Summer Note From the Fields

Flower Harvest

The solstice.  The peak of summer bursts with colors and flavors on the farm.  The green of the grass and leaves, the blue sky, the orange of a fresh Sungold tomato and the yellow of a golden beet are as vivid and brilliant, I want to name all my crayons after them.  The flavors are clear as a single bell, a taste of one strawberry from our edible front year is the platonic ideal of all strawberries, juicy and unmistakable.  

This year on the farm, we’ve been getting the first taste of our labor from the fruit trees.  Our first tart cherry harvest consisted of just two cherries, but their flavor whetted my appetite for future pies.  The five juneberries we had on the farm alerted me to when to forage for these in the city.  I’ve heard the cycle of growth of perennials described as “sleep, creep, leap”, and this has born out for us.  In 2014, the first year we had pear trees on the farm, I saw almost no growth; the sleeping pears were investing in their roots.  Year two saw a bit of a difference, and for the pears that we planted in 2014, we can see the leap of their third year.  Some of the pear trees have already put on 3 feet of new, green growth just this year.

In the meantime, the annual crops we grow, from the splashy and spicy nasturtium flowers to the sweet candy of the sungold cherry tomatoes, the sugary yet grounded earthiness of the beets to the creamy crispness of the hakurei salad turnips, satiate and nourish us.  Thank goodness the days are long this time of year – more time to work, play, preserve the burst of summer flavor and capture the colors of summer  in jars to store for winter.