Green Gulch Farm, September - Goodbye, Apprenticeship!

September. It was incredible, busy, and incredibly busy. Here's an overview of some of the things that happened:

- Potato Dig!
We hosted the broad community on the farm to dig spuds. It was great; we dug about 80 boxes (!) of potatoes.


- Food Awareness Month
We've re-activated an environmental action and awareness group at Green Gulch, the "Ecosattvas". Our first major endeavor was to designate September as a month to raise our community awareness about food and environmental issues around food production. September is a traditional harvest month, in the northern hemisphere, so it seemed appropriate to delineate the month this way, and our group is very passionate about local, healthy, organic food systems. We had a number of activities for the residents here, and for the broader community, aimed at celebrating food and looking at food systems. The crowning event was our annual Harvest Dinner and Dance. We prepared food from the farm, and the farm and garden crews did the cooking (with some highly valuable help from the kitchen crew). The menu:

--> Foraged Foods Salad (ONLY wild ingredients were used, except the dressing!)
--> Stuffed Magda Cousa zucchini with Indian spicy red sauce
--> Potato Masa Griddle Cakes
--> Rose Geranium Pound Cake, Apple Pie, Fresh Blackberries, Ice Cream
--> Wild Juice - recipe from Juicey Lucy (thanks!), with nettles and kale and loveliness

Then, after the feast, we danced! It was a real, down home square dance, and it was fantastic fun. 2 hours of foot stompin, whirling fiddlin fun. We decorated the pool deck with christmas lights and kerosene lanterns, and it was lovely.

We also made a Food Miles map for produce purchased for the Green Gulch kitchen (that coming from outside of Green Gulch). This spurred ideas to create an ongoing list of foods and food miles for many different ingredients in the kitchen, and that project is still active. We posted a "Pick of the Week", a poster featuring a vegetable of the week.

All in all, Food Awareness Month was a resounding success, with lots of discussion around food and food politics.

- Ending of the Farm Apprenticeship
The apprenticeship ended in October, but everyone was keenly aware of the close coming, of our 6 months together as a crew, and for us as apprentices. Two of the apprentices were departing for other venues, so there was a bittersweet tone to the whole thing - celebrations and goodbyes. To mark the ending of this moment, the farm treated the apprentices and staff to dinner at Greens Restaurant. The feast was glorious, positively. We had a kitchen tour with Annie Somerville, the head chef and long-time friend of Zen Center (see photo).


We had some donations of wine, and the weather cleared up for an exquisite sunset, which we could see perfectly out the soaring windows. A night i will remember for a long, long time. It was so lovely to celebrate with the crew, and to share a beautiful meal together.

So then it became October. On our last day of work, two of our friends came down to the farm and serenaded us while we worked! Cutting arugula and listening to angelic voices harmonize - it was like a fairy tale, and it made my last day really special.



For my birthday, and during my break between the apprenticeship and the beginning of Practice Period, i took off for a 3-day backpacking trip to Yosemite National Park. The weather was incredible - sunny and warm during the day, clear and cold at night. I soaked up the sun, and felt so much joy being in the cool mountain air of the mountains.

Yosemite is vast, and i was stunned by the beauty all around me, all the time. It was really magical and i hope to go back someday, for longer to explore more.

Now we've started Practice Period - a 2 month period of intensive Zen study and practice. The schedule is more focused on Zen practice, less on farm work, although i am still working on the farm. However, due to this turning inward, as i've heard it called here, i plan to take a break from posting and blogging until after the practice period ends (Dec 7th). Until then! Go forth, be well, and take your place.

Green Gulch Farm, early August

The sun! The sun! We FINALLY have some sun. Not everyday, but sometimes, in the afternoon. Its glorious, positively glorious. I was thinking at how strange this seems sometimes. I had an email from a friend in St Louis, MO, talking about how beastly hot it is there. And i remember being there, and the beastly hot, and thinking about how a place with cool, cloudy, wet days seemed like a dream come true. So then, now that i have that, it doesn't seem so nice.

I've been noticing how a large part of what i think about is being off somewhere else - somewhere from my past, a pleasant memory, somewhere that i want to go, from my future or fantasy. Either way - its so often somewhere ELSE. Even when i see, everyday: dragonflies in blue and red, hummingbirds playing and perching near me, flowers of myriad shape, color and scent exploding into being, wonderful food prepared for me, work in the soil and playing with plants, and exquisite company of friends and loved ones. How can i want to be anywhere else? Yet i am. Today, there was a ceremony, at the end of an intensive retreat. One person asked the teacher: when i sit here, from dusk until dawn, my mind is off wandering the hills, roaming all about. What can it possibly be looking for? Answer: the place between dusk and dawn.

