Autumn Applesauce with Friends

My exploring sack full of green apples.

When we searched for a homestead, we had an uncommon list of attributes we were looking for in a property:  good schools, a south-facing hillside, some woods, bramble berries, open space for a large garden, and an apple tree or room to plant some apple trees.  Oh yeah, and a place where we could live  - an old house, a trailer, some sort of dwelling we could abide in while we built our solar home.  A place we could tear down after we moved into our new house.  The land came first.  When we found Hawk's Hill, I was blown away by the amount of apple trees -- old, needing a good pruning, but in good health and still producing.  Our upper orchard, with trees from way back in the day (1960s/70s?) produces red and green fall apples. The lower orchard was planted by old Zeke in the late 80's/early 1990s, and has green early fall apples.  Unless we have a terribly frosty spring, we usually have some apples for sauce.


Friday dawned a gorgeous September day, and we celebrated the harvest season with my friend Cheryl and her 7 year-old son, Caleb, by picking green apples for applesauce from our lower orchard.  Last spring's frosts had killed a number of the plentiful apple blossoms, leaving just the king fruit to grow fat and healthy.  The green globes we plucked, and that rained down from the tree when Caleb climbed up and shook branches for us, were crisp, juicy, and remarkably free of blemishes considering they had not been sprayed.  Tasting mildly sweet with a bite of tartness, they served the need for applesauce.

 

I scrounged in the barn for the metal basket apple picker with plucking tines a friend had kindly given us, and David attached it to a telescoping aluminum painters' pole.  Now we could reach the really massive fruits at the top of the tree!  Caleb, Cheryl and I each took turns craning our necks back, standing on the garden cart, squinting at the sun and fishing the long-poled tool clumsily around clusters of apples until we managed to scoop one or two into the basket, then lift up to snag the apples, as if setting the hook in the fish's mouth, and then pulled back to pluck them from their boughs.  We had a pretty good success rate, and cheered every time the pole swung back down like a massive crane and dumped its goods into waiting hands.  Caleb would look at each big apple, rotating it in his hands and prizing it up, then say,"This one says Cheryl on it."  or "This one has Betsy's name on it."  and dole out his prize.  We ate our fill of fresh apples, juice dribbling down our chins, and we chucked the cores for Max the dog to chase, retrieve and eat.

     The splendid September day melted away as we hauled our bushel and a half of apples back up to Soulstice, scrubbed, chopped, cooked and processed them through Cheryl's Victorio Strainer.  The mushy, seedy discards got dumped into a bucket and delivered to the chickens, who delightedly gobbled them up.  The pureed apples, we returned to the big sauce pots, and added brown sugar and cinnamon to 2 of the pots.  I rustled around in the pantry and found a jar of maple syrup from last year, and added half of that to the third pot of apple puree, until it reached a perfect sweetness, with just a hint of maple flavor.  It still gives me a tickle to think that the third pot was 100% indigenous.  Even the energy to cook the apples probably came from the solar power generated that lovely, sunny day.

 Three pots of pureed applesauce which had just been apples hanging on a tree hours ago simmered on the stove, and I could feel the bounty of the earth in the food treasure sitting on my stove top.  Imagine a jar of applesauce this winter heated in the microwave, sending its appley scent wafting through the house again as it did when the first pot of apple chunks began to boil.  What made the day melt away so quickly with so much work to be accomplished?  Cheryl's friendship.  Her memories of childhood in her mother's kitchen making apple pies and sauce; talk over the best hand-cranked apple and tomato processing equipment (Victorio Strainers beat Foley Food Mills hands down!); and Cheryl's laughter.  Caleb proudly told us they have set a challenge for themselves to avoid all refined sugar for the mont  They allow themselves local maple syrup and honey. Inspiring.

Cheryl and Caleb took home a bucket of apples that they turned into 16 quarts of sauce and a pie, and David and I jarred up our sauce and canned a dozen quarts for our winter larder.  With each jar, we will relive the memory of the sunny September afternoon spent with our friends as we eat it.

