At the Farm

Katie and I went up to our friend Ilsa’s farm in Petersham, MA, last weekend. The house is situated on sixty or so acres of land (the land itself is called “Anahata”), and Ilsa and her fellow farmer Ben are the ones who run it (the farm is called “Seven Crows Garden”). Beginning last fall, Ilsa and Ben did everything needed in order to sell vegetables this summer—they tilled the land, built the vegetable beds, got permits, seeded, transplanted, weeded, etc. As someone who can kill aloe plants, every other form of cacti, and even those rosemary Christmas trees found at bodegas during the holidays, and also as someone who hates yard work but who from the sidelines watched his mother valiantly attempt, and fail, at cultivating a garden almost every summer of his youth, I can recognize that Ilsa and Ben's having a full harvest to sell right now is no small feat.

So we arrived late Thursday night and were put to bed immediately. In the morning—But how amazing was my sleep? With the open window letting in the most delicious cool water breeze?—it wasn’t raining, so Ilsa thought it would be fun for us to go weed. We were asked to weed a few rows where the onions were. This part of the garden was quickly deemed “the rice paddies” because we were in mud up to our ankles, thanks to the torrential downpour the night before. I did find a little zen in the process, even though I have historically hated all forms of yard work. Also, the satisfaction of pulling up some kinds of weeds is much like dislodging a great booger. From the farm, we could see turkey vultures circling in the distance; according to Ilsa, these profoundly ugly birds have featherless heads so that they can slide in through the eye sockets of their prey.

At one point, Ilsa yelled at us from the other side of the garden, where she was tending to squash, and came barreling over. “If you see any of these . . . ?” she said, making her way to the rice paddies. She showed us on her fingertip two little striped beetles that were fucking. “If you see any of these . . . ?” she said again, looking us each in the eye, sternly, eyebrows raised. Then, silently, as the answer to her question, she pulverized the beetles—they were still copulating!—between her bare index finger and thumb and flicked the mush away. Such is the reality of organic farming! Those beetles will ruin the squash, apparently. When we wanted a break from the weeding and the mud trudging, we were to inspect the squash plants for these beetles and “squash” them ourselves. (I did only one pair. With a glove on. I’m squeamish.)

So this is my “farm look.” My hair is tied up in a “Bam-Bam” (a summer 'do that I'm playing with) and those pants belong to Ilsa. Also, inadvertent MJ nod.

After the weeding and beetle squashing, Ilsa took us on a small tour of the area. I actually can’t remember all the names of the towns because there seemed to be a new one every time we came to a crossroads. We went to a dairy farm where the chicken coop was a gutted RV trailer, and two adorable three-month-old calves were buckling around. In addition to the milk and eggs sold there, these farmers sold the cows’ colostrum, their first milk after giving birth, for human consumption. It looked like melted Orange Julius.


Katie and I were the resident chefs, and dinner was that evening’s activity. Because of everyone’s various dietary restrictions, everything had to be vegan and gluten-free. I find it hard to cook like this. I made polenta topped with a blend of sautéed greens from the garden—beet greens, two different types of kale, and bok choy—and tomato sauce and basil. Fine, but could have been improved with butter and cheese. Far more successful were my zucchini-potato latkes: Take three medium potatoes and roast them till they’re almost done, and then, when cool enough that you won’t hurt yourself, grate them. Grate up a zucchini into a colander, sprinkle it with salt, and let it sit for a while. Fold together with the potatoes, 1 beaten egg (Oops! Actually, eggs weren’t off limits. We also had them for breakfast. How does anyone live without eggs?) and about a quarter cup rice flour. Dollop these into a hot frying pan, which has a generous amount of olive oil in it, and press gently so that they form three- or four-inch rounds. Fry until golden-crisp on each side. Serve hot, and not with sour cream.