A friend and i were noticing together our absence from each moment, and agreed to make lists of what we see, sense and appreciate each day. Here are some of the things i've seen in the past few weeks, that have presented themselves as gifts:

Coyotes, on the farm fields
Bobcat adult and cub
Ravens
Pink lilies, erupting suddenly from nowhere on a long stem, pink flower trumpet
Old friends
Point Reyes - seabirds, juvenile gray whales, California sea lions
Stories of family of river otters (otter pups!) in the farm fields
New friends
The stars, emerging from the fog cloud cover
Pink clouds and eggshell sky of dusk, with bright moon rising over Coyote Ridge
Redwoods towering and gigantic over the boardwalk at Muir Woods
Fresh beets, just washed and bunched
The scent of red kale in bunches, freshly picked
Blackberries off the bush
Apple pie
Caramel the cat, sleeping basking in the sun
Lunchtime dip in the cool reservoir after the sun emerged and made the work hot
Folding laundry, surrounded by deer and fawns



There are many, many things that i am grateful for, and the more i think about it, the more there are. Now the trick is to turn the things that i dislike around, into things i am also grateful for. That one is much, much more difficult than recognizing the things i do already notice as gifts.

Also, there are the ravens. The ravens, ravishing the fields! Mischievous? Hungry? Its unclear. But they are here. And we've begun to cover the entire new plantings with floating crop cover, to keep them from pulling out our plants and leaving them to desiccate and die. So we've managed to keep the crop cover on the new plantings, but we lost the majority of the lettuce in planting 9 to the ravens. We made an heroic effort, and planted and re-planted, but to no avail. The birds still came and pulled everything out again, and so there will be a stretch when we may be without much lettuce to offer.

So at this point, we're harvesting almost everything that we will or have grown this season: brassicas (kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, red mustard), lettuce, beets, spinach, herbs (dill, cilantro, parsley), leeks, scallions, potatoes, summer squash, dandelion greens, foraged greens (nettles, purslane), chard.



My favorite items to harvest are beets and potatoes. I find it completely satisfying to root around in the soil for tubers. We've completed our last major sowing for the season, and we continue to sow lettuce for the kitchen garden (that's where we plant and harvest baby lettuce, mostly for restaurant sales). So it feels like the 5th month of this apprenticeship: we have a good idea of the crops we harvest, and generally what goes into harvesting and packing out, and then disseminating to the world.

We've had some other pesky pests, like flea beetles, and the California quail have been munching some of the lettuce, but nothing is so devastating as the ravens have been. So, we keep on keeping on, and try to do what we can and ask a lot of questions and make great effort. This feels good.

Green Gulch Farm, July

Well. Its been a whirlwind of a month! There were lots and lots of Things happening - roughly ten thousand. So here's the recap:

1 - my dear friend Kate visited, and helped on the farm for a few days.



2 - Then there was the 4th of July, we went to the Marin County Fair.


3 - The next day, on the 5th of July, Green Gulch had their annual Interdependence Day celebration, with kooky costumes. Myself and my compadre Sam co-emcee'd the event. It was tons of fun.



4 - Then, i went to Colorado for a week! It was a fantastic, spectacular trip, full to the brim with visiting family, seeing friends, and participating in my dear friends', Ariella and Erik's wedding. I was honored to perform their commitment ceremony, in the mountains under the crisp blue Colorado sky, evergreens swaying in the grass filled meadows of the Rocky Mountain foothills.


5 - Then back in Green Gulch, i went to work at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market for the first time (we rotate who works there between apprentices).

6 - Friends that i met from the wedding, came to end their across-the-US trip in San Francisco.

