Greetings, CSA members. Brandon here. I write after a terrific week of summer production on the farm. A few of my favorite culinary vegetables have started to come on strong. Plan to use eggplant, okra and more peppers very soon. Also, we have seen a tall, artistic stand of summer cover crops. Several fields contain a mixture of fragrant buckwheat interspersed with soaring sunflowers (think Claude Monet) and in other fields we have monochromatic ribbons of each (think Mark Rothko). Yesterday I was on the weed eater for about three hours and trimmed one of the cover-cropped fields, and I admit that I cut off a few buckwheat stalks near the edge of field #4 (think Vincent Van Gogh). Apart from harvesting and admiring cover crops, we have started to gear up for Fall. On Friday, we seeded chard, radishes, arugula, and crucifers. Also on Friday, Paige treated us to a lunch at Oz Pizza followed by a visit to the Scharko's farm in Fairburn. Gotta love field trips.


Some Techie Farm Talk
For the educational component of this newsletter, I want to write about our harvest techniques and how they relate to vegetable storage in your home fridge. At Serenbe Farms, we practice traditional harvest techniques as described in two excellent resources (chapter 19 of Elliott Coleman's The New Organic Grower and various technical guides at www.attra.org). The organic grower should know each text intimately. I find myself looking at them often for answers to small questions, big questions and unsized curiosities.


Elliott Coleman writes well generally, and in particular six bullet points on harvest techniques demonstrate his keen eye for not only organic agriculture, but also farm culture. Take a look with me:

• Eliminate all unnecessary work.
  
• Simplify hand and body motions.
  
• Provide a convenient arrangement of work areas and locations for materials.
  
• Improve on the adequacy, suitability, and use of equipment needed for the work.
  
• Organize work routines for the full and effective use of labor and machines.
  
• Involve the workers in the process. When people becomes more concious of the way they perform work, their interest increases and their attitude toward the work changes. They begin to notice other things and make valuable suggestions for futher improvements.

At first glance, the suggestions seem cogent and practical. They are. What good farmer does not value efficiency and simplicty? At second glance, you sense a whiff of that malodorous scientific management funk that sustainable farmers tend to deride. We sometimes jab at air-conditioned tractors, irresponsible use of fossil fuels, and GMO soybeans. However, Coleman has avoided egregious judgment by balancing strong, critical words such as "eliminate" and "improve" with softer subjective words such as "unnecessary" and "adequacy." That is to say, Coleman advocates supreme judgment, but on human, not terms suggested by metrics/numbers/data. By honoring the value of quick work, but not bowing to the golden calf of industrialized efficiencies, Coleman argues for efficiences born out of communication and sharing. In practical terms related to Serenbe Farms, we all hold each other accountable for the "better way." If each worker believes in the better way, the she must also acknowledge the possibility that her way might at some point lose out. We harvest quickly and humbly, always open to change. That is a cultured harvest.


A few vegetables we harvested this week:


Edamame translates to "beans on brances" from the Japanese. Pretty straightforward, just like its harvest. First, one farmer cuts the plants at their base and makes individual piles alongside a bed. Other farmers flock to these piles and begin removing stems and leaves. Once processed, all farmers help transport the denuded edamame to the walk in cooler as quickly as possible. We try to streamline the process, but some variations occur, mostly determined by the personality of each worker. For example, Paige asked me the other day if I could share any harvest advice with the group before I walked down the hill to store some of the already processed edamame. I am most proud of suggestion numero uno, that we remove stems to the beat of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" on grounds that the q = 116 rhythm provides a quantifiable metric by which to judge one's rate of strip. Nobody objected to my face, but I am sure that behind my back the idea was not well or generally received given that upon my return, I was the only one humming this 80s pop hit as we stripped and packed edamame. I tell this story not to grind an axe, but to demonsrate how there are mild limits to inculcating on others your own personality and also the application of metrics to farming. All in all, I was excited to plop down in the field and chat with my fellow farmers for a few hours while harvesting a few hundred pounds of edamame. So excited, in fact, that I included a nifty recipe below.