Here's hoping you find a forgotten apple tree this week, whose fruit you can retrieve for really good applesauce  -- or tart apples from a local farm market -- for an old-fashioned taste of autumn.

Happy First Day of Autumn!
Betsy

The Indigenous Day Report

Clover & Catnip tea with lavender

My day of indigenous eating has been going well.  After breakfast, I made herbal tea with red clover blossoms, catnip sprigs and a stalk of lavender -- all herbs growing just outside my kitchen doorstep --which yielded a refreshingly minty tea to sip while snacking on juicy sweet Poona Kheera cucumbers.

Poona Kheera cucumbers

When I set the challenge for myself, I had forgotten the sourdough bread dough I had made yesterday and left to rise for a baking today.  I have been cultivating the wild starter for over a week -- from nothing more than water, and whole wheat flour.  I fed it daily, adding water and flour, and when we had mashed potatoes for dinner, I used the leftover potato water to help supercharge the yeast.  I had to taste a slice right out of the oven -- sooo sour, but with a soft, moist crumb and a hard, crunchy crust.  A taste I enjoyed in my lunchtime hunger.  My husband and daughter gamely tried the bread, but opted for less sour tasting cloverleaf rolls for their bread.  The dog loved the hunks the rest of the family tasted and couldn't finish!

The yeast and potato water are all from Hawk's Hill, and the butter I put on the bread is at least local! The rich sourdoughy taste fills in remarkably for cheese and junk food at the same time.  It was a guilty pleasure today to sneak back into the kitchen and nibble another slice and a half of the cooled, cheesy-flavored bread.

 For lunch I made a quick soup from chopped potatoes cooked in tomato juice.  When the potatoes were done, I added a quart of zucchini and yellow squashes, sauteed with onion slices and rosemary in olive oil, leftover from dinner a few nights ago.  The tomato juice, squashes and onions added a delectable sweetness, and the potatoes stuck to my ribs until dinner.  My True Love even filled a bowl and joined me at the picnic table to lunch in the fresh autumn air.

Dinner:

These were the materials on hand for dinner:

So ratatouille was clearly called for.  I sauteed up some onions and garlic, then added the peppers you see in the bowl above, then the tomatoes, a medium-sized zucchini, chopped, and finally, the 3 little eggplants, chopped.  Simmered with basil, salt and pepper, the classic French stew was delicious and rich without a hint of bitterness at all.  

Finished ratatouille

I snuck one more slice of sourdough bread -- couldn't keep out of it, and it gave me a feeling of eating something more substantial than just veggies.  So good.  Topped it all off with a slice of cantaloupe melon.  Yum.  I feel stuffed full of good food, without any desire for dessert.  

Not a bad day of eating.  And, I used up some of the produce that has crowded my kitchen counter for days.  It was also a super cheap day of eating, as the only foods that had to be purchased at the store included whole wheat flour, some olive oil, 4 tea bags, and a smidge of salt and pepper.  I ate for less than a dollar, and I've got loads of leftovers for tomorrow.  Thanks, garden!

By focusing my attention on the foods that have come from Hawk's Hill and not on whatever my whim of the moment was, I also ended up only eating very healthy foods.  Not a gram of refined sugar, nary a bit of white flour, and no preservatives or additives went down the hatch with my body fuel today.  I feel close to the earth, grateful for the work of the plants that are feeding me, and like I know what that keen look in a chickadee's eye means --we are both alive and alert on this big green earth.  You could live like this.

Thanks to you for following my adventure!

Betsy

The Indigenous Food Game

Today I set a playful challenge for myself.  Really an exercise in gratitude and immersion in the gifts rolling from Hawk's Hill.  Today, I pledge to only eat food grown on my property.  I've just finished breakfast, and looking at my plate as I took the last few bites, I realized that it had all been home-grown:  2 fresh fried hens eggs with leftover sauteed pak choi greens and onions from last night's dinner.  And a pot of black tea.