This has all been lovely, and full, and rewarding. Other things have been happening too, not quite as lovely, but just as important in the dance of life. Its been cold, and socked in with fog here (actually, its more like cloudy, and sometimes misty), for virtually the entire month. We'll get bouts of sun, sometimes in an afternoon, but the routine has changed on the farm so we all bundle up good before heading out to work now. Also, the raven/crows have been wreaking havoc in the fields. They pulled up ALL of our lettuce from our most recent planting. Its quite disturbing; i have it from an expert that they are probably eating seeds. However, in order to do that, they tear out our newly planted starts (they don't bother much with the direct-seeded crops) and toss the starts a-skelter. So we found rows of crops torn out the ground, and we feverishly replanted. After doing this several times, with considerable effort, and we covered the brassicas with floating crop cover cloth, we put up a scarecrow (well, my hero Marshall put up the scarecrow) and we waited. The ravens pulled out all of the lettuce, despite all of these noble efforts on our part to thwart their mayhem. So, there has been a hold put on the new planting: until we can re-stock with enough floating crop cover to cover the entire planting, its not worth it to spend the time putting starts in the ground. Its depressing, because we all know there will be a few weeks (more?) without much lettuce. And, lettuce is our major crop - its the thing we sell the most of. So i'm feeling a little wary of when that day comes, that we can't bring (much) lettuce to the markets. We'll see - maybe it won't be so dire.

All for now - i'll be posting again more frequently now, just a hiatus with all the chaos of July. Go forth. Try hard. Enjoy yourself. Watch your step. Take care of your practice.

Farmer Monk Pride

Last weekend was the Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. San Francisco Zen Center has a float in the parade every year, thanks to the efforts of some vigilant practitioners at City Center. A few of us from Green Gulch decided to participate, and we brought flowers and rainbow chard decorations from the farm. It was glorious. The parade was stunning - it was huge, with these large, motorized, loudspeakered, dance-music, hordes of people floats. It was so uplifting to see so many people gathered, in the parade and as spectators, to celebrate queer pride and diversity. Our float was decidedly different than many of the others around us. We were quiet (no loudspeakers), not-dancing, carrying parasols or rainbow chard, or sitting zazen on a flatbed truck. So what warmed my heart completely was the outpouring of support from the crowd. People cheered so loudly for us - it was so uplifting. I had this ear-to-ear grin the whole time.

I felt so cheered up by the whole thing, and by the city's embrace for the cause. The streets all over town (not just The Castro) were decked out in rainbow flags. It was a full, city-wide-feeling event. I am also really glad that Zen Center has a presence in the weekend's festivities. No one is excluded from Zen Center based on their sexual orientation.

The past couple of weeks have been great, and mad. So busy, with the markets going now, and harvesting 3 days a week plus all the other normal stuff. It feels good, but it does feel like more of a workout now than it did before the markets started.

The next couple of weeks are busy, too, and i might take some time off from posting as i have friends visiting and then going to Colorado for a vacation and wedding. Here's a photo of a farm dinner we threw together last week - it was glorious! Almost everything, from food grown on the farm.



Eat well, be well!

Green Gulch Farm, wk 9

Planting
Harvesting
All-day all-women's sitting
Tea ceremony with Tracy-sempai
Contra dancing
Organizing the CSA program
Sunday farm stand sales
Pie for snack



We completed the planting in record time this time - we went well into lunch, but we finished before 13.00, with no extra help. We must be getting faster! I think its the harvest. We're all in this speed-mode now, after having harvested 3 weeks now, and we're getting faster and more comfortable. Plus, when i see Emila or Sarajane harvest, i realize that i COULD be going about ten times faster than i am. But with practice, i feel i have gotten faster...i just think i now have this theme of barreling through everything at TOP speed, ingrained in my blood and bones. Also, the soil was particularly soft and forgiving for the first few beds of the planting. We planted "the usual" - two hundred thousand lettuces (not really, but a lot), brassicas (brocc, cauliflower, cabbage, kale), chard, beets, spinach.

We've been having some trouble with the crops that we direct seed in the fields: beets and spinach, mainly (plus some of the herbs). We're not sure why there are problems, but there are these long patches where nothing germinates, and then there are other areas where the plants are really puny, if they ever germinate at all. Its a little frustrating, because we harvest a shedload (hmm, that's about 9 boxes or so) of spinach every week.

It was glorious and warm over the weekend. There was a new moon, and i had the privilege and pleasure to attend an all-women's day long sitting with Wendy Johnson and Linda Ruth Cutts. I enjoyed it a lot - they had adorned the altars in the meditation hall with items representing the four elements, plus symbols of our connection to nature and the ocean. There was some illuminating discussion of some of the figures in the meditation hall, such as Kuan-Yin, who is standing atop two dragons of compassion, each of whom have a pearl of wisdom in their mouths. She is pouring compassion into their mouths, and she holds a mudra which we practiced with (one-handed, the "OK" symbol in the USA).

