Clagett Farm Notes

On the radio

Your tomatoes, sweet potato greens, and your farmer were featured on WETA 90.9 this morning.  WETA's new show, The Intersection, hosted by Rebecca Roberts, had very nice program about eating and growing local food.      

I was hoping that by hearing Ms. Roberts ooh and ah over your sweet potato greens, you, my dear customers, might be more willing to try them.  (Not many Tuesday shareholders seemed as thrilled as I am that they're in your share.)  So if you haven't been inspired to eat the leaves of a sweet potato plant before now, then you should listen to the show!  Click over to the The Intersection website, from which you can listen to any show from their archives (you want the one from July 28, 2006).

 Before the show, it was fun to chat a bit with the Chef of Restaurant Eve, Cathal Armstrong, who is a surprisingly passionate supporter of his farmers.  Now I'm looking for an excuse to invite my husband to dinner there.  Mid-summer celebration, perhaps?  I also have to admit that it was just fun to sit around in an air-conditioned building for a while.  When it's this hot out, I'm easy to please.

A summer Thursday

Yesterday morning a volunteer named Ryan spent a few hours weeding the watermelon field with Kenji. Pigweed, Jimson weed, morning glory and foxtail were the most common plants that were pulled out. It was hot and very humid, so soon both, Ryan and Kenji, were drenched in sweat. Good practice for Ryan, who in September will start his agriculture-related Peace Corps stint in a Francophone African country (he does not yet know which one). While Ryan and Kenji were weeding, Michael Heller and Keith Hudson, a young volunteer who loves farms, were stacking hundreds and hundreds of bales of hay. Hard work.

During lunch we were sitting at the wash station when Kenji saw a large bird. "An eagle!" Kenji exclaimed. Sure enough. A bald eagle! By the time I took a picture the eagle was high up in the air, so please excuse its fuzziness.

Rob quipped that as national symbols are concerned Clagett Farm has it covered. We have wild turkeys, which Benjamin Franklin wanted to designate as the national symbol, and now the bald eagle, the actual winner of this honor, shows up at the farm.

After lunch Janie, a dedicated volunteer, helped Kenji to mix soil for our second seeding of fall brassicas.

The dogs, Tuzeek and Cassie, pretty much took it easy and stayed out of the sun. They know what to do when it's hot.

Baling in the heat

Because of the heat it was a tough week for those of us who work on the vegetable growing side of Clagett Farm. In comparison to those who had to bale hay, though, the veggie team had it easy. Once again, as it happens every year, Michael Heller and Rob Vaughn did most of the baling by themselves. You need at least two people to do the job. One drives the tractor and the other stands on the moving wagon and stacks the bales. If a third person is available, two people stand on the wagon. The one driving the tractor is the one who is "resting", but soon enough it will be this person's turn to stand on the wagon. I remember that a while back an athletic young man with plenty of farming experience was hired to help out with the baling. After a couple of days he refused to be on the wagon. He could not take it. And yet this is what Michael and Rob do every year, several times a year--there are usually three cuttings during the growing season.

To a read a previous post that briefly explains why and how baling is done at the farm, click here. 

Twining tomatoes

Our tomato crop promises to be a good one. Shareholders already got some, but most of it is still to come. The plants are laden with green fruit, so August, once again, will be a great tomato month. To keep up with the growing plants, though, we have to twine them between the stakes. Twining facilitates and increases the tomato harvest. It's quite a chore, though--especially when it's hot and humid.

Below we see Kenji and Patti Wawzyniecki working as a team of twiners. Patti is a leader of a Young Neighbors in Action group that volunteered at Clagett Farm during this week of challenging weather.

And here is Stefan Wawzyniecki, the other leader of this hard working group, young members of St. Bartholomew's Parish in Vermont, Connecticut. They came to the DC area for a week of service work. Not exactly a relaxing vacation for them, but we were certainly impressed and grateful for all their good help.

Joe and Gail after several hours in the tomato field.

After much sweating, pulling and straining Kenji and Patti stop work to get a well deserved lunch break.

