By Zoë Bradbury

July 8, 2009

Last there was a moment to pause in front of a keyboard, it was the early weeks of asparagus harvest. The outfit was muck boots and head to toe raingear. The activity was slogging through April mud and rain to gather in spring’s first offering. The food was pea shoots, cabbage rapini and asparagus.

And in a blink, so fast I think there must have been a time machine involved, it’s three months later and the corners of our mouths are stained with strawberries.

Our fingertips are stained by raspberries. Our forearms and necks are stained tan by sunshine. My hands are once again tattooed by the black cracks and callouses that come so quickly from wielding the harvest knife, digging potatoes, bunching beets, logging down broccoli, head lettuce, hakurei turnips, pac choi.

A quick synopsis of the 12 weeks that have gone un-reported: We started a CSA. We built a barn. We built a shed. We installed a walk-in cooler. We opened the gates for strawberry u-pick. People thronged.

We plowed for the first time with the horses. We planted two acres of vegetables. Our pump broke. We fixed the pump. A wind storm snapped all of our raspberries at the waist. Our broccoli heads weighed in at over 2 pounds apiece. All of our early carrot seedlings failed. On June 12th, we had a world record strawberry harvest and our backs hurt.

I spent $1,000 on Rubbermaid totes for the CSA, and wished I owned Rubbermaid stock that day. The first week, the CSA members exclaimed, “It’s like Christmas!” as they pried off the lids on their totes, and then again on week two, week three, week four, week five.

Maude and Barney and I planted a couple acres of buckwheat on a quiet July evening. Trace chains jingled, horses stepped easy. The harrow tickled through the soil perfectly. The first dahlia bloomed. The snapdragons were close on their heels. The sun slid to its highest point on the hillside, setting at night behind the silhouette of the lone fir tree on the ridge.

I went surfing one Sunday and caught a beautiful left. Sula, my dog, caught four moles, a half dozen field mice and a few shrews. She swam in the creek, and napped mightily. The cereal rye I planted as a cover crop never got turned under and now the seed heads are fat, heavy and almost ready for the scythe. There could be homemade rye bread on the horizon.

The first succession of potatoes did not get hilled. Neither did the second. Third time’s a charm. We ate our first zucchini, basil, cucumbers. I dreamt of sungold tomatoes one night, and woke up to another month of waiting for them to be real and ripe. Three friends had babies, my sister got pregnant.

A new neighbor moved in next door, named Magic. I got a gift certificate to the county dump worth $23.00. My best friend from Portland arrived to help out on the farm for July, and now I am sure that this is going to be the best summer ever.

I will try not to let another twelve weeks go by.

Until then.

Zoë Bradbury is a Kellogg Food & Society Policy Fellow. She lives, writes, and farms on Oregon’s southern coast.