I also had the sheer pleasure of going out dancing over the weekend - except i have realized i hit the wall of exhaustion much sooner now that i get up before the crack of dawn every day. Its been a bit funny, because this week we had a later schedule, interim schedule, where we get up a bit later - but i'm still totally tired. Go figure.

Anyway, things roll on, and the farm is bursting with food. We're becoming more of an oiled machine, by the week. We also had our first person go on vacation (Dan! We've missed you!) and its quite striking how much we seem to bond and depend on each other, for sharing work and moral support. It was highlighted by the absence (of more than a day) of one of the crew, for me.

Green Gulch Farm, wk 8 - 2 Months! Tired and Happy.

I guess it makes sense that i've been here 2 months. There were a couple of signs, this week, that made me realize that i'm no longer a newcomer here.
- not all tasks are brand new
- we completed the sowing without much supervision from staff
- i'm no longer even tempted to make jokes about "hoeing"
- "the reefer" seems like a perfectly normal name for the walk-in refrigerator down on the farm
- many extraordinary things (Muir Beach, growing vegetables, seedlings, redwood trees, wildflowers) seem ordinary now
- we've started harvesting and selling the food that we put in the ground when i first got here

Last week was a crazy-week. Usually, we either have sowing or planting - last week we did both, because we were planting cucurbits (summer and winter squash). We only plant squash once in the season, like potatoes, instead of the other crops where we have multiple plantings of each crop. So it was squash planting time, and we also harvested for both farmer's markets (our first week at Ferry Plaza on Saturdays). We worked hard, and we rallied together, and got everything done. It felt good, and it felt like we had really given the tasks a solid effort. I was tired, and happy to be providing food to people in a local market - healthy local food. Its a miracle to me, that we can do this, but in the same breath i'd say that we are changing the world by doing this. Each person, each leaf of kale, bunch of spinach and clove of green garlic makes someone's life healthy and delicious (including mine).

We also had students (9th graders) from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco visiting, working on the farm for an hour each day last week. The students in this freshman class had been taking a course on Meditation and Mindfulness for the past year, and they were also studying water systems. I worked with a small group of the students each day, doing different tasks with them. Each day, i asked my group to try our practice of working in (functional) silence for a bit. After we finished work, i asked the students to reflect on their experience on the farm, and they had diverse and rich insights into their work and the farm. Some of them liked working in silence, others found it difficult or distracting. I guess i was surprised that any of them liked it at all, and there were some other lovely comments about how they noticed the sounds and scents of the farm (birds, green growing plants) when they were working. I was a little nervous to work with the students, and then in the end i felt very uplifted to have shared this piece of the world and a glimpse of our food system with them.

I also attended the 4th installation of a San Francisco Zen Center series commemorating Suzuki Roshi's book, "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind". The series is called "The Experts Mind", and there were two visual artists presenting their work and vision last Thursday evening. I was feeling tired, but i was so delighted to learn about these two artists and their work. The first presenter was Arthur Ganson. He has made a series of "delicate machines" - complex gears and wheels and cranks and shafts, all clicking along and turning, but made of material as fragile as paperclips. He is interested in technology and computers and art, and the intersection of the three - and i was completely captivated by his ideas.

The second presenter was Elizabeth King. She's a sculptor and animator and painter and glass-blower - and an absolutely fascinating person. She had such a passion for what she is doing - she wanted to know the intimate details of all the materials she works with, and she has studied these details for years. She makes a lot of sculptures of the human body, and especially the head, and she studied how to make glass eyes. She had this infectious interest in what she was doing; she seems to want to know everything there is to know about how to make a replica of a person. I couldn't help but be moved by this enthusiasm and passion. I decided its no so unlike any of our lives - if we are really moved by something, we might be best served by pursuing it relentlessly, until something shifts.

I received news that my friend Tanya gave birth to a healthy baby girl! I am overjoyed at this news. She was overdue, and i was glad to hear the news. These momentous miracles are all around us, and i wish to acknowledge them and give thanks that i'm here to witness any of it.

Onward!

Green Gulch Farm, wk6+7

So much happens in a week, it sends me reeling when i sit down to write. One of the things i'm noticing is how many different moods, different modes, different emotions i can have in the span of a week. Its wild, really. A lot happens, even if seemingly nothing is happening.

