Pablito~
I have heard and seen written many times bright urbanites wonder why so much of our nation’s food supply comes from California, a place where there is so little water.  In fact, the ideal place to grow fruits and vegetables is a low-rainfall area conveniently located downstream from a high rainfall area.  That pretty much describes much of the arid west.

As just about everyone in Northern California knows right now, wet weather is inconvenient.  Umbrellas, cars, roofs, concrete, asphalt and other inventions have reduced the unpleasantness of rain for most people.  But farming is particularly vulnerable to the weather for two principle reasons:  it is primarily done outdoors, and it involves dirt.

For the most part, the crops that we grow at Terra Firma during the rainy season like the rain well enough.  Ideally, they would like it to fall at regular intervals, in reasonable amounts.  Instead, what we tend to get is multi-week periods of dry weather, followed by multi-week periods of very wet weather.  When they sit for weeks in wet soil, even some of the most rain-tolerant crops start to have issues.  Spinach, for example, gets mildew.  Other crops develop root rot.  And too much rain tends to leach out nutrients from the root zone, which causes plants to turn yellow.

 Also, rain doesn’t always fall gently or softly.  Wind is always a farmer’s enemy, whether it is the hot, dry variety we get in fall and spring, or the cold and wet version that often accompanies Pacific storms.  Wind-driven rain can actually damage the leaves of chard, lettuce, spinach, and other crops.  If the ground is completely saturated, a big plant like cauliflower can topple over, its leaves acting as sails in the strong wind.  Certain varieties of citrus are also vulnerable during winter storms, when the combination of wind and rain knocks them on the ground.  Tangelos and navel oranges — heavy with sugar and ready to harvest right now —have been particularly hard hit in the last two weeks.

But our biggest headache during rainy weather is simply inconvenience.  Making your own all-weather roads on a farm is incredibly expensive, whether with gravel, concrete or asphalt.  We have almost ten miles of farm roads at TFF, and only a small portion are graveled.   That means we have to take four-wheel drive tractors with trailers into the fields, creating deep ruts and throwing mud all over the place.  In the spring, these ruts are the last parts of the farm to dry out and create all kinds of problems.

Once we get into the fields, things don’t get any better.  The vast majority of our crops are hand-harvested.  But even the most skilled harvesters lose most of their efficiency when working in cumbersome raingear and rubber gloves.  Just walking in the muddy furrows is time consuming, as the liquid soil fights to pull off your rubber boots and tries to trip you at every step.

There really is no way to stay clean and dry when you’re harvesting wet vegetables in the wind and rain.  Water runs down your arms under your raingear and then soaks the clothing below.  We make every effort to keep mud off the greens or broccoli, for example, but the fact is that mud gets splashed around and things are going to get dirtier than they do on dry days.   Crops that grow in the dirt or close to it —like carrots, leeks, beets, or spinach — are always dirty when we harvest them, but on rainy days they are much, much dirtier.  That means we have to spend extra time in the packing shed to get them clean.  One of the interesting things about soil is that it is harder to remove wet soil than dry.  So even spending extra time to rinse the vegetables doesn’t guarantee that a sticky clump of mud may not still cling to the underside of a spinach leaf or the space where two carrots touch in a bunch.

 Last week’s big storm caught us a bit off guard.  We had gotten used to every forecast storm fizzling out that we stopped preparing in advance for each storm:  harvesting citrus, carrots, cabbages and other less perishable items a day or two in advance.  There are always some things we have to harvest on Tuesday and Wednesday, no matter what the weather.  But last week was miserable for everyone on the crew as we struggled through three rainy harvest days.

This week, we were better prepared.  We spent Friday and Saturday getting ready for the weather so that we could work shorter days on Monday and Tuesday, and get everyone home early to warm up.

So when you’re preparing your produce this week, if you find a clump of mud somewhere it shouldn’t be, we hope you can remember that someone stood in the cold and rain to pick those vegetables for you.

IN YOUR BOXES
Way back in December, we had a couple of freezing nights that did some damage to our crops.  One of those affected was the beets, whose leaves were burned by the cold.  Well, those frozen leaves wilted, died, and dropped off, but the beets have now made new leaves, and those leaves are finally big enough to make bunches.  The leaves don’t look the same as the December leaves:  they are denser, with shorter, fatter stems.  I guess the plants learned their lesson and decided to beef themselves up after the freeze.

Beet leaves are always among the most nutritious leafy greens you can eat, but I would guess that these winter-hardy survivors are even more nutrient-rich than the ones that froze off.  You’ll probably have to cook them a bit longer now, to soften them up completely.  But they won’t wilt down as much as they usually do.  And of course, as always, the beet roots are tasty as well.  Two great vegetables in one convenient package!

 Dino Kale can handle freezing temperatures better than beet greens, but it’s sensitive to the weather nonetheless.  Like all the winter greens, it is planted in the fall and grows through the solstice.  As the days get longer and longer, the plants begin to prepare for reproduction, i.e., flowering and making seeds.  At this point, they all — collards, kale, chard — become inedible and we stop harvesting them.

 The first winter green to flower every year is Dino Kale (Chard is generally the last), and any winter with an extended warm and sunny period like the one we had in January is bound to see this happen sooner rather than later.  The kale has begun the flowering process already, its stems elongating and the leaves getting smaller.  Every year when this occurs, we stop harvesting individual leaves and instead cut the whole plant, putting two or three of them in a bunch.  To prepare the kale, simply pull all the leaves off the tough, woody stem and discard it.

Thanks,
     Pablito