The Garden of Eve - The Work Week, Part 1

To continue ....

The farm has a few box trucks that they use for deliveries to the greenmarkets and out in the fields to bring the harvested produce back to processing barn.  There is a list each day of what needs to be harvested which I think is determined by what is needed for that week's CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) drops and for the greenmarkets and the farmstand. So, for instance, Rafa might say, we need 240 bunches of radishes or 20 bunches per caja (crate) or 12 cajas of radishes.  Each bunch consists of six radishes that are bound by a twist tie. The radishes at the farm are such a luscious shade of pink - almost a magenta - that it immediately made me think of a great lipstick or nail polish. They are not round like what you buy in the supermarket; they are about the size of your thumb only thicker and are white at the top by the greens and then become the deep, beautiful pink color.

So everyone picks their spot along the row and fills up their crate or works with another person to fill up a crate between them.  Once the crates are full, they are loaded onto the box truck and then you move to the next area that needs to be picked and start all over again.  Here's what we picked during week that I was there:  radishes, arugula, parsley, cilantro, tomatoes, sungold cherry tomatoes, red plum tomatoes, yellow plum tomatoes, chocolate cherry tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, purple kale, green kale, green beans, purple beans, golden beets, regular beets, soy beans, swiss chard, leeks, dill, mixed greens (mustard greens, baby kale, arugula and three or four other types that I don't recall). The farm also has other crops planted that weren't ready for harvesting yet.

A little bit about the process:  I was a little surprised by how some of the things were harvested but many were things that I have never grown before.  The soybean plants were pulled up root and all. I had never seen soybean plants and was surprised to find that soybeans grow very close to the center stalk of the plant, similar to regular beans. For some reason, I had envisioned them growing under the ground like peanuts.  The leaves of kale were snapped off from the plant and twist tied together in bunches of six.  The baby lettuces were also pulled up by the root and bunched together in a bunch about the diameter of a half dollar. Once they get to the processing barn, the whole caja is put in a tub of water and raised and lowered several times to get the dirt out of the leaves.  Then the cajas go into a huge refrigerated section of the barn (just like in your supermarket) where they are stacked according to where they are going, i.e., CSA, greenmarket, etc.

The days during the week were much the same - get up, rush through breakfast and get out to the fields. Oh, and let's not forget something very important - especially when eating unprocessed bran per my doctor's suggestion:  the morning trip to the toilet.  Because it seemed that we started at the furthest reaches of the farm and worked our way back in during the day, this was a crucial thing to do prior to leaving for the fields.  There is no toilet or porta-potty except at the processing barn which seems to be about 1/2 mile from the far end of the farm.

The first morning, I was hurrying as everyone had gotten up before me, and as we got out to the fields, someone asked me "do you have your harvesting knife?" Harvesting knife? What's that? Eve told me all I needed was some closed-toe shoes and maybe some gardening gloves.  Sherita offered to loan me hers but it was all the way back at the farmhouse.  Well, that was ok with me because guess what? I had to go to the bathroom. This was my first morning and I hadn't quite figured out that crucial stop yet.

I was awakened at 12:30 am on Monday night/Tuesday morning by headlights shining in my window.  Who in the heck is here at this hour, I wondered?  Well, the next morning, I found out that the boiler was fixed and we had hot water - all due to that middle of the night visitor. Yay!

The next morning, Tuesday, I got up a little later than the apprentices because I was stiff and sore from the hard work and also because of the inability (still) to take a hot shower. I headed out to the field and realized that I had left the harvesting knife back at the farmhouse so went back to get it. On my way back out to the field, I took the opportunity to use the bathroom one last time and stopped at the porta-potty.  Everyone else was out picking tomatoes so I joined them in rows where the tomato vines came up almost waist high. The tomatoes are so beautiful that I wanted to take a photo with my cell phone camera and at that point, realized that I didn't have it with me.  I knew that I had it when I left the farmhouse, so the only place it could be was in the porta-potty.  Well, not in the porta-potty, but I figured it must have fallen out of my pocket onto the floor of the porta-potty. No big deal - I would get it when we went back in for lunch in a few hours.

