By Paul Muller

It’s time for a report about goings on here at the farm, a middle of May update. For many of you, with years of farm letters and CSA experience, reading about spring frost or blooming pomegranates becomes a late spring ritual: Yes, there will be a few pomegranates in November! We passed the late spring frosts without a major hit, unlike 2008. Our tomatoes are transplanted, and the stakes are going into the ground to support the soon-to-be six foot vines. The chickens keep escaping and any time now we expect to see the first of new chicks and protective moms emerging from their secluded nesting spots. That means baby roosters, soon to be adolescent rooster voice tryouts, and noisy summer 4:00 a.m. songfests of “er-a-er-a-er” — just trying out for American Rooster Idol, “Wake upâ how do I sound?” Sorry, I got off on a chicken tangent… Yea, we are pretty regular up here and perhaps a tad bit boring.

However, our newer members aren’t familiar with the spring report. Although the goings on occur with regularity, there is a bit of change every year, so oldsters can rock to the rhythm while newer CSA members can get some feel for what is happening on the farm. In this third week of May, we have about 60 folks working full time, usually 6 days a week, 6:30 am to 4:30 pm. They are picking, hoeing, packing, planting, thinning, planning, selling, mowing, composting, accounting, repairing, organizing, staking, tying, cultivating, teaching, answering phones, feeding, milking and tending animals, loading, irrigating, delivering, bunching, and trying to organize some event or another. That’s the regular stuff. At 6:00 a.m. some crew members arrive to load truck. Everyone else arrives half an hour later to focus on the pick and pack. Tractor drivers and irrigators are given priorities, and tractors roar to life. Pick crews gather numbers and prioritize picking. The most heat sensitive crops get picked first. This week, we are finishing peas, close to the end of lettuce, broccoli is looking for cool weather that seems to be more coastal than Capay Valley, and strawberries and asparagus are gasping for heat relief. These crops will soon be done for the year.

We push into this seasonal transition with a better idea of how the spring has treated our crops. First of all, it has been a good start for peaches and most of the stone fruit — first peaches and apricots in June! Grapes have set and seem to be abundant. We now must thin, train vines, pull leaves and manage clusters to be harvested starting in late July. Walnuts are so-so. Our main walnut variety, Serr, is kind of alternate bearing. Last year there was a good crop, but this year the trees might as well have gone to the Bahamas — there wont be many up there come October. Almonds are somewhat the same but for different reasons. Early varieties were blooming during a February rain, bees stayed indoors and the blooms fell due to a lack of interest. Later varieties, Non-pareil and Mission set nuts in clearer and warmer weather. The citrus has gone through a redolent bloom and we wait to see how the crop has set, while pears and apples have decided to largely take a break this year — the crop is light.

We are prodding the summer crops along. Basil is soon to be appearing in your boxes. Summer squash is blooming and is a couple of weeks away. The first melons are flowering. Tomato plants are beyond knee high and the first cherry tomato flowers are setting and will produce ripe fruit toward the end of June. Pancho leads a crew that will stake, train and tie these plants to support the coming crop of heirloom tomatoes. Flowers are still abundant and glorious. The flower crew, led by an intrepid Isobel, emerges from 6 foot high larkspur and cornflowers with heavy bunches of blue and powdery white flowers slung over their shoulders. Ricardo is both discing cover crops into the soil to build fertility for new crops, and incorporating old crops. We are also planting summer cover crops to keep soil covered and to renew fields spent from a harvest of winter crops. Hay fields are cut and in the bale and must be set aside to feed the sheep next winter when the fields are wet. It is a wonderfully busy place, each season with its own defining activities and rhythm.

We have a small farm in the relative scale of California agriculture. I am however, always taken by the incredible productivity of this system. Trucks full of produce leave each day for markets. I am amazed by the number of crew families that are supported by farm enterprises and the labor that takes place here each day. However, I also think often of the different day to day realities between urban and rural. It seems that the design needs reconsideration. Other than the CSA model or direct farm sales, there has grown a wall of separation between the seed sown and the products on the shelves of most markets. The evolution of the present food system, for all of its incredible abundance is suffering from that disconnect. Most farmers feel threatened by the challenges of growing and marketing their labors for a value that will allow them to continue far into the future. There seems to be different language spoken by food producers and urban counterparts. Tho we all hope for a healthy ecology underlying a regenerating and productive food system, an investment in that productivity requires a new conversation and new attention to the language of springtime work.

Farmers may need to be compensated for stewardship as a social priority beyond crop yield alone. Farms can sequester carbon while growing healthy crops and healthy resilient ecologies around the farm. The greatest mark of our new design might be a spring time newsletter 50 or 100 years from now that tells of hens emerging from their tall grass hideaways with a clutch of new chicks, or the ripe strawberries being the sweetest in the memory of parents, grandparents and children sharing a springtime abundance with a farm community.