Summer... is the favorite.

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posted on

June 7, 2023

Summer. In the hush of winter and hopefulness of spring, memories and stories of the season to come comfort my longing for sunshine. Morning mist and dewy grass wash away the respite of winter. Harmonies of chirping of birds and hums of bugs become the soundtrack of my days. Blossoms turn to leaves, azaleas and peonies burst open. The bees come back around. I smell bonfires and hear the familiar echoes of laughter on the porch. Memorial Day weekend marks the unofficial start to summer, school is out and the pool opens up again. Farmers markets are back in full swing. My freckles come out from hiding, but suntan lotion is in the air. Burgers on the grill served with that beloved blue and red berry medley, cool whip on top if we are lucky. Towels laid oceanside littered with strawberry stems and sand. Tomato sandwiches and salad, everyday. Summer is the favorite.

June 21st stamps the northern hemisphere with the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. I love the Midsummer traditions celebrated in Scandinavia, honoring the season of abundance and fertility with dancing, bonfires, flower crowns, and feasting. Summer is an occasion to celebrate with loved ones. At Third Way Farm, we have a big community dinner every week, potluck style. I love coming together with everyone over the fortunes of farm fare that we all had a hand in getting off the ground. Feasts celebrating such should be more often.

While summer is often a period of recess and holiday for most, farmers are only getting started. All the work from last season to present, comes to fruition in summer. With sunshine ahead and summer rain storms in tow, the fields erupt overnight. Crop beds turn to rainbow seas of green, purples, pink, yellow, red, and blue. Riches of growth and life are evident in the abundance of beautiful vegetables, flowers, and fruit. Yes, fruit.

Jamberry, by Bruce Degen was and is one of my favorite books from my childhood. A quick poem that chronicles the berry adventures of a little boy and a bear:

Strawberry ponies
Strawberry lambs
Dancing in meadows
Of strawberry jam.

My mom always reminds me of her summers picking blueberries and the buttermilk pancakes her grandfather would make with them. And her bus driver, who also had a small you-pick strawberry farm. Few sounds compare to the satisfaction of the pop that comes from picking a strawberry of the plant. Few smells compare to that of a blue cardboard quart overflowing with berries. Few feelings compare to being sticky and red from the juiciest fruits. All year, we wait for the berries to come -- strawberries are the catalyst of the plenty to come. Raspberries, perfect for eating after capping them on your fingertips. White and black currants host a jelly-like tartness in their small fruits. Gooseberries are a sibling to currants, having a similar tartness. Goumi berries too are juicy and tart, akin to rhubarb and perfect for jam.

Seasonality of fresh food has been washed away from our culture. All year, grocery stores are stacked with plastic crates of produce unblemished and fluorescent. Strawberries bigger than a golf ball in January, tomatoes soaked in pesticides. I recall eating berries so sour that only snowcaps of sugar would make them halfway sweet. This is not to say that there are not people growing these crops organically and mindfully out of season (hydroponic and greenhouse growers are rockstars). We remember the seasons outside the home, but forget to honor seasons of food in the kitchen. In a convenience oriented world, we forget to practice patience in so many ways. My heart explodes when I visit the farmers market and I see the community come together to support local farmers and artisans. Farmers dream of the days when everyone shops and eats locally.

As long as the earth endures seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