Saturday morning we were up very early, like, the crack of dawn, to harvest the veggies for the farmer’s market. I was put on carrots and kale and fennel. It was too g’damn early for the Bam Bam, so I reached for a red Uniqlo ball cap instead. Here I am practicing my Miss America pose, showcasing some fennel.

Meanwhile, Katie was getting drunk off the snap peas.

Ilsa is very much used to this. Has farming ever looked so fun?

We made it to the Barre Farmer’s Market by 9 AM and Ilsa had a gorgeous spread: three kinds of kale, two types of radishes, two kinds of cabbage, collard greens, scallions, turnips, red-leaf and green-leaf lettuce, snap peas, snow peas, fennel, other stuff I can’t remember. I’m a little biased, but her veggies were the best looking ones at the market. Seriously, if you ever find yourself in Petersham on a Saturday morning in the summer, go say hi to Ilsa and buy some of her vegetables. You will not regret it.

Towards the end of the shift, a woman and her daughter came up. “Skaaaaaahl-eeuhns,” the woman said to her daughter. She stood there chewing for a second (I don’t know what she was chewing) while we stared at her, puzzled, until she then said, “Or as some people call them, ‘scallions’.” I interrupted: “Or as we say in Idaho: green onions!” She chewed again, for an uncomfortably long time. “Idaho.” Now she sucked on her teeth. “What part of Idaho?” It turns out that, thirty years ago, she started the first organic farm in the part of Idaho that I am from.

Then we packed up and went home. For lunch, I made a delicious coleslaw from what didn’t sell: Julienne a head of Napa cabbage and half a fennel bulb. Sprinkle with a little bit of vinegar (I used red wine vinegar) and let sit for a few minutes. Then toss with some shredded carrots, a handful of fennel fronds, a handful of basil chiffonade, black pepper, and two or three tablespoons of plain yogurt (the lactose intolerant person also couldn’t eat cabbage, so this was fair game). It’s now ready to eat.

Later that day we went blueberry picking, which basically means that we started planning Katie’s birthday dinner. In addition to the most delicious and luxurious blueberry cobbler—I know I’m getting ahead of myself—she made this vegan and gluten free carrot cake that was seriously amazing. When I hear “vegan” and “baked goods” used in the same sentence, I instinctively think, “hurl.” But Katie pretty much blew my mind. I wish I had the recipe, but Katie's the type of cook who can visualize something, open up a cupboard to see what's on hand, and soon enough have it coming out of the oven. But before we ate that, she made pesto, which she put on some quinoa pasta and topped with shitake mushrooms, and I did a salad, and fried up the leftover polenta, and we drank four bottles of wine.

A few hours after passing out, I woke up in a heady haze to find that a bunch of mosquitoes had molested me. Arms, legs, toes, hands, neck, forehead, chest, back. (And knees! Why the knees??) But the blind rage didn’t kick in until a little later, when—well, I’m sure that everyone has experienced this: you’re trying to go to sleep, and then you hear a “buzzzZZZZZzzz” by your ear. I probably slapped myself in the face thirty times over the course of a half hour, and then wrapped my whole self up in a sheet, and then piled pillows on my head. Then I snapped. Who can contain the predator within when fronted with an army of bloodthirsty mosquitoes? On went the lamp, rolled up went my New Yorker. I found them all over the room and must have killed twenty of them. Each one left a swatch of blood on the wall and on poor Kirstin Valdez Quade’s short story that I will now never finish reading. On the plus side, I’d gotten over some of my earlier squeamishness.

I thought it would be hard to readjust to coming home. But between fighting for a seat on the Amtrak and then braving the masses in Penn Station, to the break-dancing kids on the A train (or, as Katie called their moves, “yoga on crack”) and the suffocating feces smell on the G train (since, of course, the F train line was under construction), and then to me practically throwing myself at my laptop to catch up on "all that I missed" right when I entered my apartment—it might be that this blog post and the mosquito bites are all that’s left to remind me of how serene it was.

** Thanks, Katie, for all these great pictures!