 About 30 minutes later, Farmer Chris (as the apprentices called the owner, Chris, to distinguish him from the apprentice, Chris) came out and asked me if I had lost my phone. I said, yes, how did you know? He had found it in the porta-potty and had called the people that I had last called to find out who the phone belonged to.  He said, "I think you'd better call your mom because she sounded a little worried."  So, I called my mom and asked why she was worried. She said "how would you feel if some strange man called from your daughter's phone asking if you knew who the phone belonged to?"  My mom is blind, so her phone is set up to announce the caller's name, so needless to say, when she heard a guy's voice instead of mine, she was a little disturbed. Chris explained that he was the owner of a farm and told her where he had found my phone, so she relaxed a bit.  She told me that I'd better call my sister because apparently, Chris had called my sister first who then called my mom and tried to convince her to call the police to find out about my whereabouts.  Fortunately, mom convinced her to hold off on that.  Mom suggested that in the future, I let her know the name and phone number of the place I'm going to be - just in case. Huh? Just in case of what, exactly?

Tuesday night we were invited to dinner at Eve's and Chris's.  I had been warned by the apprentices not to expect much.  (Eve, if you ever read this, I'm sorry if this next bit hurts your feelings, but sometimes, the truth hurts.)  Sherita, Sean, Chris and I all piled into Chris's car and we drove over.  Ted was meeting us there as it was just a short walk from his yurt. Jon would not be joining us because he was off on farm business somewhere else (yeah, sure!). Farmer Chris had made guacamole so we started off with the guacamole and chips while we were waiting for Eve to finish cooking. (I realized later that I really should have offered to help her - as I usually would have) We sat around the table and chatted and Forrest, Eve and Chris's son, sat down in Chris's lap and made himself comfortable.  Then, Eve served the next course which she explained was broccoli rabe/leek soup which she had made based on a recipe for lentil/leek soup. She had not made enough for all of us, so I offered to share a bowl with Sherita. Broccoli rabe is one of the few vegetables that I do not care for, so I wasn't so interested in the soup. However, I'm always willing to give new things a try, so Sherita and I both dipped our spoons in at the same time and made identical faces of dismay at the taste. It was so bitter and awful, that we just pushed our bowl away and didn't eat anymore.  The guys were made of sterner stuff and all finished theirs - despite Forrest's hilarious statement that the soup was terrible.  Then Eve served the next course which consisted of turkey chili and sweet potato fries. Again, there really wasn't enough for everybody, but at least the sweet potato fries were really delicious. I had thought that the apprentices must be exaggerating - surely Eve's cooking couldn't be as bad as they had made it out to be - but unfortuantely, it was. Oy!

The one interesting thing we talked about at dinner was the farm dogs: Casper and Milano.  They are Maremmas - bred to guard sheep in Italy - and were just gorgeous. They look very much like Golden Retrievers, but are a bit leaner and are almost white.  I was very interested in how they had discovered the breed and learning more about them so we talked about them for quite a while.  Apparently, they do not take very well to training as they are independent and bred to figure things out for themselves.  They are very smart and stay out in the fields all night - to protect the chickens and to keep deer and other pests out of the fields.  Apparently, there had been several massacres of the chickens which is ultimately why Chris and Eve decided to get the dogs. The dogs are very affectionate with people, but don't let this fool you - they are serious killers.  Other pets are not safe with them and they have pretty much exterminated the rabbits and other rodents on the farm.

                                            Casper

That's it for now....I'll try to finish up the week in the next post.

