Goodbye Garden Summer

What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.  -T.S. Eliot

Probably one of the most surreal moments of my life: buckling my seat belt on a flight to San Diego three days ago. 

I write this from a cool afternoon at the beach… A far cry from the heat, bugs, cornbread, farmers, close quarters, patty pan squash and chores of The Garden Summer.

The final weeks of the project were filled with trips to the lake, porch dinners, fishing, and visits with new friends.

[Dear friends Christian and Bridget visit the farm]

[Seth and a monstrous catfish]

[Puppies on the porch in the afternoon]

After a light week three, we expected little out of our last harvest.  The deer had taken their toll and our cash crops were still recovering from the devastating mid-month rain.  And then the flowers came on. We had buckets and buckets and still did not harvest all of the zinnias, cosmos, and sunflowers.

[Em in the early morning]

[Me]

[Ben]

So although we were light on Patty Pans and cucumbers, we made up in flowers and basil.  We had a great final market.  Throughout the morning we said bittersweet goodbyes to new friends, hugging and exchanging phone numbers. 

We even let down and ordered a hot, and possibly non-local breakfast from the market.

Our last evening we sat up on the bluff overlooking our garden in the moonlight and talked about high points and gratitude.

So long Garden Summer.

This is what we set out to do:

Grow an abundant garden:

We did this.  Our squash, arugula, zinnias, radishes, cucumbers, and beets fed us and our farmers market patrons.

Live zero-waste (or pretty damn close):

We didn’t do half bad.  Two weeks into the project we had only produced about five pounds of trash. 

Eat food grown within a 100-mile radius:

From the beginning we decided to exclude olive oil, coffee, and alcohol from the 100-mile rule.  Aside from a handful of special occasion exceptions, we didn’t use non-local ingredients in our kitchen.  Every once in a while, however, we would accept a non-local hors doeuvres in the home of a friend, or patron a local bakery for the treat of fresh baked bread.  

Sell at the Farmers Market and donate to local food banks:

We were successful at the farmers market.  We did not donate to a food bank.  We simply did not yield the quantity or quality to justify a produce donation.

Make some farmer friends and have some fun along the way:

Boy, wasn’t that the truth.

[Our summer garden]

Raindrops on a Tin Porch Roof

I’ve blinked and The Garden Summer is half-over. As I knew we would, we farmers have hit our stride in the garden, at the farmers market, and in our community. The last week has been a fantastic blur. 

Friday morning marked our second market harvest.  Seasoned farmers that we are, we were up by five and into the garden and six.  By nine o’clock we had harvested and prepped:

14.5 lbs of Patty Pan squash

23 lbs Crookneck squash

3 flats of arugula

20 bunches of basil

1 lb. radishes

1 lb. of beets

6.5 lbs. Armenian cucumbers

40 lbs. of Lebonese cucumbers

Wow. Way more produce than we had ever anticipated. Then we napped.

AND THEN Chef Mike Lata arrived.  The handsome man-friend of Emilee, Mike is a James Beard Award winner and owner of Charleston’s much celebrated FIG restaurant.  He flew in Friday to an Arkansas thunderstorm.  We spent the afternoon touring the farm, playing frisbee in the downpour, and sitting on the porch. 

Saturday’s farmers market was another wild success.  We doubled our revenue and all but sold out by 11 am. Chef and Seth worked the booth and the female shoppers couldn’t stay away….

All day Saturday, Mike began peicing together our field feast meal.  He thoughtfully shopped the farmers market, stepping behind the sale tables to handpick tomatoes and discuss with local growers.

And then Sunday was upon us.  Kitchen prep and the Mike Lata marathon began at 9 am. Three manned the kitchen with Chef while the rest of us worked on table setting, lighting, and ambiance.

Ten guests arrived by 6 pm. We took everyone on a tour of the garden and our seasoned farmer friends laughed about the size of our cucumbers and instructed us on the proper pruning of okra. All the while, Chef was putting final touches on a nine-dish harvest meal.

