe a week… but, no. Now I’m starting to think that the ‘brrrrrrrrrap-rap rap rap rap rap rap’ is going to be a relentless echo for the remaining five months of the season. I think we’ve all given up on trying to get rid of it because, really, there is no solution. Bobby can reach out his window and scare it off with a good whack of a broom – but it always comes back. And now there is a new chain of early morning events testing my patience. The bird starts in, ‘brrrrrrrrrap-rap rap rap rap rap rap’, triggering the rooster to doodle-do every thirty seconds - all of which now irritates Ashley’s mammoth great dane into a trance-like response of deep howls. Despite all this, I haven’t once screamed out or attempted to throw a rock up there. I think I may really be changing, and I kind of can’t believe it. 

 

The greenhouse chore is over THANK GOD!! Though, I’ve now moved into the chicken chore, which isn’t much better. Mostly because it’s another twice daily chore (whereas the rest of them are weekly or monthly). But at least I’m getting the bad ones out of the way before the real hard work picks up. But, all I have to do is let the (13) chickens in and out of the coop, feed them, and collect and wash their eggs. Not bad - and it’s a good reminder to me to acknowledge and respect the life energy that produces my breakfast. Yum.