But i was talking about the plants and the farm, too! We planted the 4th (?) planting in the fields last week - we barely squeaked it in, just in time for the rain! It was some major rain, too. We planted the same things as before: lettuce (lots!!), brassicas, and a host of other things in smaller quantities: parsely, flowers (Nicotiana).

We had a work-party in the Kitchen Garden (the hand-worked section of the farm), so its looking well cleaned up as compared to before. We've turned all the cover crop in, on the KG beds, so its looking really nice. We planted lettuce and arugula, and we cleaned up the edible flower beds (Nasturtium, borage, Calendula) and chives.

Last week we also harvested for market (Mill Valley farmer's market, Fridays 9.00-14.00). Our plants from the first field planting are big enough to harvest! So exciting. We brought to the market: red mustard bunches, kale, spinach, salad mix, head lettuce, green garlic, herbs - chives, thyme, mint. We harvested in a downpour, but despite that, it was really fun to see the harvest (photo courtesy Dan).



Things start to make more sense (the boxes! all the crazy types of boxes and storage and systems) after seeing that. I feel like i don't harvest very fast yet, but hopefully with time i'll get more efficient. My manager said to me that she doesn't know very much about farming, really - that with all of her experience on farms, the main thing she knows how to do is harvest. Since we spend so much time harvesting, that makes sense to me.

We have so many varieties of lettuce. I'm beginning to learn some of them. But its sort of mind spinning:
- Galisse
- Tango
- Natividad
- Breen
- Brunia
- Baby oakleaf
- Greenleaf
- Aerostar
Its amazing - its fun to learn them, since mainly i know them from the sowings and i can't identify each variety yet. But we're getting there. I also learned (er, re-learned?) last week that Swiss chard and beets are the same plant! And i learned that all peas (green peas, snow peas, snap peas) are all the same species, Pisum sativum L., just different variants or subspecies.

Happy Memorial Day! I think this is a good day to envision a world where we all listen to each other, and resolve our conflicts peacefully, and take pride in our culture and heritage.

Green Gulch Farm, wk5

Lots happening on the farm. We planted part of the 3rd field, we had birthday celebrations for our May farm birthdays, we took a field trip to the Edible Schoolyard at MLK middle school in Berkeley. See photos of the Edible Schoolyard trip, here. It was incredibly inspiring, to learn about the Edible Schoolyard, and the massive changes that have taken place at the middle school, since the project began. Not only is there now a green space and active garden space producing food that the kids eat and enjoy, the program has worked with the school to change the cafeteria - building a new building equipped with a full kitchen where cafeteria staff cook and prepare meals from scratch. This is all a complete opposite, to what was there before 1995: where the garden is now was a paved acre of unused, neglected blacktop. There was no cafeteria: the school cafeteria lay fallow, doors locked as the school didn't have enough money to keep it open. Instead, there was a trailer outside on the basketball courts, where the only thing students could buy to eat was a "walking taco" - a bag of chips with beans and heated cheese poured into the bag. Now every student in the school has to attend some program in the Edible Schoolyard garden and kitchen - so they are exposed to elements of gardening (growing plants, tilling the land, working with farm animals, e.g.), plus cooking. We sat in on a 7th grad "Iron Chef" competition, where teams of ten kids were given the same ingredients to work with, and they had to create delicious and thoughtful dishes in 45 minutes. I almost cried when one girl was explaining how she made the salad dressing with rice vinegar AND red wine vinegar.

I was also really impressed with the diversity of crops being cultivated at the Edible Schoolyard. From flowers to fruit, vegetables, grains and animals (chickens) - there's a wide variety to learn about and work with. Good job, Alice Waters - thanks for making this program, and inspiring other communities to take up similar mantles.

Back on our farm, plants are growing! The plants from our first planting here - now a month in the ground - are getting BIG! Its totally exciting. And, the potatoes are up. Things are humming right along. The fog has started, and some rain. They tell me the rain is unseasonable at this time here. That's all for this week!

First things first

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Originally uploaded by n_yoder

Ok, so the biggest thing that happened this week: Farm Baby!!! Our Farm Advisor (she was Farm Manager last year, but is out on maternity leave this year) gave birth to a healthy baby boy! Frank David. Its so completely exciting, and to be around an infant just after its born - a rare and precious gift. And now Mother's Day - so special. We've been rejoicing on the farm.

