Barnstorming Florists

Today we had two simple tasks -find a barn and find a florist willing to buy my elephant garlic, Allium ampeloprasum, scapes. They're much meatier than typical garlic scapes and they curve less too. Most are still covered in spathe, some opening to reveal green and purple, and about two feet long. 

We found a florist in East Hampton willing to take on 50 stems, but of the six we visited she was the only brave soul. The florist with the spare, sculptural aesthetic in South Hampton was so sure he didn't want them that I decided to give him our lot of samples just for the trying. He was worried they would smell like onions in a hot room or at least that was the reason he gave for passing. I didn't realize we were up against convention at high end florists, but so it is. 

As for barns, well, we handed out lots of cards to guys in front of piles-o-barns. Most said they were maxed out and then sent us down the road to see another farmer. We will be harvesting our first two varieties this week and they're going to have to go into the now cramped (shared) studio if I don't receive any calls over the next two or three days. 

We'll watch the weather closely, because we've had nearly nine inches of rain in the last week which isn't very good for harvest. I would like to harvest the day we leave camp, driving the bulbs in the evening to Brooklyn, but if rain is likely I will need to pull them and drive them back before our stay is up. 

Tomorrow we weed, clearing out the crocus bed, picking Colorado potato beetle nymphs from the potatoes, weeding the few onions that have survived my ill-timed planting. We have tons of pea greens thanks to that absurd quantity of rain last week. They're succulent, nutty, and just delicious, but my neighboring farmer said those I gave him didn't move at his weekly markets because no one knows what to do with them. 

Eat them? People tend to be followers and you have to show people how to cook and eat, otherwise they will pass on these apparently exotic offerings. Maybe I'll go with him to his market and see if I can drum up some interest. 

To relax afterward we stopped into the Parrish Art Museum. I've never been and they have some interesting new digs. Long, like a stretched longhouse or potato barn, the building stands like a sculpture in a meadow. 

Sweet

Cat Shit And Beer Bottles

Must make the best fertilizer. Things grow here in the side yard like mad. I can hardly control them. 

We're leaving for ocean camping soon and it looks like we'll miss only some of the lilies (unless the pickers come round). Meanwhile we'll be tending to the garlic farm while we camp. I've harvested the first of the Beach Farm's garlic, a Turban, on the small side because I didn't fertilize the Beach Farm this spring. They do have great color this year. Their harvest means that the Amagansett farm's early variety will be ready soon. I'll be blogging mobile for the next week -so please excuse the left-justified, fuzzy images.

After The Rains

I could hardly sleep knowing I would be rising at 3:30 in the morning. It didn't help that the upstairs tenants were noisy as always. So, when I awoke at 2:58 am, I got out of bed and readied myself for the drive to the farm. Brooklyn is unsavory at four on a Sunday morning. Still so many people up, yet those who rise early are also about. There is more traffic on the highways than one imagines at that hour. I could relax, however, by the time I made it to Nassau County, and then the road was nearly empty by central Suffolk County, before this part of the Earth rolled into the visible rays of the sun.

Driving through the Hamptons was also a quite hospitable at 5:30 in the morning. Every place I usually turn to for breakfast was still closed on a Sunday morning, but thankfully the chatty, vibrant ladies of Hampton Coffee were open for business before 6 am. And, for those interested, their restroom was spotless.

All was covered in early morning dew.

Hard not to notice the elephant garlic scapes as they rocket to the sky.

The plan is to market these to local florists. Any florists in the house? At what stage are they most appealing -open, closed, half-way?

Generally the field looked better than I imagined given the report from my farming neighbor stating that my field was a pond. The surface water had 24 hours to drain since the last of the rain, and all had from the cultivated rows.

The weeds and the clover cover I planted had grown as expected in the three days since my last visit. Everything, but the garlic, was significantly taller.

At the edge of this year's plot the water still stood.

