Valley Mama

Rain

I never get tired of the smell of rain.  Probably because it's so rare here.  Melissa and I and all four farm kids were in the garden right before the storm hit yesterday.  I suppose one of the benefits of being able to see so far in any direction is advance notice of storms rolling in.  We were replanting beans and cucumbers...many of the seedlings of the first planting got consumed by grasshoppers...when we felt the first drops.  We put everything away and started towards the house.  I was in the back yard when I noticed a glimmer on the ground out by the animals' pen.  

                                                

Sometimes someone turns on the hose to fill the goat and sheep water and walks away to tend to something else.  Every once and a while someone forgets and does not return for some time.  When this happens, the area outside of the pen is flooded.  The farm kids love this.  The grown-ups and animals...not so much.

                                                             

It's evening time - time for the goat and sheep to come in from the field and go into their pen for the night.  Also, a storm is coming, so Melissa and I go out to bring them in, babies on our backs...of course.  Melissa finds a huge board (fairly easy to find in our yard) and puts it across the lake that we discover by the pen to make a bridge for us to cross.  I open the gate to let the the girls in.  Normally, then run right in.  Tonight, however, they are not thrilled at having a lake where there used to be solid ground between them and their hay.  They are not going in, and the rain is coming down a little harder.  They bolt a couple of times, we are soaked, and Melissa is up to her knee in mud before we get them in.  Then the rain really comes.

                                                                       

An actual drenching, ground-quenching rain.  

                                                                        

Rain always feels like such a gift here, and with fires burning all around us, this rain feels even more like a gift than normal.  

        

The garden loves it.  Since we don't get much rain from the sky here, we irrigate everything.  It keeps the plants alive and they do pretty well, but it cannot compare to an actual rain.  After the first real rain of the season everything pops (including weeds).  It seems the plants grow inches overnight.

                                          

                             
I went out this morning to check on everything, slipping and sliding in the mud.  Maybe it's my imagination, but I'm pretty sure the plants look greener...happier.  

                                       

                           

It's raining again this evening, and we're loving it...it sure is nice to not have to turn on the drip for a couple of days.

                                     

First Harvest

This past week was our first harvest of the season for the CSA.  It is still early in the season for us (we have a very short growing season here), but there is already quite a bit ready for harvest.  The box had spinach, lettuce mix, baby greens (like kale, mizuna, arugula), young spring onions, and radishes (mostly Easter Egg this week).  We do lots of bagged greens early in the season when things are small, but switch to bunching for just about everything later on.    

The spinach is amazing this year and we've been putting it in and on everything!

The baby greens are so tender, still mild, and perfect for eating raw.  They are also great lightly cooked. 

The Easter Egg radishes are mild and a favorite of the farm kids.  If they had their way we would probably not have any left.  We are planting more all the time to try and make up for how many they are eating.

I love young onions.  We eat the whole onion, from the little baby bulb to the tips of the greens!

It's the season to welcome back fresh-from-the-garden salads.  We can't get enough.

Of course, this is just the beginning of what we will have available this summer.  I'm working on creating a page on the blog of our complete planting list, so check back soon for that.  

Besides the veggies, we are trying something new this year...look for salad and basil boxes at the market!

 

Garden Babies

Little seedlings are emerging everywhere!  It is such an exciting time in the garden.  Melissa and I have been working hard the last two weeks to prep and plant row after row, entrusting seeds to the brown earth...and now, we have green.  

Potatoes, onions, spinach, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, peas...these are some of the plants whose little leaves have come up from the soil so far.  Speaking of peas, we are amazed at our pea germination rate this year.  We usually have a fairly low germination rate for peas here, even when we use innoculant.  This year we soaked them for two days with the innoculant and then planted them.  So many peas.  We are amazed.  We should have lots of snow, sugar snap and shelling peas to enjoy this year.

We're not quite done planting, though we're getting close.  We'll, I suppose we're never completely done...there is succession planting of  certain crops that will happen all summer...but we are nearing the end of the big, two-week planting push.  We just finished planting carrots, beets, chard, kale and many other varieties of green things.  Now we're on squash, cucumbers, beans, basil, herbs and flowers.  I'm sure I'm leaving a few things out.  

And the two cutest garden babies are growing like weeds as well.  Eating dirt, pulling out drip lines, splashing in water, exploring bugs and tools...they are doing their own important work.  

Not a bad way for them to spend these first summers of their lives...here's to many more.  

Where have all the radishes gone?

Don't let the title scare you...we will have plenty of yummy radishes available this summer (if the farm kids don't eat them all first).  The thing about kids who participate in growing their own food is...they love to eat it.  My son, who claims to dislike just about anything spicy, will munch radishes with a bit of a kick.  All.  Day.  Long.  The same goes for peas (of course), lettuce, spinach, green onions, carrots and most other garden produce.  The kids love eating food straight from the garden.  

That's why we were not surprised when Mason and Bella were thrilled to eat the first radishes from the green house.  

And why we should not have been surprised when we walked in a little later to find most of the french breakfast radishes gone!  

We convinced them to leave the rest to get a little bigger before they ate them.  This was only a small patch in the greenhouse for our early season salads, so they can eat as many as they want.  We will have to keep a close eye on our radishes in the field though.  

There should be plenty of radishes for you to enjoy this summer.  Because radishes show up each week of the growing season, we try to keep them interesting by planting lots of varieties.  Slender french breakfast radishes with a little bite, mild and colorful easter egg radishes, spicy asian varieites, classic round reds, black spanish radishes with white insides, large radishes that look like watermelons, and plenty of daikons...hopefully we won't get bored with this easy garden vegetable!