Meet the farm apprentices

The farm apprentices are all in their mid to late 20s (I think) and it's time I introduced them:

Jon, who picked me up at the CSA dropoff on Saturday, is the head apprentice.  This year is his second year on the farm and prior to this, he worked at the Queens County farm.  In addition to his job at the Garden of Eve, he also "processes" (slaughters) chickens at a nearby poultry farm on Sundays. The guy has very little time off.  He's one of those quiet guys that you just know has a lot going on inside his head.  We generally didn't see a whole lot of him during the day once we got started on our list of harvesting - he would be off performing other tasks on the farm such as riding the tractor in another part of the farm, "fluffing" the dirt.  I think this is basically tilling the soil so that it does not become too compacted prior to planting.

Sean and Jon, goofing around in the kitchen

Chris has been at the farm for the whole season and was the third most experienced person there (after Rafael and Jon).  He runs the farmstand at the Westhampton greenmarket on Saturdays which means getting up at 5 am to load the truck. Chris also drives the box truck around on the farm from location to location and was most generous about sharing his laptop with me during my stay.  He and Jon are the only ones that will be at the farm for the whole season which I believe is March through mid-November.

Chris

Sean was the clown of the group.  A strict vegetarian, he seemed to eat a LOT of sweet potatoes - I think at almost every meal.  He was always the first with a joke or the first to throw a rotten tomato and the first to help break up a serious dogfight (more on that later).

Sherita was the only woman there and I am most grateful to her for sharing her bathroom with me! The guys used the upstairs bathroom and it was not what I would call clean. She also shared her harvesting knife with me while I was there and we did a lot of stuff together during the week. I believe Sherita has been there for several months and is planning to leave in November with the rest.

Sherita

Ted was the most recent addition to the farm.  I think he had only been there a week when I arrived and was planning to stay until Thanksgiving. As previously mentioned, he was living in the yurt which was even further away from the farmhouse than the farthest part of the fields.  Prior to coming to the farm, he had spent the summer working at The Hole in the Wall camp in Connecticut, which I think is a camp for kids with cancer.  He always looked tired and Sherita said that the kids in the camp had just sucked the life out of him. Unfortunately, Ted was not in the kitchen on my last morning, so I wasn't able to get a photo of him.

My next post will be about the week and will be fairly condensed as harvesting and pulling weeds is rather boring, so I will mostly focus on the highlights and drama during the week.


Today's factoid from The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan:  "if the sixteen million acres now being used to grow corn to feed cows in the U.S. became well-managed pasture, that would remove fourteen billion pounds of carbon from the atmosphere each year, the equivalent of taking four million cars off the road.  As much as a third of all the greenhouse gases that human activity has added to the atmosphere can be attributed to the saw and the plow."  Wow, this book really is an eye-opener.

Adventures at The Garden of Eve, Sunday

I need to back up a little....

When I decided I wanted to spend a week at an organic farm, I knew that there were some organic farms out on the East end of Long Island having spent a lot of time out there with my ex, Alan.  His mom lived in Baiting Hollow which ironically, is very near the Garden of Eve, so we spent a lot of time on the North Fork and had been to many of the vineyards out there.   So, I googled organic farms first and then came up with a site that allowed you to search by state and region. There were quite a few farms listed but the Garden of Eve sounded like the best fit for me. I could get there by train and I was familiar with the area, so I called the farm.  Eve herself answered and I told her that I was interested in volunteering at the farm for a week. I was quite surprised that she didn't ask me any questions other than when I planned to arrive and leave. No liability waivers to sign - really, I was a bit shocked.

Back to the story....

Sunday dawned clear and sunny and needless to say, the first thing I did was to look at what was on the roof.  I had thought perhaps a roosting turkey or chicken was up there.  Haha, it was a tree branch that was scraping the roof in the wind. My overactive imagination strikes again!

I found out what the reality of "no hot water" meant: filling the tea kettle and taking a bird bath in Sherita's shower, i.e., filling a dishtub with boiling water and cool water and getting as clean as possible.  Hmmm, did I really sign up for this?!

Sherita's boyfriend, John, showed up and we headed east, looking for Catapano farm.  We didn't see it (we actually passed it, but the sign just said Cheese, or something vague, NOT the farm's name) so we drove on to the little beach that was near the house where John's father lived when he was a kid. It was hot and sunny and the view of the Peconic bay was stunning. We were directly across from Shelter Island. We walked around the beach and the private boat slips nearby and John told us stories from his childhood.

