Category: Rachel’s Farm Musings

This week we’ve had several students from Maine Media Workshop and College visiting the farm. They follow us around and photograph us at work. Every time we have visitors, I’m reminded to step back, take a breath, and notice the beauty surrounding me here at Hope’s Edge. The birdsong and gentle breeze, the vibrant colors and canopy of blue overhead make this feel like a magical place. And it is! There is magic happening every day as plants, animals, insects,  microbes, and humans interact in a dance of transformation, working to find balance in this ecosystem.

I love the curiosity that a good photographer exudes. A change of angle, a venture into the chicken coop, or the willingness to follow a birdsong to its source can result in a truly unique image. Something ordinary suddenly becomes beautiful when seen from a fresh perspective.

This week we uncovered our kohlrabi, which had been covered with remay to keep the groundhogs out, and discovered beautiful purple orbs with perfectly unblemished leaves! I sent two of the photographers to take a look at it and learned that neither of them had ever tried kohlrabi. Ever adventurous, they both responded enthusiastically when I offered to cut one up for them. It was juicy and delicious and they compared it to cabbage, apple, and radish, which gave me a new perspective on it too.

While one photographer observed me weeding the chard (see photo above), my phone rang. It was Tom! It was the first I’d spoken with him since he started biking. He was in the mountains of eastern Washington, about 150 miles from the Idaho border. The trip was going well so far, he reported, but the combination of mountains and heat had made for some exhausting days! He was looking forward to some slightly less rigorous terrain between Washington and Glacier National Park.

Tom is truly getting a new view of the country after 20 seasons of spending summers almost exclusively within the acreage of Hope’s Edge Farm. New terrain, new climates, new faces and foliage. He has been meeting up with friends here and there along the way and one such friend reported that Tom really seems to be having fun. We’re hoping to hear from him directly in a blog post soon, but he hasn’t been having much luck with internet up in the mountains. He has promised me a paper letter for the blog, which I’ll post here as soon as I receive it!

There are many ways to get a “new view,” be it through travel or just taking a fresh look at your usual surroundings. In either case, there is beauty to be seen and opportunity to learn. What kind of new view will you take this week? Feel free to post in the comments if you are so inspired!

~Rachel

Spring is a season of green. This color is the first to emerge from the dead of winter, slowly at first, then seemingly all at once. The harvest, too, consists mostly of greens: spinach, lettuce, kale, chard, perhaps some scallions and herbs. It always feels exciting to me when we harvest the first colorful roots of the season. How appropriate that we did so on Tuesday of this week: the summer solstice! The glowing orange carrots, once hidden beneath the soil, were like the bright summer sun, suddenly out of hiding!

The summer solstice – the longest day of the year – is a day of light and the shifting of seasons. We are entering the season of bounty! The colors, which began the year in shades of brown and gray, then green, now bloom into a full bouquet. The sun is high overhead in the daytime and fireflies light up the nights. The light is truly at its zenith!

Summer is the season of fruition. Long-held goals and projects are reaching their peak. This is indeed what is happening for your farmers, both near and far! Those tiny seeds we planted in the cold of late winter and nourished through spring will now feed our community with the abundance of summer harvests. All of our planning and preparing is being actualized. As we enjoy the sweet summer carrots and beets here in Hope, Tom is realizing his long-awaited dream of bicycling across the country, sharing lovely, colorful views like this one as he treks through Washington, slowly moving back toward home. 

It was lovely to meet our CSA members last week and we look forward to sharing the rest of the bountiful summer ahead with all of you. As you bite into your first Hope’s Edge carrot of the season, think of the sun, the solstice, and the goals and dreams you yourself will see to fruition this summer!

~ Rachel