By Carolyn Givens
Contributing Writer
It’s almost here! The season of growing, the time when the energy of earth is harnessed to push seedlings up and out into the sunlight so that all the tastiest tender fruits and vegetables can find their places at our tables.
Now is the time for all those vegetables you’ve been missing all winter. We will till all the cover crops under and begin planting zucchini, cucumbers, strawberries and tomatoes. The raspberry and blackberry bushes will begin blooming, and the brown canes will be covered in white flowers.
In our animal enclosures, we have some new arrivals. Our mama pig was pregnant for about 3 1/2 months, and she gave birth to nine adorable piglets. They will nurse for up to eight weeks and then wean from their mom. We also expect to see some chicks pecking around with their moms and dads in the chicken enclosure. More chickens equal more eggs! We sell freshly laid eggs all summer from our free-roaming happy hens.
Springtime means that our sugar snap peas will be available at our farm stands and markets very soon. Sugar snap peas are the candy of the vegetable world. You eat them, shell and all, right out of the bag. Kids love them, and grownups do too. Besides being a great low-calorie snack, sugar snaps also contain lots of iron, as well as vitamins C, A, and K.
A lot of people ask us why sugar snaps are so expensive. The reason is that they are ‘artisan’ – like those handmade pickles from Brooklyn. The farm workers pound rows and rows of stakes in the ground. Between each stake, they put up three long horizontal lengths of twine. The twine stretches all the way down the field. The pea seedlings are hand planted at the bottom of the stakes, and the vines use the twine to help them climb. Eventually, it looks like a green vine-wall covered with flowers, and then the flowers turn into snap pods. The snap pea plants are hand-weeded, and when the pods are ready, each snap pea is harvested by hand. There is no such thing on our farm as a snap-pea-harvesting robot.
When you come to the market, the peas you buy have been picked the day before. They are fresh and delicious and so it really isn’t necessary to cook them. You can throw them in at the end of a stir-fry – and believe it or not, there is such a thing as snap pea ice cream, if you have an ice cream maker.
But we prefer to either cut them up for salad or simply eat them raw. Their crunchy goodness and ‘green’ taste will be the essence of spring.
Carolyn Givens operates Something Good Organics, a CSA program, and a farm stand on Santa Rosa Road. Email her at carolyn@somethinggoodorganics.com for more information.