And what a meal it was.  As Mike stood at the head of the table, introducing himself and the food before us… our hearts were full. Local, whole ingredients had been transformed into an award winning meal and all around the table sat friends we had made over the course of the summer… Our local cheese man, a restaurant owner, the farmers market proprietor, a local food activist, an aunt and uncle, and one very well dressed grandmother….

The last couple days have been quiet. We said goodbye to Mike and other weekend visitors and have been cleaning and catching up on sleep.

Today we float the Buffalo River in the heart of the Ozarks. I’m looking forward to relaxing and spending downtime with my dearest friends. We’ve all worked so very hard to make the last week a success and it hasn’t been easy.  There have been moments of hunger, exhaustion, and the weight of a never-ending list of to-do’s.  We are all learning to work together, communicate, and go easy.  At the very beginning of the project, Emilee said that a lot more than a garden would grow from The Garden Summer.  She was right.

Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow-ripening fruit. -Aristotle

Because we all like BEFORE AND AFTER….

I think this is what they call the home stretch. I’ll have major help arriving tomorrow (garden-happy parents) and the farmers arrive in one week. Hallelujah.

I’ll say this. There was a solid three weeks when I was sure that we were going to starve and The Garden Summer was going to be a horrendous flop. 

This terrible notion has passed and last night I picked an eggplant the size of my arm. Thank goodness.

Here is how the garden grows:

The sunflowers are up to my waist and I’m beginning to see the little buttons of buds.

Round one of radishes is harvested and more to come soon.

Cucumbers are flowering like crazy… already harvested two.

Squash… how I love you. Up to my waist and blossoming.

Bell peppers have taken on a comical lean due to fruit and blossoms. I like it.

The peanuts, beets, arugula, collards, marigolds, zinnias, onions, pumpkins, beans, sweet potatoes, corn, and herbs are all cranking now. A few minor casualties from last week’s break-in but no worries.

There wasn’t a chance that I was going to post pictures of the garden a few short weeks ago.  Simply put, it was ugly and I was embarrassed.

Now that I’m feeling a touch more secure and self-satisfied, here is some before and after:

This is early on. Ick. Notice the rectangles of green towards the back…. Those are weeds.  Our plants were choking.

A little later…. Weeds still rule. For a while, the best we could do was clear a little circle around the plants to let them breathe.

And hallelujah… we have arrived. The two beds in the foreground are young pumpkins.

Gratuitous beauty shots:

And so the farmers shall eat.  More soon.

And then Charlie ate the Collards!

I have spent the last week thinking WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO!?!

Unfortunately:

I got heat stroke.

The well has gone dry.

Despite torrential rainstorms in mid-May, no rain.

Weeds grow faster than anything else.

And there’s a critter stealing chickens.

That said… the garden is mostly under control. And when I say garden, I mean weeds.  I’ve killed a lot of them. 

Here’s the thing. The garden is too big.  It’s definitely too much for one person to maintain. Also, it’s simply to much space.  We could have packed everything in 70% of the land. Maybe even 50%.  I’ve been kicking myself. Despite all this Small is Beautiful talk… I said TILL ANOTHER ROW! THE BIGGER THE BETTER!

….I suppose I wasn’t practicing what I preached. Bah. And so I take a step back, reassess, and learn.  That’s the point right?! To LEARN.

On a more positive note… the basil is looking mighty fresh.

So here’s a little window into my world:

Tonight Charlie the bull and one gutsy gal cow broke into the garden.  I was sitting up on the porch (a healthy 1/4 mile away), cleaned up and eating dinner when I saw Steve the caretaker hauling across the pasture in the orange tractor. He was waving his arms wildly and my heart sunk.  There they were, like two impish children , tearing up cornstalks and trampling sunflowers.  I yelled (at nothing in particular) and took off down to the garden.  I arrived a moment after Steve. He had picked up a hand trowel and was whacking Charlie over the head with it. He’d yell, then whack. The female cow was a cinch to chase out.  She’s skittish like a normal cow.  Charlie on the other hand, is like an obstinate child.  If you hit him with a hand trowel, he’s going to buck his head, stomp his feet, and dare you to hit him again. 