Of course the black tea was grown in India (though the water came from my well).  But, I have a caffeine addiction and a love of a good pot of hot tea that I don't plan on laying down any time soon. So, I will give myself the caveat of tea, and seasonings like the soy sauce, olive oil, and salt and pepper in my breakfast that came from the store.  Also, of course, the Bob White brand layer crumbles  that supplement our flock's diet of pasture grasses and bugs came from the feed and seed.  A local company, Bob White Feed probably gets its corn and soybeans from farmers within about 50 miles, so at least the hens' feed is local.  Fine for the hens.  But for myself, today, my experience will be of only Hawk's Hill grown foods. Just for the fall harvest thrill of it.

With the first day of fall just a little over a week away, now is the best time of year to play with homegrown food.  Ancient people called the Fall Equinox by the name Mabon, and celebrated it as the second harvest of the year-- the first being the Summer Solstice, and the time of year when carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, peas, and spring greens began to come in from the fields.  On Hawk's Hill, I celebrate this time of year as the season of what I call accidental food:  I go out for a walk around the farm, just to walk, and discover fresh red raspberries to munch on, the first ripe fall apples dropped on the ground, a zucchini that we missed in the rush of picking for market, or when at work in the garden, a potato gleaned while pulling weeds from around young kale (sowed after the Red Gold potato crop), more sweet corn that needs to be eaten before it goes too starchy and dry, and the first butternut squashes (they seem early this year).

Waltham butternut squash and Blacktail Mountain watermelons from our garden

So let the celebration of the harvest begin this overcast, cool autumnal day.  Instead of crackers, it will be cucumbers when I want a crunchy snack.  Instead of a cheese and tomato sandwich, it will be leftover sauteed zucchini.  Perhaps I'll defrost a chicken for tonight's dinner.  Or make tomato-vegetable soup with all the leftovers in the fridge.

Poona Kheera Cukes fresh from the garden

I promise to report back with pictures of the day's experience.

May you feel the earth's bounty keenly today, whether at a farmer's market, driving past agricultural fields, visiting an orchard, receiving a baseball bat sized zucchini from your neighbor, or in your own back yard garden.

Happy Autumn!
Betsy

Hay Day

5July14, 9 pm

The sun is nearly set, darkness creeps into the sky, filling the once-azure canopy with midnight blue, the deepest sapphire, and I am standing in the kitchen in dusty jeans and a floury apron, the savory smell of homemade pizza wafting from the oven next to me.  Waiting for the haying crew to come in thirsty, dusty, tired, and hungry, I brew mango iced tea, shape breadsticks, and lay out enamelware plates and cloth napkins for our pending dinner.  Out beyond the wide screen door, the sound of a tractor humming a quarter mile away, makes me feel closer to my cattle-raising neighbors as they race the setting sun, too, squeezing the last bit of haymaking light from the day.

In our field, David and the girls fork stacks of dry grass into a wagon David fashioned from an old flat-bed trailer, its new wooden sides glowing in the last of the daylight. I hear the tractor purring as it passes by the house, hauling in another load of hay to be pitchforked into the waiting bay of the barn. The hay stacks in the failing light have the look of a Vincent Vang Gogh painting, romantic and natural.  We could very well be making hay with a team of horses as a tractor, and so my mind elects to imagine the humming diesel engine as a pair of Morgan horses tugging at their load.

The air has the thrill of Halloween or Thanksgiving, the sense of a playful holiday, but one celebrating gathering in as much as you can from the good earth.  We started the day at 5 am, picking Haricots Vert for our Saturday market in Beaver.  Racing the clock, I pulled onions & beets, plucked chard leaves & basil, before joining David and the girls picking beans, beans, beans.  At the last minute, 7:30 am, David took the picked produce up the hill to Soulstice, where he washed four bushels of bush beans, and two bushels of beets, before loading box after box of organic produce into the big red F-150 pickup.  The girls and I stole the last few minutes gathering up all of the tender purple French beans we could before towing the last half bushel of them up for similar treatment.  Changed out of our wet, muddy clothes. Stuffed cheese and bread in a cooler.  Filled water bottles.  Grabbed ballcaps and workgloves.  Into the loaded truck and away we went, where we sold all but a half bushel of the beans, all but a few bunches of beets and onions.  Where we shared recipes with customers.  Where we chatted about dogs, kids, planting times, where we saw familiar faces, and enjoyed the spectacularly gorgeous day.

