Today marks the summer solstice and the beginning of a busy season at the farm. We have a lot to look forward to: ripening marionberries, sweet corn, butternut squash blossoms, and more.
And those long summer days. In the Willamette Valley we have an extended rainy season from fall through spring, and we rejoice in the warm days and clear skies of summer.
Here’s some of our rye grass cover crop, shimmering under a bright June sun and cloudless blue sky.
Some of my favorite crops grown here are our perennials, like blueberries. Right now the berry bushes are still green, in bloom, or just beginning to fruit — but later in the summer we’ll see branches loaded up with ready-to-pick berries like this one (picture taken in July ‘07)…
These are plants that receive years of care and tending before they are fully mature. Farm managers call the young plants “baby berries,” which aptly expresses the kind of nurturing it takes to raise them.
And just by their nature, the perennials have a distinct and continuous effect on the farm landscape. With our annual crops we practice crop rotation, so we see different plants in the field each season. Our perennials have more permanent ties to land and location, and though we watch their growth and their transformation as they flower and fruit, they are definitive elements of the landscape from year to year.
Our berry fields are full of honey bees at this time of year, both volunteers and draftees borrowed from professional beekeepers. You can hear a steady and surprisingly loud hum around the blossoms when you stand in the midst of the rows.
We rely on these incredible pollinators in growing a variety of fruits and vegetables. The one you see here is pollinating a cane berry blossom in our test garden.
There’s also been some important news in the past few years about the disappearance of honey bee colonies– a little understood phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).
Here are some links for the bee geeks out there.
The first berries of the season here at the farm are STRAWBERRIES and this week will be our first pick. The aptly named “king” berries will ripen first. This phenomenon happens with all berry crops: each plant produces one extra-large, earliest-ripe fruit. It’s the plant’s annual opus, the first prize, the grandaddy. Around here, we tend to be strawberry snobs and turn our noses up at the pithy, white centered strawberries that are common on fruit platters year round. We plant many varieties of strawberries so that they don’t all ripen at once (would be hard to get them harvested if they did). I suppose our preference for Oregon strawberries is because we are lucky enough to have access to strawberries that are deep red through and through, delicately fleshy with a complex sweet fragrant floral tang. These “small fruits,” with their high “brix” or natural sugar levels, are NOT grown for transportability. In fact, the shelf life is only a day or two after harvest. We bring ours right inside within an hour or so of harvest to be washed and frozen for year round eating (enjoyment).
One of the pleasures of being right at the farm headquarters is getting to taste and try and eat Oregon fruits and vegetables nearly every day. Last year we compared tastes of 5 different Oregon strawberry varieties. Below are our informal tasting results. (Note: every one of these strawberry varieties is scrumptious so we are really talking about flavor notes!)
Shucksan~ my personal favorite, pinkish red center. Perfect balance of sweet tart complexity and nice dense flesh. Put me in a thoughtful mood (like a sip of great pinot noir, also grown right here in the Willamette Valley…)
Honeoye~ first to ripen (a virtue in itself) classic strawberry shape and most straightforward strawberry taste
Tillamook~ largest and slightly hollow center, candy-sweet taste, extra juicy
Red Crest~ beautiful blood red interior, tilts toward tanginess, tomato notes
Totem~ richest tasting. Right on the edge of sweet-as-possible
On my desk is a real Message In a Bottle. Sealed tight, it has been sitting here for nearly 2 years, since shortly after a Willamette River flood event deposited it on one of our organic pumpkin fields. A true curiosity, it is not uncommon for people to stop and ask “Is this for real?” Once they hear that, yes, this is a real message in a bottle, the distant gaze almost always sets in. Sometimes it’s just a flicker, but I can tell imagination has taken grip. What does the message say? Who wrote it? When and where and most importantly….Why?? I have some clues as to the “when” based on the type of lined stationery and the manufacturer mark on the bottom of the glass. I think I even know the “where” since some of the words rolled up in the scroll can be peaked at if you turn the bottle just so (hmmm. I see the name of a town–is it the origin or the wished-for destination of the message?)
Keeping it sealed baffles my kids. Open the thing, Mom. Come on! So far no one has taken it upon themselves to remove the cap, have a peak, and try to replace the cap… (think: unwrap and rewrap the found Christmas presents. I was never one of those kids….) The rusty crust on the cap remains intact. Maybe opting to keep it sealed is a wicked impulse to drive others crazy with curiosity. Feels more like pleasant anticipation to me. I myself enjoy the pent up mystery, so the unanswered questions do not trouble me.
Still, I’m not saying I won’t open it someday.