We also had some other things happening, but the arrival of Frank David was certainly the knock-your-socks-off event. We cultivated the field crops, which is a fancy way of saying we began an ongoing process of disturbing the soil around the plants in the field rows, to kill unwanted plants (weeds) and to discourage new weeds. To do this, we use hoes. It turns out, hoeing is a lot harder than it might seem. We'll get a lot more practice at this, so that's good.

We also completed a sowing - planting lots of seeds for germination in the greenhouse. There's a lot involved: making potting mix for the flats, getting the flats cleaned and sterilized, getting the seeds organized, and then filling the flats with soil and placing the seeds in. It turns out to be a long set of tasks, to get the sowing completed.


Then we also did a little stint with removing aquatic plants from the pond. There was compost (although i wasn't on the compost crew this week) and we received our Summer Project jobs, plus our tuesday chores. Summer Project is one aspect of the farm that is assigned to each apprentice, so we take special care of that set of tasks. I'm assigned to handle the veggie boxes for our CSA (small CSA - community supported agriculture - for Muir Beach). So there was a lot of housekeeping this week.

We had a tea ceremony demonstration for the apprentices last week, and i attended my first tea class. It is good to be back in the tearoom. I've been away from tea for about 2 months over the time of the move and transition, and i'm glad that we have tea here.

Wendy Johnson came to give a talk on Wednesday. She talked about ... everything. She was wonderful. She has a powerful presence. She spoke about practice, about bringing our Zen practice to our lives, whatever our lives are. For her, its growing food. So she spoke about how this is so critical that we bring our practice to the world, whatever the case may be of where we are in the world (living in a monastery, working in an office). It was Cinco de Mayo and she spoke about war and peace, and several of the Spanish speaking members of the temple read one of our daily chants in Spanish. I loved hearing the Spanish - it was poetic and songlike. Beautiful.

As Mother's Day draws to an end, i am struck with how much gratitude i have for my Mothers, and for all the Mother's of the world. And, we also call the planet "Mother Earth". So it feels like maybe Mothers are all connected, through the Earth? I only hope that i can uphold my end of the bargain, and be a caring steward for my life, for all suffering beings, and for this one and only planet. May we all go in peace.

Oh, one more thing

PS - HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Natha! I love you!

Green Gulch Farm, wk3

Ok, so i have some photos for you, taken by David at the Slide Ranch open house. Yep, those are baby goats!!


This week we shimmied some time around and worked Sunday, planting potatoes. We planted SO many potatoes. We planted several varieties: yellow fin, russet, and others. So we began by amending the soil on Sunday (gypsum and feather meal), and then planting the potatoes. Our trusty, fearless Farm Tractor People (farm staff drive the tractors) pulled rows for us to plant potatoes in, and other rows for the other veggies. Potatoes get placed in a furrow, then covered by raking the sides into a mound in the middle of the row. Other veggies get plunked in the raised soil surrounded by furrows, two lines per row. So then we also did our second planting (potatoes don't count as a "planting", because they'll stay in the ground until August, when they'll all be harvested around the same time). Most of the non-potato (non-Solanum, in fact) veggies were planted out on Monday. This was all sort of squeezed in real quick-like, because the weather forecast loomed RAIN. And we were just in time: it poured, in torrents, Monday night and Tuesday. So we hurried and planted just before we would have been rained out for another week! Good stuff. Same veggies as last time, maybe a few differences: lots and lots of lettuce, kale, mustard greens, broccoli, cabbage, beets, spinach.

Then the rest of the week, we got a lot of other concise projects on the farm finished: we put out floating row cover over the field crops we'd just planted (except potatoes) for flea beetle, we made more compost piles, we hauled aquatic plants out of the pond. We prepped most of the Kitchen Garden for planting, and we did some commando weeding in one of the residents' yard.

Ed Brown gave the dharma talk on Sunday morning. Then later in the day Sunday we had Japanese tea ceremony demonstration with Meiya, our tea master and teacher, here. The tea room is beautiful, and it was a really nice day. More, soon!

Planting! GGF wk3

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Originally uploaded by n_yoder

A long, eventful, productive week. We completed our first major planting! The field rows are 250 feet long; i'm told we planted about sixteen THOUSAND plants last monday. Here's what we planted:

From starts - lots of lettuce (many different varieties), kale, broccoli, fennel, mustard greens, radicchio.