This time of year, the earth provides so many harvests, so much food, hay, sunshine, & market conversations. Part of the trick of summer is trying to pause in my haste, to gather in the harvest of sensations, to thank God for my place in the year and the goodness around me.  Right now, I feel like I have an embarrassment of riches-- all the family working on the farm, a flood of food coming in from the garden, and the beauty of the nature in summer.  To all of this I can only say, "Thank you, God."

Wishing you a life awash in summer's riches,
 Betsy

 

Thanks for the market photos goes to blogger Rose Marie Kendall.  See her blog at 

http://localfarms-localfoods.blogspot.com/

Planting Days

25Apr14

Yesterday was another first of spring -- first dusty, dirty dragging in tired after planting day.  First day of thighs feeling tight and weak after towing a garden cart laden with a heavy roll of plastic mulch up Hawk’s Hill.  The first day you’ve pushed yourself to do everything you possibly can in a day.  We ate sweet & sour cabbage, noodles and tofu for dinner, our jeans dirty & dusty, our cheeks ruddy, our eyes bearing the soft darkness of fatigue, yet glowing with the joy of the work accomplished.  We celebrated the return home from college of our beloved Sarah, the joy of reunion and the delight of sharing stories of conquests from Sarah’s writing award and exams completed, to David’s reawakening of an ancient computer, its retro games reinvigorating memories of our children’s childhoods.

On my knees in the garden this morning, poking holes in black plastic, and setting onion starts into the soil, I let the song of the Mockingbird wash over me, the cheeky warble of the Rufous-Sided Towhee echoing from the fencerow treetops enliven me.  Grounded, racing the coming rain, I poked the plastic with a tool my friend Steven made for me from a stick (works great).  A poke into the plastic breaks open a hole in the mulch and down into the soft earth just right for a little transplant to fit into.

Sweet Candy, Walla Walla and magenta Red Zeppelin onion starts tucked into the good earth, spreading down the rows like a tide of new life, standing tall as dancers in a line.  The hissing of soaker hoses beneath the plastic rang like the song of celebration.  Knowing the onions’ torpid roots were just now reawakening, just now reaching out to the life-giving water, just now stretching towards fruitfulness, I pictured them in months to come, rounded and fat, with their tall flags of greens standing up, or bundled in threes for the market table.

Sowing -- whether plants or seeds -- has a magical quality, the beginning of new life after the stillness of winter.  The work is intense, knotting muscles in shoulders and back, but delighting my soul and body and mind.  Pausing as  I plant, I look to the treeline, to witness 3 male Blue Jays courting a female, to spy the bursting changes in the tree canopy if not hour to hour, at least within the span of the day, to witness every shade of spring, the subtle changing-of-the-guard from early spring woodcocks’ crazy crepuscular whistling flight to Cardinals and Robins and Mockingbirds, to the new activity of the Blue Jays.  Nature’s ceaseless show requires only observation for admittance.

My basket of onion starts emptied as the first drops of rain spattered the plastic.  I stood, dusted my hands off on my jeans and, pressing palms together in my prayer of Namaste, I bowed to my new starts, thanking God for the privilege of planting, for the gift of the soil and the balm of nature, and asking blessings on the growing plants.  Rain drops plonking on my head, I tucked away my stick tool in the garden shed, and toted my basket up to the house for lunch and more conversation with my beloveds.

Rain pattered away all afternoon, and after I cleaned the chicken coop, filling it with fresh, dry oak leaves, topping off the feeder, and tucking a fresh egg in my flannel shirt pocket, I found myself with an hour to kill before dinner preparation.  