We left and looked up the goat farm on one of our phones and finally found it.  There were two goat pens and one small, dollhouse looking space where they sold the farm's products: chevre of every flavor, regular cheese and goat milk based skincare products. The woman at the cash register told us that she made the skincare products and her husband made all the cheeses (or is it vice versa?). I bought a goat cheese Gouda and a lavender-honey chevre. Yummmmm! 
 

The owners

We drove around a bit more - through the idyllic town of Greenport - and then decided to try one of the vineyards.  I suggested Pellegrini in Mattituck and we turned around and went there.  The tasting room is beautiful and they also have outdoor seating that is quite pleasant.  It was a beautiful day, so we decided to take our flights outside to enjoy the fresh air.  We all agreed that the un-oaked Chardonnay was the best, so I bought some of that to take back to the farmhouse as Jon was making turkey for Sunday dinner.

Mark, the guy that runs the stand at the Brooklyn greenmarket, had traded someone for a turkey and Jon was going to cook it for Sunday dinner.  Jon is quiet and unassuming, but he worked at Chez Panisse (of Alice Waters fame) for a year and a half.  I am SOO envious!!  I made the potato-leek gratin that I made at Thanksgiving last year and it was a huge hit, once again. I wasn't sure how it would turn out as the oven in the farmhouse is tricky, but it turned out just fine, thank goodness.

After dinner, we all sat around talking and Sherita relayed an invite from Eve and Chris, the farm's owners, to come over for dinner on Tuesday night. I hadn't even seen them at this point, because they were celebrating Yom Kippur and wouldn't be available until Monday.  The apprentices all told stories about Eve's cooking and advised that we should eat something before we went over to the house for dinner.

Hmmm, how bad can it be? I thought to myself. Well! More on that later.

Ahem!!

After my initial post, I realized that I should go back to the beginning and explain what led me to the decision to volunteer at the Garden of Eve and more importantly, why I think a life as a farmer is in my future.

For the last several years, I have been contemplating what I want to do with the last third of my life.  I lived in Tampa until I was 30, then moved to NYC and have now been in NYC for the past 20 years.  I feel it's time to move on, but I haven't been able to figure out just what it is that I want to do. I thought perhaps teaching, but I don't think I have the patience for the political nonsense that goes on in our educational system. For a time, I thought that I wanted to go back to school and get a degree in Interior Design.  I really love design and I'm pretty good at interior design without having any formal training. But, the design world, like many others, loves youth and starting a business in interior design would probably mean staying in NYC and I'm convinced that it's time for me to go. Then, I thought I might get certified as a yoga instructor and move to Venezuela and build a yoga retreat/posada with my ex-husband, Luis. Hmmm, that didn't quite work out either. To become a certified yoga instructor, the training requires a big time commitment that I'm not really ready to make. Do I love it that much? I like yoga a lot, but no, not that much! So, still searching...

Then, in a "catching up" conversation with my friend, Kitty, she randomly mentioned that she had stayed at her sister's farm last fall.  My ears perked up.  "Your sister's farm? What farm? I thought she was a landscape architect?"  Apparently, Kitty's sister had decided to start an organic farm outside of Atlanta and her mother and brother had both moved to the farm too to help her out.  (They live in separate living quarters on the other side of the farm.) Wow!  We talked about it a little bit, but the seed had been planted.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought "Wow! I could do this!"

Now at this point, I have to go back to the VERY beginning.