If okra plants run at full turgor, we walk up and down the rows popping off or cutting young pods. Anything over an inch we keep, and anything longer than eight tends to cook up like ropes. Seven inches seems like a wide margin, but a pod of okra can go from less than an inch to inedible in two days. Ideally, we would embark on itchy quotidian harvests for ultimate quality control. Realistically, we go out a few times a week with buckets strapped to our necks and race through an itchy and ever-taller jungle of okra plants to collect as many perfect pods without missing any. The double-check has come into great fashion lately. One can easily miss a pod or twenty.


A good tomato harvest boils down to braun, smoothness and dexterity. Basically, if Lebron James every came out for a game of pick-up Serenbe, I would choose him on my team. Together, we would approach the tomato field with some ten bins. We would work across from each other and go for the tomatoes of the perfect just-ripeness. We would be sure to remove stems (can puncture fruits during storage), not include blemished fruit (end rot, worms, etc. can ruin a tomato's day), and gather as many fruits in hand before placing them gently in a bin that we slid alongside us in the row (Elliott Coleman cites that 40% of a single harvest motion is spent moving the product to the bin, and therefore, eliminating this movement by grasping as many fruits at a time can speed the process. Not intuitive stuff, believe it or not. You would be surprised how many people naturally plink harvest). With bins laden, we would awkwardly hand them over high tomato trelissing to other teammates who pass the bins to the side of the road to be picked up by the old farm truck and returned to be sorted and stored in a cool, ventilated space so that ethylene gases did not overipen the fruit. Before moving to another field of tomatoes, we would wash our hands with a wonderfully and yet gender-neutrally fragranced antibacterial soap in order to avoid cross-contaminating other tomatoes. So, as you may see by now, having a systematic mind and NBA build could streamline this whole process. Without Lebron, we make do.


For herbs and greens, we wake up before sunrise and at first light begin to harvest. In the summer, plants will take up field heat (industry term) rapidly. Harvesting early and storing quickly means that the vegetables will not begin to respire as quickly, therefore lasting longer in your fridge. What is respiration? Why does it matter?


If you have a burning and technical interest, please redirect ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_respiration). If you did not redirect yet, and have little intention of doing so, you should know that you have at least seen respiration occur. When your basil oxidizes and turns black after you washed it or left it out on the counter in a cup of water (both dangerous culinary urban legends and no nos) or your squash turns squishy in the hi-tec vegetable crisper (really a marketing gimmick and ¼ as effective as packing vegetables in an airtight Rubbermaid or similar container with a moist tea towell or paper towell placed inside. My fridge currently has no drawers. I took them out and inserted Rubbermaids), then you have seen post-harvest respiration. Proper storage and prompt usage mitigates these problems, and also makes your veggies taste better since respiration is a physiological process in which starches and sugars are converted into carbon dioxide, water, and other by-products. The process continues after harvest, diminishing the starches and sugars that add flavor. Moreover, at harvest, vegetables are removed from their main oxygen source, viz. their roots. This means postharvest respiration may be anaerobic (occur without oxygen). In anaerobic respiration, starches and sugars are more likely to be converted into ketones, aldehydes, and alcohols than in aerobic respiration. These compounds hasten the death of plant tissue and decrease the quality and flavor of fruits and vegetables.


We can manage respiration-and the freshness of your produce-by using proper harvesting and handling. You can do the same by storing well and eating quickly. And if you cook and consume as quickly as we harvest, stopping by to see us at the Saturday farmers market would work just fine. We are around from 9am-12noon every week.


Harvesting has become my favorite activity at Serenbe. Demanding a balance of physical and mental, and social energies, harvest is a a great indicator of farm culture. Not to prate, but I think we do pretty well here at Serenbe. We work strong, organize carefully and communicate effectively so that harvest can become a pleasant cultural activity. True, harvest ain't the opera, but it'll hunt.