Spring invites new beginnings.  The press of planting season is on in the sunshine, but the wise farmer knows to never walk on wet soil, or the result will be compacted concrete-like earth.  Planting in the rain is out of the question.  

I meandered over to a collection of massive flat stones in the pasture that David had mentioned at lunchtime.  The spring grass and raspberry canes were beginning to climb over the 2’ x 3’ x 1’ chunks of rock, and we knew if we didn’t haul them out soon, they would be camouflaged by rampant weed growth until November’s frosts revealed the earth’s bones again.  Rain sprinkled and pattered as my true love and I sized up our prizes.  They would fit nicely around my new water garden, Stonehenge-like shoulders to bound the trickling pool.  We dispatched ourselves -- David to start the tractor, and me to clear space around the water garden where the stones would set.

The rain began to patter down harder as I set the “Monster Strap” around the first slab of rock, and David eased the tractor forward.  The wet grass slipped right under the stone hunk, and the tractor pulled the monolith along with the ease of a child’s string toy.  The cold droplets of rain tingled on our skin and plastered our hair down to our heads.  

David towed each of the rocks into place, and found one more down in the brush near our granddaddy Sugar Maple.  Clambering in among rosebushes and sapling ashes, I hooked the strap to the wet rock and David pulled it free with the old Kubota.  Then, with the blade on the tractor, David pushed the stones into place, and I dropped some perennials I had dug from around our old trailer into the spaces between the thick rocks.  Now the water garden began to take shape.  We stood back sopping wet to admire our creation as cold spring rain dripped down from a stone-colored sky.

The tractor parked and silent, the only sound that remained was that of rain drops and the burbling water garden. As we walked back to the house from the barn, headed to a hot shower, I got the first thrill of walking up on the pool of musical water hidden behind massive stones. The sound reached my ears before my eye caught a glimpse of the secret that lies beyond the rocks and plants.  Somehow, the knowledge that a secret, sunken garden awaits visitors to Soulstice’s front porch just tickles my fancy.

May your fancy be tickled!
Betsy

Rock Bottom to the Pinnacle:

Unearthing a Purple Fortune

Snowdiculous is what my beloved called Tuesday's Tax Day snowstorm.  Just Monday, I was planting beets, turnips and carrots in the garden in Daisy Duke shorts, and praying for rain.  Got it.  Plus a little snow.  That does look ridiculous on the green grass and at the hem of the neighbor's woods just now tinged with the green hues of opening leaf buds.  Every flat of plants -- broccoli to leeks, pak choi, peppers and tomatoes -- is crowding the plant stand and spilling over onto the floor nearby, waiting out the cold temperatures and the interruption of planting season.

My fig tree reinvigorated.

Plant traffic jam

The spring snow reminds me of our first full week of dwelling on the farm.  We had come for a visit on Easter break ahead our moving date in June.  We arrived on the farm on a warming trend.  The girls, David and I spilled out onto the land, David and the girls building a tree-house in the granddaddy sugar maple tree while I pruned the grape arbor and took my first turn at gardening.  I remember the popsicles the girls sucked on that hot Tuesday afternoon, watching thunderclouds build and sail over the farm.  The mountainous clouds marked a front bringing a curtain of cold air and snow the next day, weather so like what we are experiencing today.  I laugh at the stuff I didn't know back then.

When we took possession of the farm the previous autumn, we used the new keys to open the locked rooms of the barn, finding yellowed cattle vaccination charts, ancient coffee cans heavy with sharp roofing nails, and sturdy tools hanging on nails in the wall or propped upright.  I had fingered through the pitchforks and rock rakes in the barn, finding familiar implements --a sledgehammer, a hatchet, a spade, a flat-bottomed shovel -- along with old metal tools with worn wooden handles I had never used -- a hay hook, calf castrating equipment and a pick axe.  What the heck was a  pick axe doing in this lush haven?  But wait, there was another pick axe.  Why two? 

