Dance Party
July 18, 2024
Garlic harvest is complete, a full week ahead of schedule. Tomatoes are rolling in, a full week ahead of schedule. All around the farm, everything seems accelerated. Does that mean we’re in for an early winter? Only time will tell. But I can say this—we're lucky to have such an awesome team to keep things on track.
Last year's crew is back—Jackie, Nancy, Mike, Mia and Adam. In some ways, it’s like they never left. The weekly schedule is somewhat irregular, but we’re all together on Fridays, which makes for fun lunch-time conversation. We’ve also added some teens and tweens to the roster. Ada has joined in on early morning harvests, and her boyfriend, Arturo Milla, has worked a few mornings, too. Kobi’s Tuesday cashier responsibilities have extended to include restocking, and and his cousin, Evan Holdorf, either joins the crew in the fields or helps out at the Tin House. Balancing out the age bracket are Auggie Osborne, John McGowan, and John Cavallo. Auggie is our head mower, keeping the fence lines clean and living up to his goal of filling George Garbarini’s shoes. John McGowan picks up our weekly egg order from Makinajian Poultry Farm—a huge time saver!—and has been helping Judy with chicken chores. John Cavallo has become our go-to person for carpentry jobs, including new tables for the wash station. Thanks to these assists, as well as the ongoing contributions of Papa, Ann, Yvette, Judy, Glenn, and Maryellen, and Jeff, the farm is in great shape.
Things are getting hot and heavy in New Pond Field. In the June newsletter, I wrote about our crew’s “first date” with the field—encountering unfamiliar soils, contours, and objects while hoeing sweet potatoes. Now the sweet potatoes and winter squash have vined out, the potatoes are dying back, and the buckwheat and sunflowers are about to bloom. Everywhere you look, there’s a lusty pulse of energy. The honeymoon phase. The field is still an unknown quantity—the final harvests have yet to be tallied—but it’s precisely because it’s unknown that it’s so interesting now. Had we planted all the sweet potatoes in New Pond and the crop failed, we’d have no sweet potatoes at all. So we hedged our bets by trialing 4 different crops, plus one cover crop. With so much variety in one field, it makes for a pretty wild dance party.
Back to our awesome team, we have two guest contributors. Hope you enjoy!
Farm Me To The Moon
by Mia Goren
Picking through red, strawberry moon.
Some years are rainy, some days are like today
I had a full moon day once
We all laughed before we even knew what happened
It was 2001
Were you even born yet?
The car drove right into the puddle
How I wish that were me right now,
The surface of the moon
Where a lady seeks cover beside me
And I will wipe my thoughts away,
Like my poor sole.
Writing about our lunch conversations about the bad luck of full moons, I found there was so much poetry through mundane conversation. That is something I feel a lot, working both on the field and off of it. This particular full moon fell on a work day. On a strawberry picking, sun burning, ladybug landing day.
The unraveled pieces seemed to come together during lunch time, our reprise from the hot sun and reflective soil. Our (the farm crew’s) chat started with simple but wise words from Caroline herself. She talked about the anxiety that comes with being a novice, with wanting to control the uncontrollable and worry about everything around it. In this case, the weather. Some years are rainy. That’s what she was told by a more seasoned farmer, and what she told us around the wooden table. Today was not rainy, it was painfully steamy. The topic of conversation then made its way all the way to the moon, the full moon that is. It was the strawberry moon.
I’ve always had bad luck on full moons, and one fateful night led to the demise of my Canadian leather boots. On my walk back from a late film class, the soles of not one, but both of my shoes came off and I flopped all the way home under its bright light. I don’t believe in coincidences. And it seemed neither did Mike, as this story unlocked memory of a horrible night in Boston. His involves a rainy walk, missing keys, and a poor woman’s load of laundry. And, of course, Mike. I’d ask him about the rest.
From then we continued back to the fields, where the dust blew about like a barren planet if you looked at it from just the right angle. Like the surface of the moon, said farmer Jackie as we plopped down in front of cucumber towers. I wipe the sweat off my brow, too hot to think coherently. Snipping away at cucumber suckers, remembering the ladybug that joined us for the work day hoeing basil and lettuce while tucked away into the shade of my hat. And just like that, another day at the farm had found its end. The words in my mind buzzing, my hands so full of strawberries.
CALLING ALL READERS!!!
by Nancy Galgano
I recently saw a window sign in an Upstate NY independent book store: “Books… for getting lost and finding your way”.
I love books. I have books in every room in my home. My love of reading blossomed in Mrs. Bruni’s first grade class at Unqua School in Massapequa in 1974 and I’ve been an avid reader since then.
I discovered Restoration Farm in 2015 and knew immediately that I had to become a CSA member. I joined the farm crew in 2021 and was happy to find that everyone on the team loves to read too. We have swapped books amongst each other and conversation in the fields has turned to what everyone is reading. We read different genres, and I love always having another book on deck.
To me, the farm is a special place where I come to join, learn, explore, discover, nourish, escape. It occurred to me recently that books provide these very same experiences.
So let’s weave the two together… be on the lookout for the new Tin House Bookshelf! Browse, share, take a book and leave a book. I think it will be interesting to see what others read and we can share our thoughts. I am hoping it will be a well received addition to our like minded farm community.
Come… wander, absorb, digest, realize, dream, plan, get inspired. Get some veggies and books, and enjoy some nutrients for both the body and the mind.
Back to schedules and dance parties, the Long Island Fair is September 13, 14, & 15. This event, now in its 182nd year, is hosted annually at the Old Bethpage Village Restoration. The fair has something for everyone—competitions, pony rides, circus acts, food, music, contra dancing, and much, much more. If you enter one of their competitions, admission is free! The competitive handbook is available online, and now is the time to plan for your participation. Who knows—you could face off against Restoration Farm in the garlic category.
Thanks for reading, hope you dance, and see you at the farm
—Caroline
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