From seed - salad dandelion, carrots, beets, spinach.

There might be others i'm forgetting. But it was a lot of plants! A lot of food. Then we set up the irrigation pipes (stored at the end of the fields when not in use) and "watered in" all the new plants and seeds. The ravens/crows were circling, by the end of it all. We also amended the field with gypsum and feather meal before planting. And there was a treatment of some of the rows with Ecotrol - a product of corn grit, soaked in essential oils, to ward off Symphylans. Our fearless, amazing farm manager(s) have put together a map of where the Symphylans lived in the field last year, so we only had to treat several rows with that. It was especially nice to plant in those rows, because you're sticking plants in and there's this nice, pleasing unexpected aroma wafting up from the ground.

Now, my camera is out of batteries so i'm putting the photos on hold, but i'll keep the news coming. We also did our first sowing of seeds this past week - learning about potting mix, different seed types and where all those things need to come from in order for the farm to be Organic (certified). Interesting note: we rebuilt our potting shed siding because originally it was constructed with treated plywood - since the potting mix spends time right up against that wood siding, it had to be replaced for the farm to meet the Organic certification.

David Brian and i went to Slide Ranch on Saturday, for their annual "Spring Fling" open-farm fundraiser. It was wicked fun. They are an educational farm, located just to the north of us on Highway 1. I spent the morning making origami with kids (yay!) and then ate some serious donated scones and had a potato sack race, egg race (i lost, broke my egg), and three legged race. Also, there were sheep and goats and chickens and ducklings! And baby goats! The kid goats were really a highlight. They are completely amazingly cute, and they are very friendly - they come right over to you and then try to eat your finger/jacket/watch. Blissful sigh. The ranch is a cliff-away from the water, so we also walked down to the tidepools and i also blissed out with some marine invertebrate geeking out. We saw mussels, barnacles, crabs (3 types including hermits), gastropods snails, giant green anemones, ochre sea stars, and other sea stars. Then we walked back to GGF along the coast - a perfectly beautiful walk, and much closer than i thought it would be (about 1.5 hr).

From here on out, the plan is to plant every other week, and sow on the off weeks. We're getting back on schedule, after we were rained out at first.

Green Gulch Farm Week 2

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Originally uploaded by n_yoder

The days are full, such that the weeks are more like months. I feel like i've been here a month, instead of just under two weeks. I have my own knife. We were encouraged to name our knife, keep it safe for the summer. I call mine Pantalaimon.
Very trusty, so far. I learned how to sharpen my knife, and i didn't freak out when i sharpened him! I feel good about that.

On to the nitty gritty, so to speak: we worked more in the "kitchen garden" this week. We are still waiting for the fields to dry out enough to do our large scale planting, so the majority of the work is "cleaning" up beds, or preparing beds for planting in the KG. There was a good few hours of compost processing where we got good and dirty, and we also excavated a storage shed. The shed was supposed to be water and rodent-proof, but there was condensation inside and the mice had gotten in. There were two mice nests we found, which we evacuated, and about 30 mice that mostly scattered. One of the nests had teeny tiny pink hairless baby mice in it - no bigger than the first knuckle of my thumb. We evacuated them safely, but they were gone the next day, so there's no way of knowing what became of them. I like to think that the Mama Mouse came along and moved them all.

There are several steps in preparing a bed for planting, or bedding up. We first edge the bed (chop a line around the perimeter, with a spade), then we heave all of the plant matter in the bed up, by tilthing (dig a garden fork in the soil, and sort of lift up the rooted matter). Finally, we come through by hand and pick out the tilthed out plant matter and chaff, and then smooth it with a rake.

So in addition to bedding up, we planted a few things in the KG, and we also harvested baby lettuce (we'll do this every week now, for the rest of the summer). We planted leeks, scallions, and lettuce. And we turned in the cover crop on three beds. Chugging right along!

We had a couple of wonderful additional things last week: our fearless Farm Manager got her friend's band to play and sing for us on Thursday. It was so divine to have live music. The band performance turned into an open music night, and many of the residents are musically inclined, so we had some really touching and lovely performances. Our own Renee made sweet potato pie, and led the group in fiddle tunes. It was absolutely fantastic.

The practice schedule is settling. Its becoming more like a real schedule, and one that i feel like i'll get used to. Overall, things are going well.

