First Share

I'd been away from New Roots Farm for two weeks as work and travel intervened. Yesterday I returned to the farm that is now well into the growing season. Rows and rows of vegetables, warmed by Reemay (a light polyester covering), are lush and some are ready for harvest.

The first share of the CSA was doled out this week to 75 members. Each member received gorgeous heads of lettuce, bunches of scallions, garlic scapes, white turnips, and rainbow-colored Swiss chard. After spending the morning gathering some of this food for the CSA shares and planting winter squash and pumpkins, I left on my mountain bike with a backpack full of these same vegetables.

As soon as I got home I created a huge green salad with sliced turnip for lunch. Much of the Swiss chard was chopped and sauteed with garlic and crushed red pepper as a dinner accompaniment. The scallions and garlic scapes await a stir-fry. Our own sugar snap peas are just forming pods, maybe soon enough for the stir-fry.

Last week I spent a few days with mom and dad at Winterberry Farm. They lease some of their land to Brookfield Farm (which I've written about many times), a CSA with more than 400 members. Some years ago my parents conserved their land through the Massachusetts farmland protection program known as APR. The road signs (see below) were put up just recently.

The growing season in western Massachusetts is always a week or two ahead of us here in southeastern New Hampshire. As I walked the back forty at Winterberry Farm I was amazed at the lushness of the potato plants growing on some of our fields. So far it seems to be a relatively pest-free season.

Rows of potatoes at Winterberry Farm