When I was 9, my parents adopted my mom's nieces and nephew as their mom, her sister, had been killed in a car accident.  They came to live with us and it was quite an adjustment for everyone.  My parents had been designing a new house out in the country and the house now needed to be redesigned to accommodate the extra kids, which meant it would also be more expensive to build.  My mom had a great job and was actually one of the first women Chamber of Commerce presidents in the US.  However, my sisters and brother needed a lot of supervision: my youngest sister was diagnosed with amblyopia (lazy eye) and needed intensive therapy to try to correct her vision; my other sister had a lot of psychological issues connected to her mother's death and needed intensive psych therapy. We all needed dental work.  Plus, my father had had his first heart attack when I was seven and had a lot of medical expenses. My mom had to give up her job.  Something had to give, so, we planted about half of our property and had a huge garden.  A few years later, my parents bought the property across the street (an acre) and we completely  planted that as well.  We had about an acre and a half planted as well as the orange trees, grapefruit trees, grapevines, pecan trees and whatever else my mom decided to plant (fig trees, avocado trees, etc.).  My parents were also semi-hippies, so we were into composting long before you could buy a composter at Home Depot.  We had chickens and turkeys and we also had earthworm beds. (!)

As we all left the nest, the area that was planted became smaller and smaller until there was really nothing left. My dad's health was in decline so he was really incapable of using the rototiller and my brother wasn't around, so everything was lying fallow, until.....

I took a break between my sophomore and junior years of college and lived at home again ("What do you mean a 1 am curfew?!") I planted a 10x10 garden that was super productive because I had read a book about how to do it. (won't go into it here - the process was too lengthy to describe). I loved every minute of my garden and was sorry to say goodbye when I went back to college the following year.

So, I had a pretty extensive background in gardening prior to moving to NYC.  Even here, I have always had containers on my fire escape with herbs and flowers. So, when Kitty mentioned farming - now you can better understand why I had that "aha!" moment.

The Garden of Eve, My Adventure Begins!

Day 1, Saturday, 9/18

I was supposed to meet the head apprentice, Jon, at the Queens CSA stop "between 8 and 8:30" according to Eve, the farm's owner.  I arrived at 8:02 and was told, "he got here early today. you just missed him." The homeowner scurried around for 10 minutes, looking for Jon's cell number and meanwhile, I sent a text to Eve asking her for Jon's cell number as we had somehow missed each other. This is not how I wanted to start out my week on the farm. I'm pretty sure that Jon saw picking me up as an unwanted hassle and probably viewed me as some dilettante that wanted to play at farming for a week. Hah!

Anyway, Jon arrived back at the CSA location, rearranged the back of the truck to make room for my bicycle and bags, and off we went to make the other stops on his route.  Our next stop was at the Brooklyn Greenmarket at McCarren Park. He was dropping off some eggs that were shorted for the CSA delivery and stopped to talk to Mark, who ran GoE's stand at the greenmarket. I talked to Mark briefly and then resorted to watching the dogs at the dog run while waiting to leave for the next stop.  I think Jon was simply wasting some time at the market because he had left so early that the next two CSA stops would not be ready for him yet.

Finally, we left there and made the next stop in Carroll Gardens at the Transit Garden.  Everyone was so friendly and I helped to unload their "cajas" (or crates) of fruit and vegies and then loaded the empty cajas to go back to the farm.

We made one more stop in Brooklyn and then it was off to the Garden of Eve in Riverhead.  Jon is not exactly loquacious but he did make an effort at conversation and patiently answered all my questions.  Apparently, the farm makes the majority of its income from the CSAs.  I was quite surprised to hear this as I assumed it would be from the farmstands.  Good to know!  The farm sells 800 CSA shares (including half shares) and also operates a farmstand at the farm in Riverhead on a daily basis. It also participates in greenmarkets at McCarren Park and at Westhampton Beach.  Eve also mentioned in passing one night that she also supplies several restaurant chefs with the farm's organic produce.

We arrived at the farm just in time for lunch.  Lunch is generally prepared by one of the farm apprentices who leaves the fields at 10:30 to go back to the house to make lunch for all of the apprentices/volunteers.  That first day's lunch was made by Ted and consisted of grilled peanut butter and peach sandwiches.  I have to say that I was a bit apprehensive but the sandwiches were great! We all sat around and talked for a bit and then it was out to the fields.  There were a couple of volunteers out for the day from Manhattan and we were set to weeding.  The other volunteers had never been on a farm or gardened before and were completely clueless. I hadn't even thought about it before, but what if they pulled up the good plants instead of the weeds? That's potential income, down the drain! We continued to weed for an hour or so and then it was time to collect the eggs.  They were a little scared to reach under the hens to pull out the eggs and I can't say that I blame them - especially since I was pecked a few times by a recalcitrant hen.

