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.