of deliberation, contemplating the work to come. The younger barterers arrive with coffee cups in hand; we all agree we’re not officially awake until the caffeine has kicked in and our bodies have adjusted to the sharp morning air. Kneeling next to each other in the cold fields, the conversation doesn’t start until we shake ourselves awake enough to ask, “What’d you do this week? How are the kids? How’s your shoulder/back/ankle?”
Eventually our muscles loosen and the chatter spills across the bed of tiny onions as we squat, plant, and scoot. We discuss roads not taken, our plans for the summer, money worries, and health. And then, because we’re getting close to lunch-time, the talk turns to the vegetables we’re growing and what delicious dishes we’ll make from them. As we warm up to the work, the spring sunshine, and the soil that’s perfect for planting, we’re thrilled to see such a huge job accomplished in a single morning. We’ve planted 8,000 alliums—several varieties each of leeks and onions, each as tiny as a new blade of grass.
A couple Saturdays later, we transplant the next big crop, the brassicas—broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, and kohlrabi. Since these are shorter-season vegetables, we plant fewer brassica starts than alliums, so transplanting goes more quickly, but they need the added step of covering with gauzy row cover to guard them from flea beetles, the garden’s earliest pest. We finish in record time and stand back to survey the fields full of plants we’ll begin to harvest in a few weeks. Now all the transplanting is done until early June when the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil go out to the fields, accompanied by the marigolds that help repel undesirable insects and attract the desirable ones. The Thursday crew has already transplanted the annual herbs—dill, cilantro, parsley, and chervil—that we started in the greenhouse this year to beat the weeds rather than seeding directly into the fields.
On opening day, rain was predicted but the sun rises strong and clear. Picking vegetables on opening day follows the same routine every year. After we stand around a few minutes saying good morning and “Here we go!”, we load bikes and bike trailers for transporting vegetables from the fields to the barn with multi-colored plastic picking baskets called trugs and the tools we’ll need for harvesting: forks for digging Jerusalem artichokes and a pocketed bucket with the horis—Japanese digging tools—and clippers.
We start the morning by observing the owl twins and their mom, who has flown off into the trees across the field, perhaps to lead us off the trail from the babies. Then we dig green garlic bulbs that have “volunteered” by planting themselves in last fall’s garden and pick spinach, taking the biggest leaves from the fall-planted bed. Picking spinach elicits our yearly debate: should it be picked quickly, pulling the leaves by the handful, or slowly and deliberately, picking each leaf individually? As always, we say, “Pick it how you’d like to eat it,” so eventually the more discerning manner wins. However it’s picked, all Stonebridge spinach is a delicacy this time of year, sweet, crisp, and very, very green. Spinach is the reason we start our season earlier than other CSAs in our area—it grows well this close to the foothills. Many of our members say they don’t care if we give anything else on opening day. After a long winter, they’re ready for spinach, and lots of it.
As the trugs are filled, the veggies are biked into the barn by the intrepid bikers with a trailer hitched to the back. We used to truck in the produce, but, years ago, decided bicycles were safer and more ecological for trips between field and barn, and the vegetables stay fresher because they’re transported more quickly. Sometimes, though, we get a little ambitious about how much a trailer can hold. You can always tell when a rider has taken the corner on the downhill side of the bridge too quickly from the spinach left in the middle of the road. Walking back to check on the progress in the barn, I follow a Hansel and Gretel trail of spinach leaves, gathering as I go. Spring spinach is so sweet and delicious, I hate to waste a single leaf.
After we finish harvesting the spinach, we dig the walking onions, pungent enough to scent the whole barn, and all the Jerusalem artichokes we can find. We like them sliced and fried in olive oil with a touch of butter, like the “fresh-fried” potatoes my mom makes, a special treat because they demand constant attention to brown without burning. One of our first shared Stonebridge recipes was Jerusalem Artichoke Soup, a response to our members asking, “What do we do with this?” It’s still an early spring favorite among our longest-standing members.
We finish up the pick with rhubarb, harvesting the red stems and slicing off the huge leaves, which shouldn’t be eaten because they contain toxins. This year the crop is a little sparse, but we give enough for a small rhubarb crisp and we’ll pick more in a couple weeks. Maybe the cold, dry winter affected the size and quantity of the rhubarb. Who knows? What we do know is that the same conditions aren’t favorable for every crop. If the spring is cool and long, the broccoli will be happy, but the tomatoes and peppers will be transplanted late. If the spring is short and hot, we can transplant those crops earlier, but the fall-planted spinach will go to seed not long after the season begins. Today we are giving beautiful spinach, walking onions, Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, and gourds we dried over the winter. Most years, radishes, lettuce, and Asian greens join the list; with this year’s cool spring, they’re on their way. In just two weeks, we’ll give twice that variety of vegetables, and by August, three times that again, but for this first pick, the real share is a welcome to another season at Stonebridge.
By ten o’clock, we shed our sweatshirts and are soon down to our shirtsleeves. With the pick biked in for our barn boss, Eva, to count, weigh, and arrange in the barn, we weed the strawberries and the rose garden until it is time to meet the new members at eleven o’clock by the barn. John gives his annual safety talk: be careful near the ditches, stay with your children at all times, don’t play on the equipment, watch for “leaves of three, let them be” poison ivy. Following his talk, I lead the tour to familiarize new members with the fields and the layout of the farm. As we walk out toward the largest field, I don’t intend to mention the new owls because I’m concerned that a large group of people might frighten the mother into abandoning the babies, but someone spots some barterers pointing at the nest in the tree, so the owlets become the stars of the tour after all. I’m secretly glad everyone sees them—how often does anyone get to see twin great-horned owlets that close?—and the owls don’t seem too disturbed at the uninvited attention.
Soon the farm is full of happy people welcoming the first vegetables of the season and revisiting their favorite Stonebridge spots. While I’m chatting with new members, I hear squawking; some young boys have let the chickens out of the coop and I have to shoo them (the chickens, not the boys) back inside. Slippy, our irascible black goat, butts the fence next to a couple children who have been inviting her to play. “That means NO!” exclaims the little girl to her littler brother, interpreting the body language of goats with a giggle. A returning member has brought a friend and their children for a picnic and they share the delicious “friendship bread” she baked. In the barn, Eva helps new members figure out the scales. If the weights aren’t set correctly, one pound of spinach might end up filling a whole bag. “That must be too much,” announces one subscriber. He’s right: the pound weight was set on “one” to start rather than “zero.” Weighing vegetables is a great way to teach kids mathematical skills and some common sense as well. What does a pound of spinach look like? Feel like? Taste like?
Opening day marks a new beginning on the farm, one that enlivens the land with the busyness of many more humans. Once the pick-up season begins on that second Saturday in May, time changes too. Each week is now marked by Saturdays, when the farm bustles with people walking and talking, slowing down their city ways, and noticing the natural world around them. Asking people to walk from the parking area below rather than drive up to the barn doesn’t just increase safety on the driveway and the bridge, but creates a transitional space as they stroll up the gravel drive and cross the irrigation ditch to the barn. That walk is an invitation to enter the natural pace of the farm.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. From the water streaming in the ditches to the grass growing in the meadow and the birds chirping in the trees, nothing on the farm says, “Hurry.” We have to slow down to match nature’s pace. To live and work on the farm, we must come to a different understanding of “accomplishment,” one not measured by our résumés or awards or bank accounts, but by how well we