We've been cutting lettuce for awhile now – a salad
smattering of eight different varieties we planted in large fabric containers
on the deck; lettuce, and the trio of radish varieties. Together, as spring’s early arrivals, they have been functional foretastes of the summertime
feast to come. Jazzed with the
miscellaneous herbs sharing the morning sun on the deck we have savored the
tender reward for enduring the grocery store winter. The kale has likewise been a welcomed addition
to the stovetop, both the two varieties planted in mid-spring and the row
from last fall that resurrected after winter.
In recent days, however, the harvest has kicked it up a
notch – a few cucumbers among the three varieties climbing their trellises;
squash of four varieties; and cherry tomatoes. Their larger counterparts are
swelling and hanging alluringly on the plants, but are yet too green to even
consider frying. We've learned to
wait. The blackberries are ripening, and surely the peppers won't be too
far behind, along with the okra and eventually the potatoes, though it remains an enduring mystery what will – or won't – become
of the brassicas.
Just commencing, I realize with a smile, are the weeks that validate all the
planning, all the ordering, all the seeding and babying and digging and hoeing: countertops covered with the morning’s
offering; magical lunches and dinners, and eventually steam rattling the lid of
the canning pot when the ingathering overwhelms us, and later, that magical “pop” of the lids securing their
contents.
Just now giddily underway, the season of harvest.
It feels a bit that way about our life here on the
farm. Four years ago we left our lovely
town home perched on a hill in the city and moved to these acres we christened
“Taproot Garden.” Moving anywhere from
anywhere is, I'm convinced, the hardest work in the world, and so our initial
endeavors focused largely on homemaking – unpacking, hanging pictures,
rearranging, walking around, exploring, living; the usual nesting investments
necessary for transforming a living space into a home. Eventually we expanded our interventions –
trimming branches here, removing a tree there; assembling a greenhouse, accumulating
some tools and equipment, and finally sowing a few seeds. In subsequent years we have reached out a
little further and dug down a little deeper into this ongoing education;
adding, subtracting, experimenting,partnering, reading – always reading something else to
learn something more about what we are doing or to explore an idea for we are considering undertaking.
And it feels like the harvest is beginning. Some of those
early seeds are finally fruiting. Others look
promising. Scattered on the countertops
of our souls is a nice and nourishing collection of early pickings. And it feels good.
None of which, of course, offers any permission to sit back and wait for
the ripening. I, who yet knows almost
nothing about what we are doing out here, have already learned that much. Incalculable hours of weeding are out there
in front of us, along with an eye to the sky and a readiness for compensatory watering;
that, plus vigilant anticipation of and preparations for the bugs that are surely on their way.
We, and the garden, are really just getting
started. Summer, in more ways than one, is still young.
That said, it's nice to start seeing how our sweat has
watered the seeds, and to start eating a few of the things we've planted.
