I am pleased to welcome Stephanie to our team. She has joined on as our Assistant Farm Manager. She has agreed to write a monthly article about the farm. Here's her first entry, from January:
"I had never been to Capella Farm and I must admit that I got
lost on the way to my first day of work. After getting myself worked up and
nervous – I really wanted to make a good impression and being late was NOT
ideal - I decided to pull over and ask for directions. As I walked up to the
construction crew working alongside the road, they glanced at me and continued
to hammer away until one man finally asked if I needed help. “Capella Farm?” I
asked, “Do you know it?” Suddenly he broke into a smile. “Oh yes! Just go down
the road until you see the three greenhouses. You can’t miss it!” Luckily for
me, Capella Farm is like no other place in the neighborhood.
My new friend wasn’t kidding: the three hoop houses do make
an impression. They kind of jump out and surprise you; triplet plastic and
metal giants. I was pleased to see them. It meant that I would probably get my
hands dirty right away, even though the ground was frozen. Inside the houses,
the dirt thaws early in the morning and we can grow, transplant, and harvest
all through winter.
As I pulled up, a giant black dog burst out of the house and
leapt to greet me. Jennifer came out of the house smiling, holding a pitch
fork. I was informed that we were going to harvest parsnips for the CSA pickup.
This should be good, I thought, but we didn’t head to the hoop houses as I had
expected. Instead we marched into the field where another farmhand, Nick, was
already hard at work clearing away the snow. Yes, this did mean that we were
about to dig parsnips out of the frozen, snowy ground. Undaunted, Jennifer dug
the pitch fork right into the ground and started digging. How, I wondered, are
we going to get these out without breaking off the roots? In answer to my
question, Jennifer started to pry the parsnips up along the side of the row,
pushing them up and out of the dirt rather than pulling them out directly. Another
trick she had used to keep the ground from freezing was to cover the bed with
hay, which acts like a blanket. Within half an hour, we had enough parsnips for
distribution.
We decided to break for lunch. One of the greatest
challenges I have found while living on a farm is conjuring a meal out of
whatever is growing at the moment. Sometimes, like in the summer, this is fun
and easy; so many recipes to choose from. Sometimes, it’s just plain difficult.
Nick took some yukina and arugula from the hoop house and tossed the greens in
hot olive oil seasoned with garlic and dried chili peppers, preserved from the
summer pepper harvest. Not bad for a winter meal.
As I left that afternoon, I watched the hoop houses fade
into the distance behind me and decided that, like Capella Farm’s neighbors, I
had become a fan of the farm."
- Contributed by Stephanie - Assistant Farm Manager, January, 2013
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