A Labor of Love

A few summers ago, I spent it touring farms in the south. Farmer Clinton C. Boyd Jr. was one of the two black farmers I met on the tour. He has a beautiful property in Montgomery, Alabama, and spends his time trading produce with neighbors or donating it to food banks and organizations. His reasoning? Farming is a labor of love. He came to farming after retiring from the military. In search of deep and meaningful work, he found that he could sustain his family and community through land stewardship. I find his story deeply curious because he mentioned his passion; music. After being drafted into war, he became a 25th Infantry Division band member and the first Black Sergeant Major at the Army School of Music. He wanted to continue pursuing music, but leaving the army meant struggling to find gig work, and struggling to find gig work meant a change of plans. I don't know that he came to farming out of passion. But I know he came to farming out of value: valuing autonomy, providing for his family and community, and hard work. Since meeting Sergeant Boyd, I've spent much time thinking about what it means to live in my passion in addition to living in my values. I remember entertaining this conversation with a professor who said that all his passionate friends in the '60s and '70s who took to the streets in support of women's rights and black lives, protesters who were anti-war and anti-establishment, now live quiet, conservative lives as bank tellers and tax auditors. Nothing wrong with those careers! But their passion and zest for justice has fizzled, and he's found it challenging to get them involved in modern social issues. The promise they made to themselves in their 20s to stay vigilant has been followed by years of inaction.Life post-lockdown has presented the same parallels. Awareness about the gravity of the climate emergency was at the forefront of our minds; community-supported agriculture was at an all-time high. People consumed less and cooked more. Conversations about racist policies and systemic oppression led those to take to the streets to support black lives. People crowdfunded money to help neighbors who lost jobs or lost family members. Organizations were overrun with donations and volunteers. 2020 was a time of reflection, and revolution was brewing. I would have never guessed that the years following would mean much of a return to the same old—a return to normalcy, gluttony, over-consumption, and a lack of introspection. I'm afraid our impassioned promises to one another have also proven empty.I've found less and less that I am motivated by stories of passion. Passion is an emotion, and emotions are fleeting. Passion feels more like an identity we sell ourselves. I'm a passionate person. Living solely in an emotional trance and less in our values. And I can turn to farming to demonstrate why.Farming these past six months has been passionate, sure, but mostly grounding. Living and working closely with other 20and30somethings meant witnessing what it looks like to live in one's deeply rooted values. 20and30somethings who are passionate, yes, but aren't chasing the sheer sense of euphoria that comes from revolution. Those who have found a revolution in everydayness, the mundane and the cyclical. I work with those who, through a love for food, a deep reverence for the earth and its people, and curiosity about better systems and better practices, have found it in themselves to be disciplined and committed. To live lives that are virtuous but not virtue-signaling. They value their community and themselves. They don't exist in search of euphoric passion, hoping to be inspired to do better; they are simply living in their better, in the now. I am surrounded by people in their 20sand30s who are doing the more challenging things. Treading through cow manure and bird poop because animals grazing on fresh pasture is just that important. 20and30somethings that can maintain hundreds of CSA shares and deliver produce to numerous restaurants. Can build relationships with elderly neighbors and lovely community members. Can sustain an every Saturday farmers market and weekend chores. With love, can split the load of weeding, planting, harvesting, composting, bed prep, deliveries, and animal care because better food systems and quality agriculture practices are just that important. I am confident that their commitment to this work- their curiosity and their discipline- will exceed every impassioned political trend. They are people who wake up each day with a deep sense of the things they value, and a desire to follow through. It's not our heightened awareness in moments of political strife that are the most important. What matters most is our follow through.Fortunately, this time I've spent as a farmer has confirmed my suspicion: passion isn't a prerequisite for disciplined action. I can assure you that the romance of the first strawberry harvest, or the first okra harvest, is followed by itchy arms, welts, and rashes. Gorgeous heirloom tomatoes require months and months of meticulous pruning and pest resistance. Ask any farmer, and they will tell you that farming can often be uncomfortable or taxing. Cute animals on fresh pasture means rotational grazing in the rain (with wet socks and damp clothing) or the sun (even when that sunshine brings temperatures to 100 or more degrees.) Working through poor air quality, extreme heat, or cold, rainy days is often more difficult than many farmers let on. A commitment to a no-till, regenerative farm is a commitment to more work. A commitment to greater intention. And yet it’s still important that we do it anyway.This isn’t to romanticize some sort of martyrdom or self-sacrifice. High suicide rates in the farm sector tells us otherwise. But that our commitment to a better world is often a lot less romantic than we care to admit, and it’s still important that we do it anyway. Farming has shown me that the most critical and revolutionary work is done meticulously and consistently, even if it fails. It has shown me that we are obliged to the process even when crops may one day be taken over by weeds, insects, or diseases. Farming has shown me that we are still obliged to our values even when the euphoric sense of revolution is behind us, not in front.I'd argue that much like farming, true revolution is in the small moments. I love the phrase labor of love that farmer Boyd referenced earlier. Because farming, like any revolution, is laborious long before the love of said labor can ever be witnessed. It is laborious long before the season's first crop is actualized. I think farming has taught me to fall in love with the process just as much, if not more, than falling in love with the outcome. I have found a true revolution in these 20and30somethings.

Tomato Time

The beginning of July. Out with the sweet red of strawberries and in with the red fruit of tomatoes. Red, and orange, yellow, and purple, first green, sometimes pink, solid, striped, and tie dyed. Most of the year we are asked, “Do you have tomatoes yet?” Short answer, yes. When tomatoes are not in our hands and bellies, they live in our hearts and minds. The tomato plant (scientifically called Solanum lycopersicum) is a solanaceous crop, in the family of many familiar foods like eggplant, potatoes, and peppers. All solanaceous crops are flowering, simply put - flowers give way to fruit via pollination. Tomatoes are native to South America and were later cultivated in Europe. So by some geographic technicality, a tomato could be considered a tropical fruit! The Mexican word tomatl turned to the Spanish tomate and then the English tomato. The Italian word for tomato is pomodoro (that pasta pomodoro you love means tomato pasta). Pomodoro translates to “golden apple,” meaning some of the first varieties of tomato grown in Italy were likely yellow. The original wild plants were more ornamental and the fruits were much smaller. After years and years of planting, growing, harvests, and seed saving experiments, the varieties we know and love today came to be. Start to finish, tomatoes are around the farm in some way. Seeds are snuggled up in their bags during the winter, sown in late winter, planted early spring, grown, pruned, and harvested through summer, then finally cut out in the fall.In the early days of March we get busy with sowing. Beefsteak, Cherokee, Sungold, and many, many more (there is even a variety called Kellogg's Breakfast)! It is hard to believe that seeds no bigger than the top of a pin grow to tower over us. After the seeds get cozy for a while with their soil trays warmed by heat mats, they are moved out to our greenhouse to spend time soaking up the sunshine. Once the plants are mature, they are planted into various plots on the farm. There is an entire white high tunnel filled with hundreds of tomato plants. Like most plants, people, and animals, tomatoes appreciate good friends. Nasturtium and marigold flowers are companions to tomatoes, they attract beneficial insects that drive away pests and bees that pollinate. Countless hours are spent trellising and pruning, this supports the plants and ensures they produce fruit all season long. And finally, after months and months of lots of the utmost love and care comes the fruit! Flowers turn to fruit, green gives way to all the beautiful colors and flavors of tomatoes. The harvest is what we look forward to all year long, it is worth the wait and such a joy to share with the community.My personal favorite way to eat tomatoes is straight up, cherry tomatoes are like candy. An heirloom tomato the size of my head, sliced with salt and pepper. I learned this next one last summer, it’s one of those no measurements just do what feels right recipes:Heat a generous amount of olive oil or butter in the pan. Sauté onion, garlic, cherry or diced tomatoes until cooked down into a sauce. Salt and pepper and add herbs to taste. Chop your favorite Third Way Farm sausage, add to the pan and cook to perfection. I personally love the hot Italian, I like to add smoked paprika for an extra kick, too. Serve over pasta, rice, potatoes, or on its own!Paintings! I'm painting tomatoes this weekend.

Summer... is the favorite.

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A Labor of Love

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