Any farm worth its salt continually grows a large pile of stuff. When sufficiently large, the farmer sets a match to pile and said large mound of junk disappears, transformed to ash.
We have had such a pile for a year and a half, awaiting some occasion. Sylvie lobbied for burning it when we hosted the cross country team last night. Every Sunday the team goes to a team member’s house and runs a route together; Sylvie had staked out the township road – really boring as far as a route, but the landscape is beautiful.
As the team started to come in, I knew now was my time. One piece of paper and a lighter was all it took to start the first waxed produce box, which started as a sizzle and quickly became a solid flame. The many dozen, maybe hundreds, took off like a jet fuel and in no time a roaring 50 foot fire greeted the runners back to the farm like a signal fire set ablaze by some survivors desperately trying to catch the attention of an airplane from their deserted island.
Way too hot for smores, instead we pulled down the long hose I was using for irrigation to wet down the fence that kept starting on fire. The creosote electrical pole kept smoking, but it was just a bluffing, I guess. Luckily, we had just received our second shot of rain just an hour earlier, so it was really safer than I’m making it out to be.
On the produce front, that rain on Saturday night was just a godsend. I had started irrigating in earnest on Saturday, pumping water to move these crops along. When they get too dry like that, all the sunshine and good growing temps don’t mean a thing. Somebody super dehydrated doesn’t have the get-up and go to do much and neither do vegetables.
In the box:
- Norland Red Potatoes
- Carrots
- Green Beans
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Zucchini
- Green Peppers
- Garlic
- Napa Cabbage: This stuff is kind of ugly – that part of the field apparently was too short on fertility, but there’s still something here to chop up and put to use. This person put together 20 recipes for Napa – https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/napa-cabbage-recipes/
Lida Farm 