The longest day of the year is here and I can hardly believe it. It feels like the snow melted off of the fields yesterday!
The June solstice marks the first day of summer, and on the farm the change of season is palpable. With the rain and sunshine everything is suddenly growing exponentially. I feel like we could watch the leaves grow right in front of us.
Life on the farm is shifting as well. As a first-year farm, this spring was chock full of building infrastructure. Every task felt like it was actually made up of ten tiny tasks all rolled together. There was a lot of building and bending and cutting; everything needed to be made or bought for the first time, from beds to tools. Now, instead of having as many infrastructure projects we are transitioning to having a weekly routine of planting, weeding, and harvesting.
We spent a lot of time and money on those initial investments this spring, so it's good to feel like we are starting to reap the benefits of that at our weekly farmers market. Spring is a tough time for a lot of farmers financially: lots of investing and little income. It feels really encouraging during this start-up period to have some money coming in and to know that people like what we have to offer!
One of my favorite seasonal harvests that is coming up soon is the garlic harvest. Garlic is planted in the fall and harvested in the summer, but before the garlic bulbs are ready to be dried and stored the plant puts up a funny little stalk called a garlic scape. Scapes have a wonderful, garlicky taste that's a little more mild than it's bulb-counterpart. Scapes will eventually become flowers if they are left on the plant for too long, so make sure to take them off of your garlic plants soon to encourage the plant to invest more energy in the bulb hiding below the surface.
I love to make pesto with scapes, but I'm holding out for our basil at the farm to be ready. In the meantime I stumbled upon another recipe to use up these delicious scapes: bacon wrapped garlic scapes. Simply wrap each scape with a piece of bacon and cook them in a pan until the bacon is brown on both sides!
Enjoy the bounty of this new season, and happy solstice!
Meg