It is the beginning of August. The sun and the rain have been battling for dominion over our days, settling into a ferocious and unpredictable, yet nourishing and balanced cycle. Harvests are abundant in these conditions.

On a personal note, regular readers may remember that I lost my day job at the start of the COVID shutdown. Recently, on the seventh anniversary of this blog, I officially decided to make that a permanent change. It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing for years, and now feels like the best time to dive in. I’m working the land full time now, and I’ve never felt better. I find my life harmonizing with the weather patterns. Sunny days are for field work, gardening, sun tea, and hanging laundry. Rainy days are for preserving the harvest, making and mending what is needed, and for studying. I’m studying hard, and I’m learning a lot. Every day is magical, and I’m so grateful for the combination of luck, strategy, and hard work that brought me here. I know what a rare chance this is, and I won’t waste it.

As you might imagine, there’s a large pay gap between a software engineer’s salary and a beginning farmer’s salary, so anything I can produce rather than buy increases my odds of success in this venture. This is especially true of high quality fresh food, which pays me not only in grocery savings, but also in improved wellness. I harvest regularly from my gardens – four raised beds, an herb spiral, and some container plants. But I also supplement my garden’s offerings by foraging wild edible and medicinal plants from my fields and wooded areas.

Right now, lambsquarters, red clover, and plantain are plentiful. Lambsquarters is a wild relative of spinach, and it tastes just as delicious as its famous cousin. Red clover and plantain have many uses for food and health. If you’re interested in learning more about how to use red clover and plantain, both are covered in Rosemary Gladstar’s excellent book “Medicinal Herbs: A Beginner’s Guide“. My library has a copy, and maybe yours does too! As the farm evolves, my goal is not to remove weeds, but to continuously skew the weed populations towards useful species. I mow and cultivate selectively to discourage poison ivy, cocklebur, and hemlock while encouraging useful weeds to grow and multiply. I’ve even planted some seeds of native weeds I enjoy, in hopes they will take hold and spread through the untamed parts of the land.

Tomatoes, cucumbers, and green beans are thriving in the garden. My sunflowers have had limited success. Most of the sunflower seeds didn’t grow- I suspect the seeds were devoured by hungry wildlings. And who could blame them? Sunflower seeds are delicious. Of the few sunflower plants that germinated, only one is yet in bloom.

Much to my surprise, my greens garden is still producing, even in the summer heat! I expected the collard greens and kale to bolt once the weather warmed, but they are unfazed. The radishes did bolt. Other brassica family members have started to differentiate themselves from the nearly identical forms they all shared as young plants. Kohlrabies are growing bulbs, cabbages are forming heads, and Brussels sprouts are sending up their tall stalks. You may notice there are no pictures of harvests from that garden today, and there’s a reason for that : cabbage loopers. The little green worms have eaten more than their fair share of these plants, and so I paused my harvesting while the plants recover from that damage. BT is an effective organic pesticide for cabbage loopers that I do use when necessary, but I waited a little too long between my applications of it. These plants are very vigorous, and I’m confident the harvests will resume in a couple of weeks.