The high country won't let us get too attached. Not to 80 degree spring days, nor to lingering blooms. After all, if the frost doesn't shake them off, the wind will.
But living here, you almost come to love all the surprises, even when they sometimes mean your freshly transplanted snap peas get doused in a gentle layer of snow (like this morning!). Just like those who move here from pretty much anywhere else, our transplants have to acclimate quickly, regardless. Our wild mountain weather waits for no one, and the Sierra weather gods are surely hysterical as they devise sudden systems that no meteorologist can warn us about.
What's interesting is what a challenging terrain can produce. In herbalism, we're taught to seek plants and herbs in the wild that are growing in difficult circumstances over the ones growing in lush abodes. Experienced herbalists agree that the ones surviving challenging conditions invariably offer more potent medicine, as though their life force grew stronger just to make it through. While limits surely exist, we see something similar on our farm: the flavor and body of plants grown outside—where we have much less control over temperature, pests, and humidity—are nearly always superior to those grown in our greenhouses. We see this in our lettuces, our snap peas, and even our roots.
We even sometimes see it in people. Have you ever noticed the well-worn charm of someone who has been through life's struggles? Like the wind that slowly carves the face of a mountain, life's unrelenting challenges also seem to shape us with more depth, humility, grace, and compassion. In a word, wisdom. And that wisdom can make a personality, once rife with dull superficiality, bloom into an attractive landscape of well-earned qualities.
Exceptions abound, including our deeply loved tomatoes, which we've never seen grow better outside up here. We also enjoy countless humans who have suffered relatively little, but still manage to delight. But on days like today, with the wind ripping outside, snowflakes littering our many freshly planted beds, and a forecasted low of 27 in late May, it's hard for farmers not to get poetic and hopeful about all the flavor and 'character' this might mean later on.
Our Tokyo Bekana bed looking more like iceberg this morning! ;)
Inside Your Box This Week
Carrots
Dandelion Greens
Sugar Snap Peas Hakurei Turnips Tokyo Bekana
Red Beets Kohlrabi
Spinach
Mizuna
Recipes Worth Trying...
{click images to go to recipe}
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We're honored to nourish you!