Farm Tour

I love me some fresh summer veggies.

So does Bryan.

And so will Jonah, I expect. He's already a fiend for carrots, beets, asparagus, broccolli, and butternut squash, to name a few. And he hasn't even tried them fresh out of the garden yet.

He will this summer, though. We started a few veggies from seed in the spring, and even though some didn't make it out of the seedling stage (and others that we originally planned to grow are still sitting rather disappointingly in their seed packets), we have enough progressing in the backyard to sustain our gardener's anticipation.

Peas.  I don't think I've ever had a truly fresh pea in
my life, so I'm excited to try these.  And those
are strawberries in the containers behind the peas,
though some critter keeps eating them before we can!

Mesclun fresh from garden to plate could
just about convert me into a salad person.

We won't be able to pick our asparagus for
another year or two, but for now it's
growing and ferning like a champ.

For those many, many, many veggies we don't have the space/time/know-how to grow on our own, we rely on our farm share--our membership in a local community-supported agriculture program, or CSA. This year we've actually selected a collective of farms: a group of Amish farmers in Western Pennsylvania who collaborate to provide a relatively wide a variety of organic produce as well as organic, pastured meats and other farm products to their CSA members.

Which brings me to the main subject of this blog post... A couple weekends ago, to celebrate the beginning of our CSA season, Bryan, Jonah, and I drove out to our neighborhood of farms to eat, tour, and meet our farmers face-to-face! Here are a few snippets from our field trip:

Jonah checks out the baby lambs penned
alongside the strawberry patch.

After picnicking and getting to know some of the other members/farmers/CSA-staff, we headed out into one of the fields to pick ourselves some strawberries. Regretfully, I don't have any pictures of that, nor of Jonah trying his first strawberry, which came out of this field. I will say, though, that a local farmer once called the strawberries you find at your standard grocery store "California imposters" compared to our local variety--and, in my experience, his words were by no means exaggeratory. The local strawberry here in Western Pa. is in a whole different league of strawberries: deep red all the way through to the core and positively bursting with ripe, sweet berry flavor--every one the best strawberry you've ever eaten. Anyway, hopefully we haven't ruined lesser strawberries for Jonah forever, but there it is.

Strawberry-picking was followed shortly by a trip to one of the farmer's ice houses. This is a refrigerated warehouse where the farmer stores his winter produce Amish-style: with an enormous wall of ice, carved in blocks from a nearby pond. Jonah thought it was cool (no pun intended!), but mostly for the acoustic qualities of the warehouse.

From the ice house, we climbed onto a horse-drawn wagon for Jonah's first hayride. Through the fields we rode, taking a gander of the Swiss chard, Russian fingerling potatoes, and broccoflower we'll be enjoying later in the season.

On a hay ride. (That's actually more hay
growing in the field behind us.)

At our last stop, we were able to walk among the chickens whose eggs we'll be receiving on a weekly basis--and even to hand-collect a few eggs to take home! Jonah was a little freaked out by the population of hens, I have to say, who were both extremely vocal and numerous. But he enjoyed petting one of the new chicks back nearer to the quiet farmhouse.

About to enter the chicken pasture.

Jonah cautiously inspects the chick
for possible threats before petting.

After about four hours out at the farms, we hit the road with a cup of hand-churned (yes, hand-churned) goat's milk ice cream--and, of course, with great anticipation for the beginning of our veggie season. Looking forward to more fun culinary adventures (and probably a few more farm trips) with Jonah this summer!