In Season

Based on my experiences today alone on The Farm I came up with many inspired, beautiful possible chapter titles, including:

I Don’t Want Rooster Love

Hoeing Skills (that would make any father proud)

I’m Gonna Get a Spatula After This; You Want Any?

(in reference to a jar of apple butter…. obviously)

First Taste of the Season: Strawberry

I’m Not Wearing Sunscreen Anymore, It Just Attracts the Dirt

Today I followed Farmer Thomas’s lead and plucked one bright, red strawberry right off the bush and ate it. Within a week alone berries have gone from barely visible to slightly yellowish green, to edible. There are not many, but with every step down the row I see at least one plump for the picking. My personal goal is to beat all the deer and slugs to the harvest.

I’m anticipating a decent amount hanging nicely and ready for the taking by Monday morning… Our CSA deliveries and Farmer’s Market Saturday’s are still a couple weeks away… What to do? What to do? Chris has a hankering for a strawberry pie, and I’d just love to eat them straight from the bowl.

Tomorrow marks the completion of my second month as Farm Girl, an identity I’m still trying to embrace. Dirt underneath what’s left of my stubby fingernails, freckles across my nose, the same three pair of Dickies in my Monday- Friday wardrobe rotation. (But I only wear two pair per week… yep, that’s me.) I weed carrots on my hands and knees for hours at a time, crawl through rows of onions, flame weed garlic, prune tomato vines until my fingers are sticky with a yellow and gray that doesn’t wash off with soap and water.

Plants plants everywhere. Busy days sunup to sundown. Somehow I still managed to make my Granny’s biscuits tonight and sauté up some crookneck squash (from California I’m sure.)

Chris mocking the photographer...

First strawberries of the season...