April is on its way out, and in addition to letting you know that
Washington Asparagus Season is here
Olykraut is restocked at the farmstand, with a few exciting new additions!
the crew pulled some wonderful Spring Onions and Baby Bok Choy for this week
and we will begin selling Tomato Plants NEXT week on May 6th. It is too cold to harden the plants off properly tonight, so we’re going to pitch things to the first full week of May.
I thought you might enjoy a little snapshot of what Farmer Mark has been up over the past few days and tell you a bit about Cover Cropping at Wild Hare. You may have heard the phrase tossed around here and there as it is a practice employed by many organic and regenerative growers, but have you ever seen Cover Cropping in action? Do you know what it means in practice? Perhaps not. It is a slow process involving months of growth, dormancy and multiple passes on a tractor for a farm of our scale. But, Mark has made a commitment to working out the kinks to work Cover Crops into our farm plan, because building soils is paramount to what we’re trying to accomplish. Cover Crops help us prevent erosion, suppress certain weeds, and work nutritious organic matter into our soils to improve fertility and structure. After mowing and tilling to prepare a field, we use a fancy no-till drill so that we don't have to disrupt the soil further. This lets the soil grow as long as possible without the tractor interfering. In our 2 year rotational fields, this means the soil can grow undisturbed for 20 months. Using this drill, Mark sows a mix of grasses, oats, legumes timing things just right ahead of the Fall rains and first frost so that the seeds will germinate and we don’t have to worry about irrigation. (We’re lucky enough to be able to rent this piece of shared equipment from the Pierce Conservation District each year, because it is a pricey tool for a single farm to own. Instead, multiple farms across the county can put it to good use. Yes!) And with any luck, those plants are almost as tall as I am by late April, and ready to work into the soil at the perfect moment of maturity—when they’ve put on plenty of size but haven’t fully gone to seed.
From there, we tackle the task of incorporating these Cover Crops into acres and acres of soil. In terms of equipment, we work with what we have and what we can borrow easily and affordably. Ultimately, Mark will use a Plow for this task, because we own one and they’re effective at turning over large swaths of soil. But, as Mark has recently explained to me, Plows are not made to handle long lengths of grasses, oats and legumes. (I’m learning as we go too, you see). So, before we can plow the organic matter, we have to mow it and chop it up. And as you may have guessed, we’re thankful that we can borrow another very cool tool from PCD to help us get the job done—the Flail Mower. The Flail gives us the ability cut and scatter those tall plants into segments that are only a few inches long in a single pass that still somehow takes hours and hours. That’s what you see Mark doing in the video—slowly, surely, taking the cover crop down row by row. And once he’s done mowing, he hooks the plow onto the back, working perpendicularly to the tracks left behind the tractor from mowing to reduce compaction. In all, this one field took him over ten hours on Sunday. Tractor brain is a real thing, BTW—he usually passes the time listening to lectures and podcasts, but he’s a total weirdo after a full day of tractor time. But, it is worth it. This year’s Purple Sprouting Broccoli was planted in last year's rotation of Cover Crop, and it turned out to be glorious, for a recent example. So there you have it—a little Springtime dose of armchair agriculture.
Thanks for supporting what we do,
Katie
IN THIS WEEK’S FARMSHARES:
Asparagus
Spring Onions or Leeks
Baby Bok Choy
Tokyo Turnips or Purple Daikon
Frozen Blueberries
SEASONAL RECIPES & HELPFUL HINTS
HOW TO STORE ASPARAGUS - The Food Network
CRISPY SCALLION ASPARAGUS PIZZA - Naturally Ella
QUINOA & ASPARAGUS SALAD - Martha Rose Shulman
ERIC RIPERT’S BOK CHOY WITH SOY-GINGER VINAGRETTE - Dinner, A Love Story
JAPANESE VEGAN SIMMERED DAIKON WITH BOK CHOY & EDAMAME - J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
DAVID TANIS’ GLAZED SHIITAKES WITH BOK CHOY - The Wednesday Chef
ASPARAGUS & SPRING ONION SALAD WITH 7 MINUTE EGGS- Food & Wine
ABSURDLY ADDICTIVE ASPARAGUS - Food52
DAIKON & GRILLED CHICKEN CHOPPED SALAD- Betty Hallock & Donna Deane
AIR FRYER ASPARAGUS- Love & Lemons
TURNIP SALAD WITH YOGURT, HERBS & POPPY SEEDS - Dishing Up the Dirt