bye bye berries

Unfortunately, the rain I wrote about wiped out a lot of our already-ripened strawberries. The ones that were still green when the rains hit have mostly been picked, sold, and eaten as the season winds down for the year, although Penny says we'll probably be harvesting them in smaller amounts until the end of the weekend. For the past few days I've been singing a chorus of "No-I'm-sorry-we're-out-for-the-day-maybe-tomorrow-we-really-can't-guarantee" to a parade of disappointed customers.

It's reinforced that fact for me: in farming, you just can't guarantee. At the bakery where I used to work, nothing couldn't be done - if it wasn't in the display case, chances were we could bake or frost or fill it out back. But at the farm stand, it's up to mother nature. Customer service is not exactly what nature's about, and unfortunately a lot of people have to go home berryless. On the bright side, blueberry season isn't too far off...

In other news, I've finally figured out how to get my photos onto the computer! I plan on going back and adding them to my previous posts. Penny says she doesn't know how I function without a smart phone - I like my old-fashioned technology, my dumb phone and digital camera, but even they can be tricky to figure out...

beet greens ready to be washed

these were the early days, when there were only a few veggies to put out

the flowers are starting to look colorful

they become lovely little bouquets like this one by the register

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!