At the northern extent of my field the water was a few inches deep and the weeds acclimated to the soggy soil made themselves known. I slogged through the mow cut, hardly making it as my boots sunk ankle deep in the mire. I then crossed to the adjacent lower field that had recently been cultivated. A real nightmire.

The field had received nearly 5 inches of rain in 24 hours. That's nearly a month and a half's worth in one-forty-fifth the time. But that doesn't make it any less of a problem for growing a crop that generally accepts dry soil conditions. I can only hope that this soggy condition doesn't exacerbate this spring's growing problems.  I'm also not sure that I can make use of the northern third of my field for garlic. I'll have to work with the Trust to find an equitable solution, possibly drier land.

Checking on flood damage was only one reason to head to the farm. The reason I left so early was to be able to harvest garlic scapes to deliver to my neighboring farm for this week's farmers' market. He needed them by 7 am, and as luck would have it, we both arrived at the gate at exactly the same moment. Unfortunately he had a hard time selling them. Apparently there isn't much taste for the garlic vegetable in the Hamptons. I hope he has better luck at his Thursday market. I also cut 5 pounds (250 scapes) for shipment to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture kitchen. Scape season will be on for another 3 weeks and I hope I can sell more, lest they become compost.

Scape cutting was finished by 8 am, so the remainder of the day belonged to weeding punctuated by breaks designed to alternate from my weeding posture. I walked to the edge of the field and I spotted a remnant of an old plot. Evidently used for growing herbs, it had chamomile flowers, culinary sage, thyme, bronze fennel, and some purple lettuce.

I also discovered this bed of strawberries.

I bumped into a turtle crossing the road. They are such funny and cute creatures.

And I noticed peas growing in the wheat.

Unfortunately, the East Coast just endured yet another bout of heavy rains, only two days since the passing of the last event. The field in Amagansett received 2 inches of rain on top of the five of Friday. Hudson Clove has been socked with all kinds of difficulties this season, but most can be tackled throughh better soil preparation, including grading and amending to compensate for wet soil. After harvest I will be able to concentrate on the good work of preparing the land for next season. Proper liming, adding gypsum, compost, turning under the summer buckwheat crop, contouring for better drainage. That's about all I can do without moving to another field. With luck I will be able to plant some of my garlic in November, but it's too soon to tell. Although I planned to do this to increase my yields and acclimate the planting stock, I may have to buy a significant portion of my planting stock this season to make up for losses. This practice will greatly add to my costs and at some point becomes a deal breaker. 

Suffering A Sea Change

Mayor Bloomberg has announced his plan to combat the effects of rising seas on our urban population and infrastructure. Applause for having a plan, but I want to point to a couple of things.

In NYC, most of us who live on the water do it because its a splendid place to live, but for most of our history the waterfront, if it was occupied at all, was occupied by industry and shipping. The damage to it by flooding was often less critical than it is to the residential and retail space that have replaced it. It is clear, however, that if we didn't build on the boundary of the sea and the land, there would be little to spend billions defending against. The sea and the land are always in flux, giving and taking, and if you want to build something permanent in this space, you best design adaptive structures and infrastructure. All I can say is that we, not the sea, are our own worst enemy. We build directly on the sea, we cause a phenomena that results in sea rise, destroying a generally storm-resilient coastline, and then aim to build a way to protect ourselves from the monster we created. An old, but decent overview of shoreline protection awaits you here.

________________________

Mayor Bloomberg insists that hydraulically fractured gas be kept out of the city's water supply regions. Why? Because he agrees that the risk of polluting our clean water supply is simply too high. Yet he then proposes that the city's response to human-caused global warming is to pump way more gas into the city because it has been considered less harmful to the climate. New pipelines are coming in at every angle, including through the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge and Gateway National Recreation Area. Where is this new gas expected to pipe in from? Of course, it's the fracked states of the Marcellus Shale and maybe one day from our own State of New York. I don't believe in a double standard. If it's too risky for us in the city, it's too risky for everyone.

