7/6/18 - Week 5 - Neruda's Ode to the Onion

It's been a hectic week here on the farm even by July farm standards. We're having some technical difficulties with the filtration and flow on our gravity water feed system, which means we've been running around like crazy chickens micro-managing what precious water we have to make sure it gets to each plant, but as sparingly as possible. A very special thanks goes out to our neighbor and wizard Scott Kelley, who's been on the case so we can focus on the plants as much as possible. Save the best cauliflower head for him!)

It will all be OK, but the busyness has meant less time to craft newsletters! We had one all worked up in the old noggin about seasonality and the arc of growth and limits, but it will have to wait for next time.

So this week, in honor of this week's fresh torpedo onions, we'll leave you with the one-and-only... Pablo.

Blessed water!

* * * * * * *

Ode to the Onion

by Pablo Neruda

Onion,
luminous flask,
your beauty formed
petal by petal,
crystal scales expanded you
and in the secrecy of the dark earth
your belly grew round with dew.
Under the earth
the miracle
happened
and when your clumsy
green stem appeared,
and your leaves were born
like swords
in the garden,
the earth heaped up her power
showing your naked transparency,
and as the remote sea
in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite
duplicating the magnolia,
so did the earth
make you,
onion
clear as a planet
and destined
to shine,
constant constellation,
round rose of water,
upon
the table
of the poor.

You make us cry without hurting us.
I have praised everything that exists,
but to me, onion, you are
more beautiful than a bird
of dazzling feathers,
heavenly globe, platinum goblet,
unmoving dance
of the snowy anemone

and the fragrance of the earth lives
in your crystalline nature.

* * * * * * *
See you in the fields,

David and Kayta

6/29/18 - Week 4 - Wildness

We gotta go hang some garlic! This week, a throwback Farmer's Log from one year ago... P.S. Mama deer is back!
* * *

One of the most special things about living and farming at Green Valley is that is a very wild place.

It's no wonder: If you zoom out on a satellite map of the address here (13024 Green Valley Rd.), you'll see that this little valley is nestled in the base of a forest that extends Northward, essentially unbroken, up through Alaska!

A field amongst the firs

We come in contact with this wildness everyday out here. It is perhaps most noticeable in the bird and mammal kingdoms at this time of year, during the spring / early summer surge of activity, new growth, courtship, competition, homemaking and baby-raising that corresponds with the return of the sun and the all the surge of new life it supports. At this time of year especially, our furred and feathered neighbors weave themselves into our everyday lives, greeting us in the morning, keeping us company throughout the day, and accompanying us on our way home at night as they go about building their lives next to ours.

A Great White Egret swooping over the fields

The bird world is especially rich out right now. Kayta's parents, avid birders, spotted 34 species during their two week visit from Missouri at the beginning of June. (And that's just the tip of the iceberg.) All the feathered ones seem to be making a go of it while the gettins good and doing all the things that go with that: Courting (those Turkey gobbles of April and May, echoing down the valley) and singing (wow, hear that Swainson's thrush), fighting (the "bird wars" begin in late May as the sky fills with inner/interspecies arial battles and battle cries as they all squat, steal and harass each others nests and territories), eating (where did all our lettuce seeds go?), building homes (check out the Barn Swallow mud nest near our wash-station) and starting families...

In the owl box perched along the 13024 driveway, a barn owl family has taken up residence. Who knows when mom and dad moved in but about a month and a half ago tiny little raspy screeches could be heard coming from the box. Now, our way home at twilight every evening, we watch four barn owl teenagers exercise their flying permits. Compared to their silent, sleek, be-masked parents they are awkward flying monkeys. At first they would just pop their fuzzy heads out of the house, then pop back in. Lately, they have been taking flight, with a tellingly rapid RPM crash landing into the nearest tree, where they screech at each other for awhile, before flying back to the safety of the house. Where they screech some more. All. Night. Long...

