lettuce love

Well, strawberry season is well underway, and this week we opened up the fields for “U-Pick.” It all feels quite festive. For the past few days it’s been all about strawberries and peas—shelling peas and snap peas, both of which are almost as sweet as the berries. I think these things remind people of their childhoods, though it could be just me. They’re tokens of those years when summer wasn’t simply a reprieve from the winter, but brought something more magical with it.

When they first started coming in last week, the berries were perfect, beautiful little specimens—I’m talking stock-photography strawberries. I’ll post my pictures of them here. On the other hand, the ones now arriving from the fields are massive and mutated, like Siamese twins. Sometimes you can see clearly the place where two berries have fused. It’s as if they were trying to eat each other in the fields. Because they’re strawberries, I find this image kind of sweet, not at all cannibalistic. Even strawberries can’t resist each other.

the stock-photo berries

group hug!

Speaking of vegetative love, our “couplets” of lettuce have caught my imagination. These are the heads that are too small to sell on their own, so they get bagged and sold in pairs. One green-leaf head sits comfortably beside one red-leaf head, and the resulting couple goes by several different names, depending on who you talk to, including a “frilly,” a “fuzzy,” a “couplet,” and a “couple.” In any case, it’s a romantic concept. As we were sorting through lettuce heads this morning, Penny pulled out a particularly tiny green one and told me he definitely needed a friend. She’s apt to refer to her vegetables with pleasant personification. She advises me that keeping the displayed veggies fresh and hydrated is all about thinking like a vegetable.

I’m working on getting into a more vegetal state of mind (short, that is, of going into a coma...). Beet greens have replaced spinach in my dreams.

strawberries!

The strawberries have arrived! We now have the first of this year’s crop, from Maxwell's Farm in Cape Elizabeth. The farm stand is thick with their heavy sweet scent. Though for a week customers had been asking why we didn’t have strawberries yet, everyone who came in yesterday seemed pleasantly surprised: “Strawberries? Already?” As if the berries had only been a dream that no one expected to come true.

As of yesterday, ours had not yet ripened, due – as Susan and Penny explained – to a difference in microclimates between the two regions of our town. Jordan’s end of Cape is just enough colder that our strawberries need a few more days.

Now that it’s finally hot out, we at the farm stand have been watering flowers and icing vegetables like crazy. At my old job I used to ice cupcakes – now, I ice turnips and radishes and beet greens. Beet greens wilt fast, but it’s easy to forget to replenish their steadily melting bed of ice. Which reminds me that I am still, solidly, the rookie around here. The newest face here – Emily, who started this week – is a recent college graduate who’s been working summers at Jordan’s since she was about ten years old…

fresh from the fields!

father's day

Yesterday, the sun finally broke through after a few days of torrential rain. In an open farm stand vulnerable to all the whims of temperature and wind, it’s hard not to comment on the weather, and everyone was in a sunny mood as they contributed their insight on the sunshine. I spent the loveliest part of the afternoon weeding the herb garden and enjoying the warmth.

I had Father's Day off and I celebrated it with my dad and some of the fruits of my coworkers' labors. At Susan's recommendation, we had radishes with butter and sea salt. Susan's a great cook and customers are always asking her for advice on how to prepare their veggies. In particular, this past week we've had the last of a fiddlehead crop which has befuddled many of our customers. Fuddled by fiddles.

Father's Day has satisfied, for now, my childhood obsession with radishes. It's not exactly their flavor—although I like them just fine, and appreciate their personality—but I've had a soft spot for radishes ever since Peter Rabbit stole them from Mr. MacGregor's garden in Beatrix Potter's children's book. That little book made radishes look so appealing!

I haven't started taking photos yet, but I promise I will soon. In the meantime, here is a picture of Peter Rabbit. Don't his veggies look delicious?

first week

Friday marked the close of my first week at Jordan’s Farm. Like any first week, it’s been a storm of new faces, unfamiliar routines, and a few tricky customer questions. But I think I’m beginning to settle into life here: for the past few nights I’ve dreamed about spinach. In my first week, I’ve washed and packed so many bags of spinach and lettuce that leaves march across my eyelids as I sleep, and when I see a wilted leaf on the street I feel the urge to pluck it up and toss it in the compost bucket.

Week one has been about getting the lay of the farm stand. It’s a sweet building with wide, open front doors that let in delicious breezes—a perk most cashiers certainly don’t get. When I arrive in the mornings, Susan has already arranged the day’s vegetables beautifully. One of my jobs is to keep them looking “gorgeous,” primping and preening them with a spray bottle of cool water and invisible waves of affection.

After a cold spring and a damp, chilly week (“You should have been here three weeks ago,” my coworker Jamie told me, shivering at the memory), summer is finally starting to assert its presence. I'm looking forward to my rookie season.

Rachel and some good old salad-packing