By Zoë Bradbury
April 13, 2009
I had my first official asparagus harvest this week and it was mesmerizing. Logging those spears one by one, down each row and back up the next with a sharp knife, I felt like a gleeful little kid on an Easter egg hunt: every asparagus a surprise and a treasure.
They are an amazing, mysterious vegetable, a pure Spring life force thrusting out of the ground towards the April sky. A quick glance and you wouldn’t even know they are there — no leaves, no fanfare, just long rows of single, slender stalks quietly defying gravity in the race to become an asparagus fern. They are all muscle: Name any other vegetable that can grow nine inches in one day, emerging fearlessly from cold, wet spring soil while everything else is still living a cush, pampered life in the greenhouse. If there were Vegetable Olympics, these babies would win some medals.
My first harvest feels like a major milestone as I head into my second season on the farm. These are the perennials that I painstakingly researched, planted and tended last year, but never got to eat or sell because it’s hands-off-the-goods during the establishment year. Planting asparagus — which can produce for 20 years — was a hopeful investment in the future, a long-term commitment to this farming odyssey. I suppose a little part of me doubted that they would actually grow — that I would do something wrong and kill all 2,600 crowns I planted. And somewhere behind that doubt was the lingering question mark about whether I, like a sturdy asparagus, could defy the odds and the statistics to muscle my way up as a young, female, beginning farmer.
I almost cried when I saw the first ones push up out of the ground.
Part of the reason my first harvest was such a celebration was that it symbolized having made it through Year One. Survived, and maybe even turned the corner from anxiously scrapping to walking on my own two feet. The asparagus will give the gift of Spring cash this year where last year I was spending in the red. And close on their heels, the June-bearing raspberries are leafed out and the strawberries are in bloom. It feels like that first year of hustling and guessing and sweating and hoping might begin to pay off.
No doubt, spring inevitably gives farmers a run for their money. Between wet ground and slugs and freak hailstorms there is always an opportunity for an ulcer, but I knew that was part of the deal I signed up for. It’s the baseline stress that is easing up — that back-of-the-head curiosity about whether or not I would be able to pull this thing off.
This week, bucketloads of asparagus feel like a good sign.
Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.
April 15th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Congratulations, Zoe! Your asparagus field looks great–how did you keep it so weed-free? I really enjoy your posts, love your writing!
June 14th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Hey Zoe,
This evening I have been totally enjoying your blogs up Floras creek. I picked up the current Tilth issue and read your article, then decided I wanted to get in touch with you and say congratulations – I so love reading your accounts. So many thoughts come to the surface for me about what you are doing. I was 28 when my dad died and I had the opportunity to take over the farm in eastern Montana. So many similarities.
Stacks of books and years of Charlie Walters’ Acres USA, and Organic gardening – Finding a mentor in Ted Whitmer who was a rare Og farmer a generation ahead of me.
Forming an OG producer co-op.
Then down the creek from you for those amazing years.
I remember when Kay and Bob Bell gave my an airplane ride and I got to take pictures of Marsh Haven. What a delight.
When fall rains come, I would love to have a pot of tea with you
Blessings to you and what you are doing, and hi to your mom and sister.