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!