My first day in the garden, I had a sinking realization of why the pick axes rested dusty in the old barn tool room.  Breaking up soil clods that David had turned over with a potato plow, I spaded the chunks into a finer-grained substrate to plant lettuce, spinach and purple potatoes in.  As I worked my way energetically down the first row of the bed, I hopped on my spade, putting all of my weight through my tennis-shoed foot on the curled metal top of the blade.  A few feet in, my spade smacked into a solid rock with a dull "chunk!"  Used to sinking into the soil, I lost my balance and tipped over. No problem.  I scootched my spade over a few inches and tried again.  Chunk!  Hmmm.  I scootched over a foot.  Chunk!  Another foot over.  Chunk! Oh *$#@! My heart raced as I fretted that the entire garden was nothing but bedrock with a thin soil frosting!  

Just then, David walked by, and pointed out places in the garden where the plow had sunk so deep, it made the tractor tires spin, saying what a shame it was that I had picked the one place in the garden that had a rock under it to start my work.  I was overreacting to a rock.  I continued at a mellower pace.  When I got done with my archaeological unearthing, I had revealed a 5' by 3' slab of rock that I could not move.  A first experience for me and a valuable start in my lessons in humility. 

I laughed Sunday, just thinking of those pick axes, and that mammoth rock, for I dug a 2' by 3' hole only a foot or so deep off the north porch of the house to set a water garden in.  I had planned to scoop the organic soil around the sides of the plastic mortar pan, and use the soil hummocks to plant flowers and hostas in.  Nope.  As I sunk my spade in for the first bite of soil, I found the thinnest veneer of organic soil clutched tightly by a mat of grass roots, and beneath that, chunks of gravel- to cobble- to stepping-stone-sized rocks.  I peeled back the sod, saving it to patch a dip in the yard, and hucked the little stones to the driveway.  The stepping stones serve nicely around the water garden.  Luckily, I didn't need a pick axe. 

Stones and water create an oasis.

Sunday evening, David and I sat on the porch and admired the beauty of moving water in the little water garden as the sun set on a gorgeous spring day.  A ring of stepping stones stood out amid the dark compost I hauled from the compost pile and poured around the pond to plant into.  The water burbled musically, and I could imagine the shasta daisies, blanket flowers and foxgloves I seeded in flats last week nodding on a summer breeze as David and I shared lunch in our favorite summertime lunch spot.  

I never know what lies under the soil -- smooth digging or chunky rocks-- but I find there is always something useful -- stepping stones, lessons in humility, even just driveway gravel -- if I can step back, regain faith and try again.  When we persevere, we win.  

That immovable rock remains majestically resting just where I found it, where the eons will find it when I am long gone.  Even the tractor couldn't budge it.  We unearthed another rock similar to it in a nearby bed.  And David hauled that giant rock out of the garden with the tractor and towed it to the greenhouse where it forms a solid stone stoop that catches the sun's warmth.  (That's what those big chains in the barn were for!) 

We have found other similarly massive monoliths in our digging on Hawk's Hill.  We now have a collection along the driveway that we hope to use for sidewalk stones, as pieces of rock walls, as stone bench sets.  I might just use one as a mammoth stepping stone around my new water garden.  Do you know how much money it would cost me to buy a rock that big?  A purple fortune!  Who knew my spade was biting into a purple fortune that day I was so hot under the collar with my haughty approach to a country problem.  

May the chunky part of your day turn over a purple fortune in treasure.
Betsy

Wishing all of you who celebrate it a blessed Easter.

Spring Tonic

We have survived the ocean of winter to wash up on the shore of springtime, where we find ourselves in the land of firsts.  The first robin of spring arrived before the first green grass day, as did the first Red-Winged Blackbird.  March 30th brought the first chorus of Spring Peepers down in the valley.  Later in the week, the first meadowlark call (April 6th) arrived a day before we walked down to the bus stop to witness the first daffodil blooming in the woods.  After a steady diet of gray skies and snow, each day seems to bring new unfurlings of flowers, buds, and songs.
   

