First Bloom

 

The first bloom is the one you sacrifice, and this year the sacrifice piled up faster than we could sweep it - so we started making things instead.

August

 

The moon is still up when we start.  By seven the buckets are full.  We've never grown so many lisianthus as this year, mostly white but some pink.

The beets came in heavy this week, Sister Holly washes all six crates by the wall.

It has been quite the summer of people.  Arriving, learning and then leaving.  August is close to the end of something and we are still picking.  The harbor always holds the last light.

July Grows the Meal

 Everything on this tray came out of the ground this morning. Scallions, washed and laid out on parchment. New potatoes, skins still thin enough to rub off. The first real tomatoes of the season.

Supper this time of year is barely cooking. Boil the potatoes. Char the scallions under the broiler until the edges blister. Slice the tomatoes thick and salt them. Good oil over all of it.

July grows the meal. We just carry it in.

Recipe below.

• 1.5 pounds new potatoes, scrubbed
• 2 bunches scallions, trimmed and washed
• 3 ripe tomatoes
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for finishing
• 1 teaspoons flaky salt, plus more for the potatoes' cooking water
• 0.5 teaspoons black pepper, coarsely ground
• 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (optional)

Steps

Boil the potatoes: Put 1.5 pounds new potatoes, scrubbed in a pot, cover with cold water, and salt it well. Bring to a boil and cook until a knife slides in easily, 15–20 minutes . Drain and halve the larger ones.

 Char the scallions: Heat the broiler. Toss 2 bunches scallions, trimmed and washed on a parchment-lined sheet pan with 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for finishing, a pinch of salt. Broil until the tops blister and char at the edges, 4–5 minutes . They should be soft at the white end, crisp at the green.

 Slice the tomatoes: Slice 3 ripe tomatoes thick. Lay them on a platter and scatter with some of 1teaspoons flaky salt, plus more for the potatoes' cooking water. Let them sit while everything else finishes — the salt draws out the juice.

 Bring it together: Pile the warm potatoes onto the platter with the tomatoes. Lay the charred scallions over the top. Finish with more olive oil, the rest of 1 teaspoons flaky salt, plus more for the potatoes' cooking water, 0.5 teaspoons black pepper, coarsely ground, and 2 teaspoons red wine vinegar (optional) if using. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

If the grill is already going, the scallions are even better over a hot fire — same timing, turn once. Day-old leftovers, chopped rough with a spoonful of mayonnaise, make a good potato salad.

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High Summer

 

 

The zinnias are taller than the fence now. We cut flowers before the heat comes up and set up the stand.

And Saturdays, the crew loads the truck for New Haven.

The tomato rows have closed in — you walk them sideways, crate on your hip. The first heirlooms are in, split shoulders and all. 

The harbor holds the last light.  August is close.

Full House

 

The heat came first. Then word of the storms.

This is the week summer stops being a promise and becomes a fact. The air is heavy by nine. By afternoon the sky goes green at the edges and everyone watches the west. We move the hoses. We check the ties on the tallest stems. We wait.

The plants do not wait. They grow into all of it — the heat, the wet, the wind that comes down the field ahead of the rain. The snapdragons are shoulder-high and every color at once. The dianthus runs in a pink line all the way to the hoop house. The tomatoes have closed their rows into a hedge. Whatever the weather is doing above, the growing goes on below.

And the house is full.

There are bikes leaning against the trees again, the way there have been bikes leaning against these trees for years now. Seven of them this season — people I did not know in the spring, who know the beds by name now. They rise early. They pick before the heat. They eat at the long table and they laugh at things I don't always catch. The work moves faster with more hands, but that is not the reason to be glad of them. The reason is the fullness itself.

I have watered this ground alone and I have watered it with a crowd. The crowd is better.

Tonight the storm will come. We will bring in what needs bringing in and we will let the rest take the rain. In the morning the field will be washed and bent and heavy, and there will be more hands than I have to set it right.

That is a good way to meet a summer.

Before the Heat

 

The top half of the door stays open from May on. Some mornings that's the first thing I see—the whole day still blue, the maple just inside the frame, everything unspent.

Then you go out into it.

The snapdragons get cut by hand, in the cool, before anyone's awake. Thirty-one Junes of this and the work hasn't changed: cut, carry, set them in water, open the stand. The light doesn't last and neither does the cool, so you move while you can.

It's a heavy armful some mornings. Most mornings I don't mind.

The Stand

This week our farm stand goes back out by the road. It is the same one it has always been — a small wooden thing, weathered now, with a corn table beside it and a scale for weighing what you take.

I bought it in 1995 for fifteen dollars.

It came from the Bauer brothers, here in Madison. Erwin and Anthony were truck farmers who had run a stand out of their garage for years, driving their vegetables up to the market in New Haven before the highway made that trip short. By the time I knew him, Erwin was in his nineties and no longer using the stand. He let me have it with the corn table and the scale, the whole arrangement, for the price of a good lunch.

Neither brother married. They had no heirs, and what they had they gave away — some sixty acres left to the town, which is Bauer Park now, out on Copse Road. Erwin stayed on in the farmhouse to the end. We hayed their fields for years, until the town took the mowing on itself.

There is a plaque on our stand for the two of them. It seemed the least we could do for a thing that has outlived its makers and gone on being useful.

The roadside stand is a great American tradition — the farmer puts the day's crop out, sells it straight to whoever stops, and everyone comes out ahead. As a child I traveled the secondary roads with my family, living mostly off whatever the local stands were selling, and I have had conversations at our own stand with people who came from as far as California.

But not every stand is what it looks like. Plenty of the trucks parked in lots, dressed up to look like a farm stand, are selling the same wholesale produce that fills the big chains — tomatoes labeled local that may have been grown anywhere and trucked a thousand miles. Here you can see the fields right behind the food. And yes, sometimes you will find the stand self-serve. That is not neglect. It means we are out in those fields, doing the thing that makes the food worth stopping for.

So the stand is open again. The first things are not much yet — early greens, a few flowers, whatever the season has decided to give. Weigh your own, make your own change. The box is where it has always been.