Friday dawns calmer and brighter, but it is a day of contrasts. Early morning doctor's appointment in New Haven. Dash back to Noank in the hope that I can find a few extra hours on the farm before taking Elizabeth to New London for her dental appointment.
Sad fact. There will be no time at the farm until Elizabeth's teeth are clean and she's been deposited at her friend's house by three-o-clock. It's sleepover season!
As I approach Wychwood Farm, it is close to four-o-clock. The sky is blackening. Large drops of rain begin to fall as a dry front approaches. Screw the rain! I'm determined to make it into the field, and something tells me that this is not lasting rain. Correct! All the same, I want to run home. I am alone in a field that could use at least four pickers. The Bush Beans are large and ready-to-pick. The cucumber patch is ridiculously overgrown and in need of harvesting and weeding. There is general grooming and weeding to do, and beautiful tomatoes ripen daily.
Window into Ben? He's pensive. Reflective. Hates his cucumber patch because they just keep coming. Can't sell them all fast enough. The spiky leaves and spines do not like, and therefore mock, Ben's hands and forearms. When the day is done, and the cukes have been handled more than sanity warrants, folks are paying less than a half-a-dollar a pound.
Window into the moment? There's about 150 pounds of cukes I'd love to give away. Pawcatuck Neighborhood Center? Do they take fresh produce? Any picklers among their clientele? All I can do is leave a message for Vicky Anderson on a sunny Saturday, and hope she calls back before I donate them to the dumpster.
The bush beans.... there are so many of them, and the forager from The Ocean House needs to return my call. Anxiety? I don't have a nice walk-in chiller, just a couple of crummy refrigerators, so it makes sense for me to pick to order.
Customers? Prospects? I remember, weeks ago, when the cukes were first
blossoms, Walter at Water Street Cafe telling me that he can take lots of cukes. He tells me about the fabulous soups and salads he makes. Yet, when I greet him, flat on his denim back, on wet terra cotta tile, at 7:30 early this morning, he's sawing pvc pipe under his clogged two-bay sink. He growls at me, and I feel like a common nuisance. Therefore, while I'm in nuisance mode I remind him that he wants to take all my cukes and tomatoes. My friend of twenty years sends me packing, my timing lacking. Noah's, on the other hand, is busy with smartly-dressed breakfast folk, fresh from matching, air-conditioned suvs. The manager on duty is prettier, and at the moment, more cheerful than Walter. She recounts a college writing course she'd taken with my oldest son, Sam.
A smile. A lead. Call back after three. I agree!
On my way back to the car, I check with Theresa at Theresa's and she wants to sell some of my produce at her deli. She's talking tomatoes, but I'm thinking she needs some of those damn cukes, a few jalapenos, and a good slug of beans! We shall see.
Finally, Milagro! Tiny, wonderful, busy Authentic Mexican restaurant across from Water Street Cafe. Closed. This is the building where Walter got his start, so many years ago. This is the spot where a talented chef and wife partner introduced their magical fare to the borough nearly thirty years ago. It's a lucky location for any new-comer, as has been the case for Milagro and owner-chef, Martine.
You see, a garden takes so much physical energy, and the stimulant that creates exigency is simply demand... from customers, friends, whomever. I feel sad and annoyed when I sense that food is about to be wasted. On the other hand, I get a thrill out of selling seven dollars worth of peppers and cukes, feel like a boy on a paper route. I have decided that I have always been a peddler. There's a beautiful simplicity in sourcing or creating a product and taking it out to waiting customers. There's even a thrill in rejection, in regrouping and going at it again... or simply going to the next waiting prospect.
Alone at the farm, hopeful at my new produce prospects in Stonington Borough, I approach the field with renewed purpose and a four stroke weed whacker. It's a little past nine, Debbie's working until noon, and her mom and dad are coming by to pick cukes for a personal pickling project. I decide to clean the field up, make a path around the corn patch. For over an hour, the weed whacker growls and whips the weeds into green confetti. Harvesting and weeding in the cucumber patch continues to annoy me, and after an hour, I decide to go home for lunch and a break from my agricultural agony.
When I return, I walk the field, picking tomatoes, considering each for its beauty and perfection, and leaving them in a shallow box at the edge of the patch. Soon, Debbie arrives with her mom and dad. Meet May and Dick. They both seem a little overwhelmed at the scope of our endeavor, but I assure them that every good, successful, venture I have undertaken has seemed insane at the outset. Seemingly satisfied by my disingenuous excuse for an obvious breach in my career, they set out to the cucumber patch. My little hollow of horrors.
May and Dick are each 75. Watching them in the cucumber patch has made this project worth every hour. May has done this before. She finds a cucumber, calls to Dick who stands, wiping his brow, at the edge. "Here's one," she calls. She mixes her tosses like a major league pitcher. After 54 years of marriage, one would wonder what sort of emotion is behind each toss.
"Here, I got it," Dick cries, and the large slicing cucumber finds its way into his palm.
May is waiting, with two more. One she tosses to me, which I grab in mid-air, and the other goes to Dick.
"Ow!" This one finds Dick's chest and bounces awkwardly to the ground.
"Hey, don't bruise them!" Debbie laughs.
After cucumbers, they take some tomatoes, and May picks a beautiful kitchen bouquet of zinnias, snapdragons and cosmos. Once they are gone, Deb picks green beans until she can pick no more. I speak to the chef at Noah's, walking through the field, convincing him, hopefully, that we are not prima donna farmers. I am told to call next week! So, in the end, we clean up, walk around the field, play in the corn rows and come home. Later that evening, we throw away a prodigious amount of cucumbers. Sadly, they were suitable only for compost, hogs, or chickens. I do not yet have such a network. We stop at Milagro for a drink, but it is too busy for us, but it was nice to meet Martine, to see his appreciation for tomatillos and jalapeno peppers.
No comments:
Post a Comment