___________________________

Just a month ago I had a meeting with New Amsterdam Market. I reached out to them last December because I thought their model of bringing high quality, local foods to New Yorkers best matched my farming practice. Their offices were flooded by Hurricane Sandy and they had to relocate, so they were late in responding to my interest. As it so happens, the other reason they took so long to respond to my letter was that they are effectively being removed from the Fulton Fish Market. Yes, as it turns out, the City of New York (which means Bloomberg and Quinn) has envisioned the South Street Historic District, a waterfront, with new development of the residential, retail, and commercial kind. In fact, this plan is embedded in Mayor Bloomberg's plan to protect NYC from future sea level rise! What? Yes, it's true. Even a plan to protect the city from future flooding is an opportunity to develop public spaces with private dollars. Whereas a market with little infrastructure could tolerate occasional flooding, a new mall, hotels, residences and closed food markets will be a disaster to clean up after a flood. It simply makes little sense unless you view it through the lens of big money. As a consequence, this year New Amsterdam isn't having its regular markets. That's just great since they welcomed me to join their market to sell my garlic!

Rain Date

This post describes my June sixth trip to the garlic farm in anticipation of the heavy rains from Tropical Storm Andrea.

I went to Agway to pick up another load of lime and to place my buckwheat order, changing my normal path to route 24 through Flanders. Long Island's famous Big Duck was moved along this road sometime during my adult life, but I remember it moving several times since I was a kid. Long Island was known for potatoes and duck farms, two industries not as common around here these days. Our duck was built in the 1930s and its moniker became architectural terminology to those in the field -a building in the shape of its product is known as a 'duck.'

The trees in the area have finally come into their summer greens and the field grass is just beginning to reach upwards.

The crop  is looking a little better than weeks prior, a general greening up, with the Silverskin strain showing the most improvement. I do not know if this is because I fed them with a calcium-magnesium and Fertrell 3 mix, because it was warming up and drying out, or all of the above. However, the Turban and Asiatic strains generally look poor, making it difficult to identify when to harvest. They are browning down now, but the bulbs are not up to size, nor have fully developed cloves. Given the proximity to harvest, the coming rains will not be all that welcome.

This is the saffron crocus, from green to brown in a month's time. Soon the weeds will completely conceal the crocus and I have no time to hand and knee this plot. These crocus require dry, or at best well-drained, summers and they are not going to get that here. I made this choice when I was under the impression that the Trust would rent Hudson Clove land on the North Fork where there is quick-draining sandy soil. The soil here, Bridgehampton Silt Loam, is a nearly powder fine silt loam that holds water moderately well if not nearly as much as clay. I think for the crocus to survive, I will need to affect the soil drainage significantly. I will also look into digging them up for summer storage and then replanting in late September.

Working a field requires the skill of observation. I have that in droves, but I'm now trained on signs of standing water like never before. Earlier on I had seen indications of moving water, puddles in walking rows, and the tell-tale smoothing of soil where water had stood. In other words, I had seen the micro, the after-effects, but not the big picture, the macro. It wasn't until Cornell had suggested soggy soil as a factor in my unhealthy garlic that I began to notice how thin the cover cropping was adjacent my center rows. The low weed count in this area became another obvious indicator of standing water. Then the contour of the land revealed itself as a pronounced 'bowl'. A new problem, or rather an old one, that now needs to be addressed.

Knowing that rain was on its way, and being early June, I pestered my farming neighbor to mow the cover crops planted last December. The grass was going to seed and the peas were in flower. We were probably a week or two late on this, but it is easy to lose focus when so much else needs to be done. Apparently this pea cover should be mowed down by late May because that is when it has fixed the most nitrogen in the soil. As for the rye, just cut it before it sets seed for added organic matter. Sometime next week, my neighbor will disc it in.

This was the radar while we were out in the field. Hudson Clove's first season on Long Island was book-ended by two tropical storms -Sandy at the start and Andrea toward the finish. How rare on both ends.

I wrapped it up a little earlier than usual, although only ten rows were weeded, as the rain clouds approached. I left before dark.