News from Terra Firma Farm

Will I ever learn to stop taunting Mother Nature? Last week the newsletter started out with a joke about winter being over, and a picture of the little buds on the grapevines opening up (among others) harbingering the advent of spring.
grape shoots

Well, on Thursday night, Mother Nature once decided to teach us a lesson. Not -- thankfully -- with the intense hail or tornadoes that hit as Fairfield, 15 miles south, where I was attending a meeting. I was thrilled to arrive back at the farm and hear that the thunderstorm responsible had missed us completely. Whew!
fairfield hail

No, the kick in the teeth came during the night, when post-frontal temperatures quickly dropped into the 30s. Our primary concern, as usual this time of year, was the tomato field, and we were prepared to protect it. The frost alarm called me just a bit after midnight, and I got the pumps turned on and the sprinklers running by 2:30. We were aware that we might lose some other crops -- summer squash, green beans, and corn -- that we didn't have enough water to protect. So I was pretty shocked to walk into the vineyard the next morning and see this: frosted grapes

Yes, that is the same grape vine as the picture above. The shriveled brown shoots were killed by frost. The vine itself is not dead, and the shoots will grow back later in the spring -- but where they would each normally have one cluster of grapes, there will be no fruit.
The grape trellises are 3-4 feet off the ground, high enough that they generally aren't damaged unless temperatures drop well below freezing for several hours. The coldest is got Friday morning was 30 degrees, probably just for an hour or so. Cold usually settles to the ground where vegetables are growing. But after touring all of the affected fields, it is clear to us that the grapes received the brunt of the damage -- who knows why. It will be a few weeks before we know the extent of the loss -- some varieties were hit much harder than others -- but it's clear we lost at least a third of this year's crop.
We've been growing table grapes for 7 years now and had never had them damaged by cold. This was the latest frost we have ever experienced at Terra Firma, and was particularly alarming because of the number of crops that might have been affected. We were very lucky. Another small blessing was that our strawberry crop, which would have been heavily damaged had the fruit been closer to ripeness, is running a bit late this year. As of the day after the freeze, I was only able to find 3 or 4 fruit that were ripe enough to have been damaged.
ripening berry

Two more sleepless nights on frost watch made for a nail-biter weekend, but the cold spell is over now and let's hope it's the last of the winter.

Thanks,
Pablito

In your boxes
We will have a number of new crops to harvest in the next week or two: Strawberries of course, new arugula and spinach, a new planting of chard, collards, and kale; peas and fava beans. So you might describe this week as, um, the calm before the storm. It's so calm in our fields, harvest-wise, that we are sending you all a bag of Pistachios.
If you've been paying attention to the Allium department in your box, you've noticed that the Green Garlic and Spring Onions are growing quite quickly now -- they're bigger each week. The onions are even starting to swell a bit into bulbs, but are still tender enough to eat raw or barely cooked (if you're into that). It's hard to believe, but it should be just a little over a month before both garlic and onions reach full size and get harvested for curing.

Recipe -- Chard Stuffed with Spring Vegetable Pilaf

Leafy greens can be an easy and healthy substitute for tortillas in recipes for tacos, enchiladas, or other foods that are wrapped.
Mash 1 avocado in a bowl with 4 T. Dijon or other good mustard. Add lemon juice or vinegar until it is a thick liquid, then add salt to taste.
Clean and dice 1-2 spring onions and mince 1 stem of green garlic. Saute in 2 T. olive oil with 1 t. fresh chopper rosemary until tender, then add 1/2 C. long grain brown rice, 1/2 C. wild rice, and a pinch of salt. Cook for 2 minutes and then add 1 3/4 C. water. Bring a boil, then simmer on low heat until all the water has evaporated. Stir to fluff and then cover and let sit 5 minutes.
Soak and drain 1 bunch of asparagus, then cut into 1 inch pieces and sprinkle with salt. Heat 1 T. olive oil in a wok or skillet and quickly sear it crisp-tender. Mix into the rice.
Rinse 1 bunch of chard and then carefully remove the stems from the leaves. Steam the leaves just enough to soften them. Fill each leaf with a spoonful or two of pilaf and drizzle a little sauce over it, then roll it up (use a toothpick to keep it closed if necessary).