Our family is participating in community supported agriculture for the first time this year and have received our first two baskets – lots of leafy stuff in these early days of summer. But also radishes and beets… We receive an email the day before each delivery of vegetables, and I thought I’d share the first part of that email, from Nora Johnson:
Every spring we never fail to be excited by the way our farm, which has lain quiet through the long winter months, comes to life around us. It begins, in late March or early April, with the sound of the wood frogs and spring peepers and grows in intensity. The greenhouse is a warm spot even before all the snow has melted and there is always a toad or two who emerges there in the spring.
This year one of our resident toads made its home in one of the flats of tomato seedlings and during the heat of the day it would burrow under the loose seedling soil. When I watered the tomato plants it would scrunch down and blink its eyes.
Garter snakes also like the greenhouse in the spring for its warmth so I always keep my fingers crossed for the toads.
These mornings, if you’re awake to hear it, the dawn chorus of bird song is almost deafening. There are spiders everywhere in the garden hurrying here and there with their egg sacs. While weeding this week I came across a garter snake curled up under a radicchio leaf. Bumble bees have made a nest above the straw-bale cabin doorway.
Birds with nests nearby scold me while I hang up the clothes on the line in the field and when I water the seedlings by the barn. Jamie and I love to watch the swallows swoop and dive over hawthorn garden in the late afternoon as they hunt for insects.
The ‘beet green’ picture is from the flickr creative commons: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliepics/
encrusted words 
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