Redland Rambles

A few weeks ago, Gleaning Day marked the end of the CSA season at Bee Heaven Farm. It’s a fairly laid back event. CSA members bring a covered dish for a potluck lunch, and prowl the farm to pick what’s left.

Searching through dried up vines for the last of the heirloom tomatoes.

It was a sunny, hot Sunday morning, and people were already out in the vegetable beds looking for things to pick by the time I arrived. CSA members who had done this before came prepared. They were wearing hats and sunblock, and carried bags and containers for their loot. It’s best to pick first and hang out later before everything is gone and it gets too hot. Pretty much everything was up for grabs (unless it was roped off with pink ribbon). Heirloom tomatoes were the most popular and were the first to go.

An assortment of heirloom tomatoes.

I found a patch of tomatoes that somehow got overlooked, and started picking. My plastic bowl filled up with Green Grape, Podland Pink, Brown Berry and Speckled Roman tomatoes, to name the ones I know. They were perfectly ripe and warm from the sun. I ate a few too, and they tasted so good!

Nearby, a boy and his mother were working hard to pull up a parsnip. The boy looked up and saw my container, and the tomatoes I was putting into it. “Give it to me!” he said. I laughed and kept picking. His mother gave him a look. “Where did you get that?” he asked me, still with a demanding tone. “From home,” I said. The mother asked if there were containers in the barn. I said there might be something, and suggested they bring back a trowel for the parsnips. They headed off to the barn, and I took a try at the parsnips. Carrots come out fairly easily, but parsnips hold on for dear life and feel like they are cemented into the soil. I dug with fingers and with the bottle opener on a pocket knife I’d brought — and got nowhere. The mother and son didn’t come back. Parsnips 2, people 0.

Stephanie with a hand full of raspberries.

Raspberries were abundant this year and every branch was loaded with clusters of fruit. The ripest ones were purple-black and sweet. You have to be careful picking them because branches have sharp thorns, and you can get scratched up in a hurry — or stuck — if you’re not careful. I heard voices in the nearby raspberry patch and spotted a young couple intent on picking. The young woman had a hand full of ripe berries, but the young man didn’t have as many.

Woman: You just pick em. Not the whole bunch, just the ripe ones.
Man: Oh, then how do you do that?
Woman: One by one.
Man: Ok.
Woman: I must have been a farmer in a past life. I know what to do!
Man: You sure do.

Bally the horse noticed new people around and wandered close to the fence to see what was going on. He got a lot of attention from kids. They all wanted to feed the horse something, and ran around picking anything and everything green and offered that. But Bally was particular and only nibbled at the finest weeds. One little boy was completely enchanted. He plopped down onto the ground and his eyes never left the horse’s face.

Making friends with Bally the horse.

The midday heat was to getting to me and I headed back to the barn to get something cool to drink. Inside tables and chairs were set up and people were eating. One long table along a wall had everybody’s food set out — an interesting hodge-podge of vegetarian salads, a lasagna, pickles of all kinds,  beans, pasta, and brownies. I missed out on mango hot salsa and mini carrot cupcakes. Large coolers held water, lemongrass tea and allspice berry tea (made from plants grown on the farm), and beer was on ice in another cooler. People ate and drank and chatted for a while but by 2 pm everybody was gone with their loot, the last of the farm’s bounty.

So that’s it for the main growing season at Bee Heaven Farm. What remains now is end of season housekeeping, then the land and the farmers take a break for the summer.

Getting a taste of something good.

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