So the season sunsets on, the light getting more golden to match the grassy hillsides. California embodies a beautiful hue of sunshine in early Autumn, an emblem to notate how Summer is setting. We smell the sweet scent of dry grass and hear the hum of sea-shells on the wind. This year, fire season was minimal and the rains came early to compliment the cool summer we had.
Our harvest baskets became increasingly colorful, varied, and abundant. Our brassicas (red and green cabbages, cauliflower, broccoli, and broccolini) had a miracle of a growing season this year, as most heads weighed between 6 and 17 pounds per vegetable! Our late start to the cut flower terrace went unnoticed for a time as we prioritized harvesting, processing, and storing the hundreds of pounds of giant brassicas. In quiet, the terrace rewarded its rest with heavy buckets and hundreds of mini-bouquets when we found time to harvest.
Foggy days at our favorite beach, Friday lunch breaks for a $9.00 burger at the dive bar down the road, grape and apple gleaning from neighbors in town, cool evenings spent at the farmer's market enjoying music and becoming familiar with our community.
Rewind to springtime; I had proposed that we have a field row dedicated to mammoth sunflowers. I had remembered when I had worked at Tucson Village Farm and the kindergarteners and I planted a hedgerow of mammoth sunflowers to divide the street from the demonstration farm. This inspired the reality of our beloved Sunflower Boulevard, which the school children and I planted lovingly in March. It was such a beautiful process to grow with these towering pillars of photosynthesis. We aspired to be like them, beginning our mornings as a Crew by turning our faces towards the Sun, soaking in the warmth and transforming it into strength filled golden radiance. By the time school groups returned for their Fall semester, the sunflowers heads began to hang their heads heavy with healthy seeds, their greens revolutionized to light yellow and their petal halos decomposed on the rich soil below. Songbirds perched on the edges of their crowns and peered into their faces, nibbling black and white striped packets of potential life. Ants marched up the towering trunks in pairs, busy farming tiny green aphids in the nape of the sunflowers. We human farmers admired the diligent little Formicidae, their organization to cultivate their bug food in the cosmopolitan environment of the colossal skyscrapers motivating. After the leaves had dried and heads victoriously decapitated, the giant saucers were put to dry and deseed. Children paraded down the boulevard and each chose a head and learned how to save the seeds. Like nature's fidget toy, they found themselves consumed with the activity. Nibbling on a few seeds, pocketing a handful for their own planting, and saving the rest for our farm animals and next year's planting, this satisfying cycle was closing to an end. We weeded and added compost to the soil where the stalks stood sturdy in the shoulders of the boulevards and transplanted snap peas for the winter months. Training these delicate vines to the woody stakes, we hoped for the best.
The leaves off the wild plum tree we sit under for meetings and lunch breaks began loosing all its leaves in a messy yellow relief, and the early rains watered down what was once the rich warm color of the sunlight. This turned the fields and hills a friendly fuzzy green, and made us realize how short the window was of the iconic California rolling hills of golden slumbers was this year.
We began packing up our patio in the far corner of a back field and building the back of our truck bed to camp in. I designed a platform, we gathered scrap redwood boards from the Barn (dated to the beginnings of the farmhouse build in the 1800's with redwood harvested on-site). Isaac built the platform in the short hours of daylight between the end of his workdays and sunset, and I began sorting and packing for our journey. After many meetings with coworkers and administration hours to hand off my responsibilities for the winter, and it was time to leave the Farm for the season.
Big Takeaways:
• Days flow slower when I am able to walk from my house to get to work and back.
• When summer crops hit their stride, even in Autumn, there's no stopping them.
• The unique shifting of the season happens quietly but boldly. I miss the warm sunlight tones.
• Working with kids to experiene the beauty and wonder of the Farm is worth the chaos.