I picked up a rake and joined Steve, yelling in my most serious farmer voice. Charlie went… eventually. Then he stood outside the fence for the next thirty minutes watching me while I watered. Flirting or threatening… I wasn’t sure.

I can’t stop giggling about the whack whack of the hand trowel on Charlie’s massive head. That bull could pick up the front end of a tractor with his neck. I mean…. look at him!

And so I weed, shovel mulch, rake, plant……  I’ve had help the last couple days from family. Lauren, my cousin’s girlfriend, is spending the mornings weeding with me.  She makes excellent mixed tapes. So that is a bonus. My aunt Maura has also been in the trenches.  She’s planted two pumpkin beds and knocked out whole cities of weeds.  Boy am I grateful.

Despite the lack of rain, the weeds, the misbehaving bull… The garden is coming along.  I have already harvested a bucket of bright red radishes.  The tomatoes are blossoming and tiny green globes are appearing.  The sunflowers are thigh-high, and the arugula is lush and fragrant. I am tired, overwhelmed, and a bit sunburned but WE’VE GOT A GARDEN.

Here are some tomatoes. Notice the weeds in the background. The word weed is even taking over my vocabulary. Weed weed weed.

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. -Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Sweet Flowers are Slow and Weeds Make Haste… -Bill Shakespeare

Well isn’t that the truth.  I have been weeding with such fervor that my pointer fingers and thumbs are puffy and sore.

The garden is coming along.  The heavy rain last week really put a damper on things (farm pun) but now the sun is shining and things are starting to perk up! We have peanuts, sweet potatoes, green beans, squash, tomatoes, radishes, onions, okra, herbs, collards, arugula, eggplant, bell peppers, and beets! We lost the cocozelle squash and a few of the eggplants… ah well. 

My handy dandy sonar deer-away is really working. I saw deer tracks on the far side of the garden a couple days ago but it was only a drive-by. “And stay out!”  Tooty the guard-dog takes herself quite seriously when it comes to critters. She’s a bonafide farm dog.

Not much else to report.  I’m really liking the quiet rhythm of the days.  I’ve got a wicked sunburn, sore biceps, and I’ve fallen asleep by 9:00 on a number of occasions.

I’ve been keeping in close contact with all the farmers… we swap ideas and get fired up on the daily.  Emilee has been working on some farm art… Take a look!

Coming Up Marigolds.

Deep Breath. The Garden is planted. The suburbanites have come and gone. Spring semester at Georgetown is complete.  I’ve finally caught up on sleep.  I would have loved to have been updating the project journal every day.  Instead I am writing for the first time since *cough* mid-april.  Ah well….

I suppose things really started cranking when I picked up the big bad truck on the 28th of April.  A dear friend and I rented a car (PT CRUISER. damnitall.) and hauled up to Allentown PA to pick up the truck.  It is an old work truck of my aunt and uncle’s and has been waiting to become a farm truck.

I giggled the entire three hours back to DC.  I’m a small gal and I was bouncing around each time the F-250 hog hit a pebble.  Truck: Check.

Two days later I was on the road to Charleston with miss tooty (my pup) in tow.  She seemed a bit nervous starting out… still wearing her city-girl pants I suppose….

I arrived late and slept an hour in Charleston.  (Really. An hour.  I was too damn excited)  At 4:30 AM I scooped up miss Emilee (suburbanite #1) and we got on the road.  The drive was long and rainy.  At one point we were stuck in a deluge on a bridge and our windshield wipers stopped working. That’ll get the adrenaline pumping.

Fourteen hours later….We arrive at the farm (road weary to say the least) to a candle lit dinner party under the pergola.  Thank you to aunties and mothers.  I cried at dinner from sleep deprivation and gratitude.  We had arrived. This was the beginning.

In the morning we got straight to work.  At this point the garden was a giant rectangle of dirt.  Nothing else.  Under the guidance of mom and Barb, we measured, staked out beds, and mulched our paths.  Then (a bit dirty and tired) we charged to the airport to pick up Mark, our beloved cameraman.  Mark is an old friend of mine from Chapman, a ridiculously talented photographer, and one hell of a dancer.  That night we filled our glasses with wine and took a golf cart tour around the property.  The fireflies were thick in the pastures and the air smelled like honeysuckle.  