There are about 1,000 chickens on the farm and probably 995 of them are hens (as opposed to roosters) - so needless to say there were a LOT of eggs.  We had some help from Trish, who works at the GoE a few times a week and at another farm the other days.  We took the eggs back to the Processing Barn and washed them and I was quite surprised when they added bleach to the water. Bleach, organic? You have to wash off chicken poop, blood, feathers and sawdust - so I guess it makes sense. The three of us sat on crates around a big galvanized tin tub filled to the brim with water and the eggs in a basket in the middle and washed eggs for what seemed like a couple of hours.  When I finally stood up, boy, my back hurt!

After that, I went to work at the farm's garden center for while, making sure all of the tables were kept filled with mums and then helped to unpack a truck full of potted mums.  The garden center is a new addition to the farm this year.  There had been a garden center on the site previously, but it was run by some other people that were just renting the space.  Eve and her husband decided to run it themselves and put up a huge greenhouse and invested some money into the project.  It seems to be doing quite well.

The farm provides the apprentices room and board, a small stipend and as much produce as they want.  They also give them a discount on anything sold in the farmstand (all kinds of organic products from bread to cheese to soft drinks).  As a volunteer, I was entitled to the produce too but needed to stock up on other items from the supermarket. So I mounted my bike and rode to the King Kullen which is 3 miles from the farm (2.95 to be exact - I looked it up on mapquest).  I left my bike helmet on and while I was in the store, this guy came up to me and said "heh, heh, heh, do I need to be worried about safety in here?" and pointed to my bike helmet.  Really? Is that the best you can come up with??  Then, as I was walking to the wine shop down the way, a couple looked at me and said "that's straight out of NYC." Haven't these people ever seen anyone wearing a bike helmet before? I mean, really!

Back to the farm and made dinner for myself (everyone is on their own for dinner - unless you make plans with the others) and then we sat around talking for a bit and then everyone was off to bed. Some of the apprentices had been up at 5 am (or earlier) to load the trucks for their trips to the greenmarkets and CSA dropoffs and looked like they were very tired. One of the apprentices, Ted, is staying at a yurt that is all the way on the other side of the farm, so he took off before everyone else.

The next day, Sunday, is the only day off for the apprentices and Sherita kindly asked me if I would like to join her and her boyfriend on a drive. The plan was to visit some vineyards and Catapano Dairy Farm (goats only) to buy some goat cheese.  Anyone who knows me knows how I love goat cheese and wine was just a bonus, so that was a no-brainer.

So plans for Sunday were complete and I was off to bed in The Chateau, otherwise known as the garage. Jon was kind enough to get sheets and blankets for me to make the bed (an uncomfortable futon - I know, I'm spoiled).  Thank goodness, I had brought my own pillowcase at least - just didn't have room for sheets too.  I read the Omnivore's Dilemma for a little while and missed Yufi and decided to turn in. I woke up in the middle of the night to hear what sounded like someone walking around outside and something on the roof of the garage. What could it be? After lying in my lumpy bed listening for a while, I decided to get up and investigate. I couldn't see anything out the window (which didn't open, drat it!) so I went outside to see what it was.  A raccoon in the garbage! I just managed to spot it as it ran away and it was pitch dark outside.  I couldn't see what was making the noise on the roof but figured I would look in the morning. Since I was up anyway, I went into the house to go to the bathroom.  Oh yes, I forgot to mention that there was no hot water in the house (the boiler was broken) and since there was no bathroom in the garage, I made my way to the upstairs bathroom in the dark, hoping that I didn't fall down the stairs. Oy! What a day!