May Top Ten

If, as the saying goes, the footsteps of the farmer are the best fertilizer, has any bit of truth within it, then our farm should be thriving in fertility right now.  My cramped feet have wandered all over this farm in the past week: seeding cover crops, seeding pasture grasses, seeding walkways of grasses, setting-up a deer fence, driving horses, planting potatoes, monitoring the deer fence for signs of intruders.  Walking and walking, considering the thousands of individual plants I was (hopefully) giving life to, conceiving of all the other work that still had to be done, concentrating on sending psychic messages to the deer population to find alternate pathways and alternate food sources within the neighborhood. 

And now, I have come to rest.  With a sore pectoral muscle from an accidental, but firm, swift horsehoof to the chest, and inches of rain falling from the sky, a hiatus has been staked out for me to sit and heal and wait, until the walking begins again.

The plants, belatedly, are journeying from greenhouse to coldframe to soil, where they are hopefully rooting into the Earth and reaching up to the Sun.  We’ll be sending out an e-mail later in the month with notifications as to when the first CSA pick-up of vegetables will be.  We’re anticipating the first or second week of June… and we look forward to greeting each of you soon.

If you haven’t signed up for this season yet, I offer a little appetizer for thought, to warm your palate up to the feast which we’ll be offering you all Summer and Fall Long:

Top 10 Reasons why joining Good Work Farm CSA 2014 is a good idea:

(10) To pick flowers for someone you love in a field at dusk after a long workday in a bustling office or caring for children or serving the public or writing a thesis.  To take this time for yourself, to breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air.

(9) To take on the opportunity for teaching: to teach your neighbors how best to prepare an abundance of zucchini, to teach your children how to tell when peas are ripe, to teach your farmers how to better support your health, your lifestyle, and your needs.

(8) To take your kids to a place without screens.

(7) To take yourself to a place without screens.

(6) Fresh Tomatoes in August.  Remember what that tastes like?  BLTs.  Mozzarella, Basil, and Tomato sandwiches.  Cherries right off the vine.  Big fat heirlooms, succulent and sweet, sliced thick with salt and pepper.

(5) To linger on the edge of a field on a hot summer day observing cutting-edge 20th century farm technology in action, watching the strength of willing horses pull a plow—turning-in organic matter, making way for the planting of food.

(4) To preserve open space, to keep farmland farmed, to support a family farm in your neighborhood that is working toward sustaining and enriching an agricultural community by caring for land, to the best of their knowledge and ability, in a slow and thoughtful way.

(3) Tender lettuces, sweet carrots, fresh garlic, new potatoes, basil pesto, steamed greens.

(2) To be a part of a farm.  We value our farm as a community asset where you, our members, are invited to aid in the formation of a culture of acceptance, food, exchange, art.  It is a community of richness and delight, of humor and joy, of seriousness and work, of creativity and forgiveness, of growth and exploration, of building soil and space for the next generation, and the next.

(1)  It is through an attunement with the Earth that we will each learn a love of patience.  A patience for the seeds to germinate, the rain to slow and cease, the dry spells to turn wet, bodies to heal, a community to form, soils to thrive, melons to be in season, callings, questions, and prayers to be answered.

Of course, we want these things now, or sooner.  But in so wanting, we deny the slow unfolding, we forget that our timelines and datebooks and anticipations lay false claim over a process of growth and decay which is timeless, and so is not ours to claim.

Keep in Touch,

Lisa and Anton

Join the CSA here.

Sign-up for a Daily Loaf Bread Share here.

Sign-up for a Ledamete Grass Pastured Chicken Share here.  (Remember--May 19th deadline for this one!)