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!
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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

6/15/18 - Week 2 - Seed Saving as a Community

A simple, beautiful thing happened on the farm this past week.

Members brought corn seeds that they had saved in their homes over the winter back to the farm to be planted.

In doing so, they performed perhaps the most vital agricultural act, saving seed. This act, in ways that are as practical as they are divine, connected us to each other; connected our kitchens and homes to the Earth; and connected us to time and to ancient ancestors and distant descendants.

“Whoa, dude, get a grip… We just saved some of those corn cobs on our dresser.”

Precisely!

So the story goes...

There once was a man in Montana looking for a flour corn suited to the short, tumultuous summers. He reached out to friends, who reached out to their friends, and he gathered as many heirloom corn varieties as he could. He was given seeds from the Intermountain West and the Dakotas; seeds from the Desert South and the Deep South; seeds from the East, and the West; seeds from Native Americans, from European homesteaders, and from African American farmers. Then, one Spring he planted them out in the same field together and let them cross, and that Fall, he harvested. He chose the ears that he liked best — the ones that were beautiful; the ones that produced a lot of seed; the ones that had a hard, protective shell; and the ones that gave sweet flour -- and he saved them. He planted those out the next Spring and so on and so forth.

After many years, this corn became known as Painted Mountain: A gorgeous, multi-colored, hearty, early flint heirloom that contains within each kernel, in a very real way, an immense genetic diversity and history; genes baring the mark of numerous peoples and cultures selecting for their needs, their desires, their histories, their stories, and their lands. These genes bare the history of people who lived and died by their corn, who were reared on it and fed their children the same corn their great-great grandmothers saved.

Kayta and I planted some Painted Mountain seeds in our East Field last spring next to the Jack-O-Lanterns. They didn’t all do well. Some didn’t thrive. Some were cut down by wire worms. But some grew strong.

Some of you may remember the hot September day we harvested that patch, eating bagels and cream cheese under the willow, and marveling at the explosions of color behind each husk.

We brought the harvested ears into our greenhouses to dry, and a few weeks later we threshed them and milled the kernels into flour at Tierra Vegetables. Then came the best part… We made pancakes and breads and cakes. And for a brief moment, our bodies and our thoughts were made of Painted Mountain Corn.

But some ears we didn’t thresh or mill. Some were so beautiful that they took our breath away. The wine-dark red ones, the impossibly orange, the muted pastel mosaics of greens, purples, and blues. These, we kept, and took home and to adorn our kitchens, our mantles, and our dusty dresser drawers.

When we chose ones we liked, that simple act of affection and appreciation for beauty, we did it without even knowing it… we performed the most ancient, important agricultural act. We selected for plants that did well that summer, in this soil, in this climate, on this farm.

Over the winter, those seeds we protected in our homes. They listened to the winter rains patter on our roofs and to the laughter, the tears, and songs in the house. And then we brought them back to the farm to plant.

It strikes us that in this simple moment of seed saving, perhaps we became what our name aspires to: We became a community farm.

A bold statement -- but nothing could be truer. In taking a small step toward adapting this powerful, sacred staple food crop to this land, we simultaneously honored all that went into those seeds before they came here... and a settled future. We chose interdependence to this place, to this seed, and to each other.

Thanks for being a part of this farm community!

Well how’s that for a sappy Farmer’s Log? Next week, we’ll have to write about tractor maintenance or something!

See you in the fields,

David and Kayta