Also like clockwork, at twilight, comes a Dark Sentinel. Our main fields are in her route. She has three spots -- that we know of: On a fence post overlooking the center meadow, on a large tree overlooking the main fields, and on the tall power pole overlooking the vineyards. A shadow. The Great Horned Owl. Like the Lady of the Forest, she gives us shivers, reminding us of our mortality. But she reminds gophers of their mortality too, which is quite necessary around here.

Yes, twilight is a special time. Quivers of quail come out from their thickets to forage (a little paranoid and a lot domestic). Mama and baby skunk visit the compost pile to see what's been left, and a gophers flit through the grass like lightning, mindful of the Dark Sentinel.

The gopher army (at its population low near the end of winter, being food for so many predators during that time) explodes at this time of year. Their subterranean networks of paths seem to multiply underfoot, their little portal holes pock the ground, and their boldness grows. One crashed against my leg as I was harvesting mustard mix on Tuesday. They may not visit the barn, but you can be sure that the gophers have been picking up their CSA shares.

And then there is Mama Deer. You may have noticed the fortress of junk in between our greenhouses and the hog panels around Aubrie and Scott's garden. These are protection from Mama Deer. Mama Deer took up residence in a thicket near the greenhouses about a month ago and, pregnant and now presumably nursing, uses a genius and boldness I have never seen in a deer to infiltrate our fortresses and feast on the fare. Who can blame her, she's making a go of it just like the rest of us.

This list could go on: The juvenile Salmonids and the baby turtles in the culvert, the broccoli-obsessed ninja Hare or the demon Racoon that visits our neighbors... no matter how much they annoy us or pillage our greenhouses, we can only but be grateful for their antics, their lessons, their company, and that they are here. This place is alive and wild. Let's make sure to keep it that way.

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

6/26/18 - Week 3 - The Magic of Garlic

"Under the earth the miracle happened..." - Pablo Neruda

Of all the magical crops we grow here at Green Valley Community Farm, perhaps no others enchant us more than the alliums.

And of the 11 allium varieties we grow (from tender scallions to sweet Walla Walla onions) no other enchants us more than garlic.

We remember the cool November day this year's garlic crop was planted. We remember the low light, the sun just trimming the doug firs on the Western hills, the long fall shadows, and the brisk air. A sweet crew of members joined us that day. Our cat Bilbo who was just a kitten.

Together we popped the cloves from their mother bulbs and held them in our hands; vulnerable, alone, like pale half moons; with trepidation we placed them into the autumn soil, thinking of the cold wet winter ahead. It felt like a prayer.. and an improbable one. We mulched those beds extra thick. And then we left.

We closed the gates. The Sun went south. The Winter constellations turned overhead.

And out there, on the East facing slope of High Garden, the cloves slumbered. They slumbered through the longest nights of the year, and through the battering early storms of Winter.

And then one day, deep down under the straw and soil, unbeknownst to anyone, they awoke.

In mid January, "clumsy green stems appeared," and we watched in awe as, day after day, week after week, "leaves were born like swords in the garden."

But we never dared to ask what lay below, and certainly never looked -- out of modesty, out of superstition, out of longing, not wanting to break the spell or to disturb the magic occurring there. We'd walk by the garlic patch whistling a tune, looking at the horizon, as if nothing was growing there, only once in a while stealing a furtive, hopeful glance at the unfurling greenery, and swelling stems.

"... and the earth heaped up her power."

In the mounting heat and elongated days of late Spring, scapes uncurled out of the hardnecks like giddy harbingers. And further along, as if on cue to some mysterious power, the green arching leaves begin to brown. Stalks swelled, and finally, leaves begin to brown and die.

That is when we begin to actually look at our garlic plants, but still standing helplessly in our world, above, with furrowed brows earnestly, attentively, counting leaves, like counting rosaries. And finally, one day, with held breath and a prayer in our hearts, we trust a spade into earth, heaved up, heard the crackling of roots breaking from earth, and we lifted up from "the secrecy of the dark earth"... garlic!

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

*Italicized quotes from the poem Ode to the Onion by Pablo Neruda