Code Red Harvesting

The radio and the papers urged folks to stay indoors on Tuesday, a Code Red day. But Tuesdays are our busiest harvest days and there is no choice for us. We were very impressed, though, by those who did have a choice and still came to the farm to pitch in. Connecticut volunteers from Young Neighbors in Action harvested close to 500 lbs of tomatoes. Other volunteers and worksharers helped us harvest over 700 lbs of summer squash and cucumbers. And that's not all they did, but I'll stop here to show some photos.

Harvesting summer squash. Susan Minor, shareholder and volunteer, is in the foreground.

Worksharer Laurie Martin between the summer squash and the sunflowers.

Tricia McCauley, a veteran worksharer, carrying a bin of cucumbers she just harvested.

Tomato tease

A hot and humid week. Summer. Among other things, the shares now have plenty of summer squash in several varieties and the tomatoes are making a modest appearance. As veteran shareholders know, the first tomato shares are only a teaser. In the coming weeks it will increase dramatically.

A few scenes from Tuesday.

Carrie figuring out the share.

Cleaning garlic at the wash station.

Some of our tomatoes.

Our farm family just became a little smaller

One of our dear and long-time CSA members, Marissa Irwin, just passed away.  She and her husband, Hans Verolme, have been members since they moved to the area eight years ago, and have become the type of old friends offering deep support and encouragement that makes our jobs so much more fulfilling.  With Marissa gone, and Kolya leaving, who will convince us to grow so much arugula?

Marissa died of ovarian cancer at the young age of forty.  She was a conservation biologist, and an activist and supporter for other women with cancer.  We're so glad to have known her. 

Pulling garlic

Today we harvested about 40 percent of our garlic. We started pulling garlic from the ground about two weeks earlier than last year. From every harvest there is always some garlic that does not make the grade, but this year the proportion may be somewhat higher. The garlic that did pass muster, though, looks quite good. Red Rocambole and Killerney are two of the varieties we pulled out today. For the curious, we only grow hard neck varieties.

It seems that this year there is a higher proportion of small bulbs (blame it on the dry spring). Do not despair: there is plenty of garlic for everyone and you will definitely get a number of good-sized bulbs.

Today's garlic is now curing in the loft of one of our barns. The timing was perfect: a very welcome rainstorm, with enough lightning and thunder to terrify the dogs, hit us just as we were getting ready to leave the field.

As old shareholders know, first we will be giving you fresh garlic and a few weeks later you will start receiving cured garlic.

We didn't have a camera today, but you can see pictures of last year's garlic harvest by clicking here.

Harvesting peas

It's time for sugar snap and snow peas. What you see below are a few sugar snap peas right before harvesting.
 
If you see fresh peas at a farmers market you will notice that they are not cheap. If you harvest them you will realize why. It is a labor intensive endeavor and it takes a while to accumulate a significant amount of peas.

The scene above is from yesterday, when we were harvesting sugar snaps for the Tuesday share. And below we see Carrie checking out the condition of recently seeded rows right next to the trellised peas.

Mulching tomatoes

To mulch our two tomato fields was one of the jobs this week. We primarily relied on our bale chopper. Using the chopper is a two person job. One person feeds straw (grown right here at Clagett Farm) to the chopper and the other holds the hose blowing the chopped straw onto the field. Below you can see Dave manning the hose and Joe feeding the chopper. 

A closer view of Joe feeding the chopper:

And of Dave manning the hose:

Yesterday (Friday) we thought we would be able to finish, but around 4:00 PM high winds and a quick moving thunderstorm made us run for cover before the job was done. While running under the rain, I suddenly found myself hat-less: a gust of wind blew it away. This morning I found my dear hat lying wet and lonely in the potato field. Although today was dry and sunny  (the thunderstorm, alas, didn't dump as much water as we had hoped), it was windy: not a good day for the bale chopper. Nevertheless, thanks to the help of several hard working worksharers the tomato fields are now mulched. They finished the job by hand.