8/17/18 - Week 11 - All the Seasons are Present

We just got back (late!) from a sweet potluck next door with friends and neighbors (David), and from the Farmer's Market (Kayta), and we are both brimming with an afterglow of high-summer gratitude for you all, and for the amazing extended community that has supported and held us and the farm through another turn through the Spring and early Summer madness of planting.

For some reason this week feels like a milestone in the season. This time year is a complex time of year on the farm. Summer is here in full force, but Fall is everywhere. Even next season is in the works.

I looked back at the newsletter from this time last year, and, it is remarkable how rhythmically applicable the 2017 Farmer's Log is to this week, one turn around the sun later.

By early August, most of our planting work (half a years worth of planning, seed starting and plant tending) is already fruiting, or starting to reach maturity. We are all enjoying the set pieces of summer; the slow developing nightshades (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers) and their cucurbit comrades (melons, cucumbers, squash). We are in that special time of year where one can make fresh salsa straight from the farm (jalapeños, onions, tomatoes, and perennial or annual cilantro from the garden). The corn is high, all tassels and silks and ears forming. And, our potatoes, especially our red potatoes, are in flower... 6 or so inches below the surface of the soil those starchy tubers are filling out.

But in the the greenhouses and increasingly in the fields, it is all Fall. Our Fall brassica plantings (kales, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussells sprouts and the broccoli we will be picking off of on into December) are all coming into their own in their seeding trays and ready to go in the ground. We planted the Fall storage carrots a couple of weeks ago. Certain beds, you will notice this week, are bare and ready to be planted into or are in the process of being prepared for what's next. These beds provided our earliest farm meals (spring lettuces, mustard greens, turnips and radishes, the first carrots, beets, and first cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage) and, depending on what was in them before, these beds will see a second crop before being put to cover crop bed in the Fall or will be planted into a late summer cover crop now (note the tiny Buckwheat sprouts).

2019 is even in the works, as we are slowly transitioning the beds that will host next year's garlic.

Thank you for all your smiles and sweet encouragement on the farm over the last few weeks. We hope you are enjoying the summer bounty coming out of the fields and this season of transition on the farm.

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

8/10/18 - Week 10 - Attack from Above!

Lucky to farm in a wild land! You never know what is around the next corner!

So one day, a couple of weeks ago, I was walking along the farm road through the meadow back home. Everything was just fine and dandy and I was whistling my tune. As I rounded the corner before the pear trees where the turkeys take cover in the heat of the day, a kerfuffle erupted in their midst like I had never heard before.

I ran toward the pear tree only to behold chaos: Turkeys flapping, flying, squawking and fleeing in every direction, downy feathers in the air. One almost ran through my legs!

"What is happening turkeys!?", I asked, but of course, they were too busy to reply.

All of a sudden, a little chick emerged from cloud running fast as lighting toward the thicket of the creek. 

And then I saw him.

One of the turkeys was not a turkey but a Golden Eagle bounding, swooping, and pouncing with his mighty talons, trying grab our little friend. 

The little chick ran so fast. Just as she was about to reach cover the Eagle leaped up with his furry legs, heaved his might wings, aimed his sharp talons and descended. The Eagles talons closed.

Air.

Chick darted to the right just in time, and skittered down into cover.

As quickly as it had begun, the turkeys were gone. Eagle was alone, standing in the road.

Just then, he noticed my presence. He looked out of the corner of his eye at me and I could almost hear him say, "Shucks." With a resigned sigh he looked aloft, and with one powerful stroke of his wings, he launched off the ground, two, three, four and he was a hundred feet in the air, where another Eagle was circling. A piercing scream lit the sky.

The nervous chatter of the mommy and daddy Turkeys could be heard from the shade of the thicket for some time. I imagined little chick huddling in there with them, smiling proudly, replaying her lightning escape.

To think of the stories she'll tell her little chickies someday.

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta

8/3/18 - Week 9 - Joshua Harris: The Corn of Life and Death

There is the practical side of farming; there is the goofy side; and then their is the sacred side...

This week, we have a beautiful entry from CSA member Joshua Harris, about a very special friend growing in the back of East Field.

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Last-last Thursday morning, in the mist amongst the many green growing beings enjoying their morning drink from the arcing sprinklers, the fertile soil and eager earthworms of our beloved community farm, we welcomed a special new occupant.

Lovingly known as Concha, these blue-and-white corn seeds are storied to be descendants of an ancient, sacred variety of corn known to the Tzutujil Maya of Guatemala as "Birth and Death" corn.

According to Martín Prechtel, who carried the seeds from the village of Santiago Atitlan in Guatemala to the US, the descendants of this corn were stored carefully in the rooves of villager's homes where they were retrieved and prayed with during the namings of babies as well as ceremonies for the recently departed.

The Tzutujil Maya Corn of Birth and Death growing in the East field

For me personally, Concha has been a vegetal midwife into a kind of rebirth of my own. The process of planting and replanting her, and of learning to love her as a wise and mysterious being in her own right, has helped me to move from a lifetime of anxiety and depression into a life increasingly filled with friendship, peace, and connection here near Occidental.

I received these seeds from Martín while attending Bolad's Kitchen, his school in New Mexico. One morning as I was sharing the story of these remarkable seeds with David, he kindly offered to set aside some space for her to grow at Green Valley. She is now happily nestled close to the life-giving driplines, getting to know her new neighbors: the beautiful Painted Mountain corn which you all have been so carefully saving.

When Martín placed them in my hands and the hands of my fellow students, he instructed us that we were to grow them only to feed our families. Over the past months, I've come to see David, Kayta, Anna, and all of you - even those of you I haven't yet met - as family. After all, we now share many of the same relatives: the radishes, peppers, berries, lettuce (and occasional dirt clod) of Green Valley!

And so, I pray that Concha's most recent incarnation grows healthy and hearty, so that I might grind some of her seeds into delicious flour which I can share with all of you, my new family, and that you may all be woven into the fabric of her story!

In the meantime, I hope that you might visit her and welcome her from your heart in your own way, with a word or a song or simply a tender glance. (I know that she particularly likes songs!)

When Martín placed these seeds in my hands and the hands of my fellow students, he instructed us that they were to be grown only to feed our families -- never to be bought, sold, or traded, and not to be gifted as seeds until we understand them better. It is said that if these agreements are not upheld, Concha will cease to grow for us or for anyone! And so, I also humbly ask for your assistance in keeping these precious seeds sacred.

I hope that the spirit of this ancient corn may guide us all into a deeper experience of the communion and reciprocity which is possible with the generous and mysteriously wise plants who give their lives so that we may live, who remind our bodies how to laugh and cry and dance and sing, and with whom we are so deeply interdependent.

Thank you all for being in my life, and for all together supporting this beautiful farm and its stewards to jump up and live!!

Long life, honey in the heart,

No misfortune, thirteen thank-yous!

-Joshua

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This farm is community supported... and so is the Farmer's Log! If you ever have a story or thought to share in the Farmer's Log send them our way!

See you in the fields,

David & Kayta