Now that new grass is lushly carpeting the pasture east of the barn, our laying flock celebrated their first day on grass April 9th, bailing out of their gloomy barn home to stop and snip tender grass shoots at their feet.  Some years, it takes the girls a little while to warm up to the idea of going outdoors, and I call, "Chooook, chook, chook, chook!" and wait on the other side of the chicken door, anxious to witness their ravenous delight upon finding lush grass and bugs to peck, new ground to scratch and sunshine to bask in.  

Not this year.  The hens and rooster trundled out the little door, and stopped right in front of it, backed up in the closest thing to a George Washington Bridge traffic jam that we have on Hawk's Hill.  The rooster stood alongside his ladies, occasionally encouraging them with a soft, "chook,"  but, he could see that he needn't waste his breath calling to them, for the air was filled with the little sounds of happy chicken growls and that quiet nipping sound of beaks plucking tender grass shoots.  I could just sense the vitamins and phytochemicals coursing through the hens' feathery bodies as they enjoyed their spring tonic. 

Our first spring tonic came just a day before, when I pulled back the Agribon frost blanket to pick spinach and found chickweed thriving right alongside the spinach, so I  mixed some right in with the spinach for our lunch salads.  Later in the week, I made a salad entirely out of chickweed.  The first crunch released the invigorating sensation of childhood freedom on a Saturday morning outdoors.  A few dandelion greens tossed into the mix made it an official spring tonic.  Taraxicum officinale, which loosely translates to "the official cure for what ails you," has been a long-standing spring tonic.  Folks eating the first fresh greens in spring, must have felt like my hens gobbling up grass shoots, feeling the vitamins and antioxidants coursing through their veins in a celebration of new life.  We have found chickweed an effective decongestant for lingering spring colds. 




Yesterday, David pulled long furrows in the tilled garden soil for me to set seed potatoes in.  Cut into chunks the size of hens' eggs, the potatoes got dipped in wood ashes to prevent rotting, and dropped into the furrows about 8 inches apart.  I imagined the shrubby, healthy plants the potatoes would grow into, picturing the bounty of tubers I hoped we would till up in July as I walked down rows with a bucket of cut spuds, dropping each one in place.  I trucked a hundred pounds of seed potatoes down to the garden in my garden cart-- Yukon Golds and Red Pontiacs -- and put most of them in the ground. The rest went into storage in the root cellar David dug into the north side of the hill.  A mockingbird sang a patchwork of other birds' songs as he looked over my work, and my dog flopped in the shade of my cart like he does in the heat of summer, content to be outdoors.  

Later in the day, David and I set up beds for the broccoli and cabbage plants now filling my new plant stand.  We raked alfalfa meal (for nitrogen) into the 3 foot wide beds, pinned soaker hoses down and stretched black plastic mulch over the soil's surface and dug it in by hand with trowels.  On our hands and knees, trowels scooping earth over the edges of the plastic, we talked about politics, the new GAP farming regulations, and my struggle to fit enough plants into the garden to serve our new market in Beaver. 

The gift of the day was the sense of unity I felt with David as we worked our way down 40 foot rows, just talking.  When the sun set on Hawk's Hill, we tucked our tools in the garden shed, gathered up the jackets we had strewn on the ground, and hauled our garden cart laden with a roll of plastic mulch back up to the barn to close up for the night. 

Baby tomato plants grow next to broccoli waiting to be planted.

The plant stand David built me is now full.

Today, I awakened to another first: the morning after my first big planting day in the garden, moving like a sack of wet concrete.  I slogged through the morning, hands rough and calloused from my work yesterday, but soul singing happily at the thought of today's spring rain pattering down on the soil overtop of our Yukon Golds and Red Pontiacs out in the earthwormy garden soil.  The young broccoli and cabbage plants sit outside the house, protected from the wind, acclimating to the brightness and temperatures of the outdoor environment they will soon move to.   

May your day --whether sunny or rainy -- bring you the tonic of spring surprises and joy.
Betsy