Tuesday was a town day. Emilee, Mark, and I spent 2 hours at Lowes, loading a big cart with rakes, shovels, hoses, an overly expensive water pump, flower seeds, a wheelbarrow, rope, buckets, and bug spray.  Whew!  THEN we put antifreeze in the truck.  I’ll tell you, I would have REALLY liked air conditioning during my 30 HOUR DRIVE from Pennsylvania.  Ah well…

Wednesday we planted sunflower seeds and mulched around a bit more.  Mark managed to put together a water pump system that could probably water a 30 acre plot. I’m still giggling about our ridiculously sophisticated pump and knock-you-over water pressure.  

That evening we drove to the airport to pick up Ben and Seth (suburbanites #2 and #3).  Seth came first. He called me as he was walking off the plane and told me he had accidentally flown to St. Louis.  I believed him.  Ben came a few minutes later.  He was flying in from a week in Mexico and certainly looked the part.  Short nylon shorts, a sunburn, and a bottle of tequila.  Hello Arkansas.  

That night we got a little rowdy.  Mom and Barb swore they were going to have an early night but by 11:00 pm and with a little tequila under our belts, we were all howling at the moon. That’s farm-bonding for you.

Thursday morning we were straight to work (despite our headaches) in the garden. Marie (suburbanite #4) arrived by 10 am and jumped right in. Seth retilled the beds, Ben worked on the garden gate, and the gals planted seeds and starts.  Midday we took a spaghetti break and sat on the porch. When we got back to the garden, Charlie the bull had broken in and we had to painstakingly lure him out with chicken feed.  (When I say we, I mean Aunt Barb…Big Charlie scares me)

Photo by Mark Samuels

That night we had another dinner party in the pergola with Mom, Barb, my Uncle Robert and my kick-in-the-pants grandmother Connie. Barb made a frittata from Connie’s garden and henhouse eggs. Plus good wine and chinese lanterns. It was delightful.  We went around the table and each talked about how we became involved in the Garden Summer project. It was a wonderful thing to listen to my family and newly near and dear friends and to realize that it is all really happening.  There we all were!

Photo by Mark Samuels

Friday we woke up and split into two groups.  Ben, Mark and I made a run into town.  Emilee, Marie, and Seth hunkered down in the garden to plant more.  We all reunited over hotcakes at grandma’s house and then hit it hard again for the afternoon.  That night we were tuckered out and early to bed.

We spent Saturday morning at the Argenta Farmers Market in Little Rock.  It is a verified-local group with quality produce, meat, and dairy.  It was heaven.  We bought the fixings for our first ALL LOCAL meal.  I took my mom to the airport.  She was headed home to San Diego and mighty sad to leave her farmers. (a name we took to calling ourselves…)  We explored town for a little bit and then headed back.  

That afternoon, covered in bug spray and armed with afternoon wine, we went digging around in the woods for old pottery and glass jars.  My great-great ancestor’s old homestead land is prime for digging up old bits and pieces.  I am still covered in poison oak from that afternoon but boy did we find treasures…  

That night we made our first local meal and took a picnic on the hill.  We watched the sun go down from the overlook and toasted our last night together. We are already family.

Sunday was Mothers Day.  In our Sunday best, we walked over to brunch at Connie’s with my aunts and uncles and cousins.  The farmers fit right in with my crazy family.  After a few mimosas it seemed like a good idea to caravan over to the cedar grove and set a dead tree on fire.  All in the spirit of Mother’s Day. Hah.

In the late afternoon, I took Marie, Seth, and Emilee to the airport.  It was hard to let them go. Ben, Mark and I had dinner with my various uncles and aunts and called it an early night.  Around midnight a big storm rolled through and soaked our garden.

Ben and Mark left and now it’s friday.  I have finally caught up on sleep and am in the thick of garden chores. My little city-girl arms are getting stronger by the day and I have a healthy farmers tan in the works. Patiently waiting for my farmers to be back in June.  I’ve never felt more at peace.  More later. xo

Photo by Mark Samuels