Arrival at Green Gulch, Week 1

Sunday, 11 April 2010
Its raining. There's been talk of it all week: its going to rain on Sunday. There is more talk than usual, even, about the weather here, because our work changes depending on the weather. We were set to plant two of the large fields this week, but if it rains today, we won't be able to. The soil will be too wet.

Back up. I arrived at Green Gulch Farm/Green Dragon Zen Temple, last Wednesday. It was a smooth but bittersweet arrival: i arrived to gorgeous sun, stopped at Stinson Beach along the way, and visited friends on the drive down. But, i had just left behind my whole life and friends and contact with the world-as-i-know-it, in a flash. Just like that, i stepped out of my life and into a dorm room. Lucky for me, this is a very welcoming place, and it was sunny and warm for three days in a row - enough for me to really soak it in, get a sunburn, and go swim in the reservoir and ocean. Also, i'm not alone. There are 9 of us apprentices, who all arrived the same day, in more or less similar situations (having left behind large and small pieces of our lives). We are artists, scientists, farmers, knitters, bakers, communications specialists, and many other things - but we share this common intention: to come here and work with the land to produce food, while studying Zen Buddhism. It is good.

After my arrival on Wednesday, we had a couple of days of orientation with our Farm Manager and Garden Manager. They told us about the history of Green Gulch Farm. We cleared "weeds" out of the pond (i'm told the main undesirables are parrot feather and Brazilian pondweed). Our able guides took us to roam in the hills, climbing up to Hope Cottage for a series of good vantage points for the farm, the valley, and Muir Beach. We botanized (!), identified poison oak, learned about the San Andreas fault, and discussed more history of the farm and its surrounds. This farm was originally a cattle and dairy farm (as were many of the farms in this region - Strauss is just up the coast from us). The land was basically donated to the Zen Center in the late 1970s, when gardener and farmer Alan Chadwick (who also implemented UC Santa Cruz's farm) helped instate the farm as it is. Wendy Johnson and others shepherded the farm into what it has become today - 5 acres in the bottom of the valley. 4 acres are farmed for vegetables, 1 acre is the garden with herbs, ornamentals, orchards and berries among other things.

On Friday afternoon, we had a lesson in soil microbe ecology (Jessica - they do value their microbes here - and they teach us to do the same). There are millions of organisms living in ONE TEASPOON of soil. Stunning. And most of those organisms, we (meaning, science) haven't even identified. Of the ones we have identified or named, there are bizillions of bacteria and protozoa, loads of nematodes (nematodes!), arthropods, annelids, gastropods, and fungi or at least fungal hyphae. With this information, we then proceeded to the beds. We planted baby lettuce starts by hand into beds that were tilled by hand. We plant the lettuces in a "hex pattern", which means the plants are staggered a bit in each row, so that the distance between any two plants is a triangular identical distance apart. See photo. Once you set plants (or seeds) in the ground, you must water them in. About 45 min will do it. So we watered our new starts, and celebrated by swimming in the reservoir. These starts will be harvested as baby lettuces, so they can be planted very close together. We plant baby lettuce beds anew, each week, so there is a steady supply of baby lettuce (this is especially desirable for the restaurants that buy from us).



Then we had a half-day sitting, and some zazen (sitting) instruction. There are many forms in each Zen sitting and ritual, and we reviewed some of those - its very helpful to review, since some are different and some are just difficult to remember the order of bowing, getting up, sitting down, etc.

Mostly, i've had the sense of having too much to do, if anything. I have suddenly and unintentionally shifted my sleep schedule, so that i go to bed by about 21:00, because wake up is around 5:00. It was a relief to find out that the center is on "interim schedule", which means that wake up time is actually about an hour later than it will be for most of the summer. I'm glad - this way i can kind of transition more easily into the schedule of rising early and bed early. So far its not terrible, and i'm not tired much.

Back to now: the fields we were to plant have been disc-ed and plowed, but as its been a wet spring so far, its still too wet to plant. Now with the rains, we might have to wait another week or two to plant those big fields, or else we'll compact the soil too much by driving tractors and machinery down the furrows. There is always a plethora of work to do on the farm, though - so we won't be sitting idle watching the soil for signs of drying out. Instead we'll be doing other farm chores like prepping smaller beds, starting new plants, and generally cleaning up. Stay tuned!