Can you feel it? Fall is in the misty morning air this week.
IN THE FLOWERS
This Week’s Flower Challenge: We just can’t get enough of dried flowers. This week’s challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to make a garlic braid filled to the brim with color from the garden. Garlic braids are quite simple to make (check out this tutorial if you’d like a little guidance) and adding dried flowers turns them into a swoon-worthy gift.
Start by making a collection of drying flowers in the garden. Consider your color scheme: all yellows, all pinks, a funfetti free for all, or a rainbow working from top to bottom? Want your braid to turn into a full-fledged bouquet at the top? Awesome. Then assemble your supplies. We’ll be selling cleaned garlic with its tops intact for a slightly reduced price in the barn right next to our usual, ready-for-use garlic. You’ll want a little bit of biodegradable jute twine, or, if you’re feeling brave, long stringy weeds for tying your braid at the beginning and end (fun fact: the arrangement on the left below is held together by dead bindweed). Then go to town! We find garlic braid making to be a wonderful group activity. Have a party and send everyone home with their very own garlic braid!
On the left: a bouquet for drying in a color-scheme we can get over. On the right: a garlic braid featuring Celosia, Gomphrena, Statice and Strawflower.
IN THE HERBS
Oregano, Marjoram, Thyme, Chives & Garlic Chives, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Tulsi Basil, Purple & Green & Bi-color Shiso (aka Perilla), Mints, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Cilantro Flowers, Dill Flowers, Anise Hyssop, Sage, Tarragon, and Vietnamese Cilantro, Culinary Sage, Sorrel, Husk Cherries, Lemongrass.
Herb Spotlight: Have you noticed the lush green grass sprouting between the lemon balm and the garlic chives? If you did you could be forgiven for thinking it was a weed. But all this season it’s been secretly transforming sunlight into fragrant green stalks of Lemongrass! And now the moment has come to harvest it. To harvest, cut or snap off a thick stalk at its base like in the picture below. If you’re unfamiliar with lemongrass, check out this helpful primer on cooking with it that includes links to several Thai and Vietnamese recipes. After using the thick, more tender base, the tops can be made into a delicious tea.
FAQ
When does the CSA end? Exact dates are TBD, depending on the weather. The flower and herb garden will starting winding down in October and we’ll put her to bed in November. But expect some good blooms all the way til then. The strawberries will usually wrap up a little earlier, producing through the end of September.
If I go away can a friend use my share? Yes! If you’ll be out of town or unable to come pick strawbs and flowers, feel free to send a friend or relative in your stead. Please verbally orient them as to the directions and how things work as we are not always around.
FARMER’S LOG
Work Song Part II - A Vision (Epilogue)
by Wendell Berry
If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it…
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
there, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides…
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it…
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields…
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom
and indwelling light.
This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.
————
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
