BEANS. I love beans, particularly the little french filet variety (yes those ones that are reaaaalllly a back-breaker to pick). Their tinder snap and crisp flavor screams summer and always gives me a pleasant wave of nostalgia. So, in honor of the green bean, the blog this week is a throw back to a few years ago. Below is a little reflection piece I wrote about green beans.

I love growing flowers (obvious from the overabundance of flower pictures peppering my social media and marketing efforts :). At one point I had hoped to only grow flowers. I would fantasize about long days in my green house tending plants and arranging flower bouquets. In the fantasy growing flowers is really easy, I always look beautiful and unhurried and the flowers are never damaged or overrun with weeds, people weep with joy when they see me and my armfuls of ranunculus, dahlias, lisianthus, and tiger lilies, and there are rainbows and unicorns in the background. Well, ok, not that last part, but you get the idea..

Today marks the beginning of the 15th week of the Thornfield Farm market season—the halfway point. I can't decide whether to be amazed at how fast it's gone or terrified by how much further we still have to go. Every week moves by so quickly I can't believe it's over, and yet there is so much work packed into every day that it always feels like three weeks in one. I'm exhausted and very happy.

Zephyr is tall and lush, her hair hangs out in big green lobes of vegetative health. Her fruit is long and lean with a delicate yellow body and a sweet green tip. Her babies come in fast and keep coming for weeks, and weeks, and weeks. The flesh of her fruit is tender and delicate with a subtle sweetness. As a mother Zephyr hangs tough when the other squash bend to the Virginia disease cycle. She's not an automatic target for the stripped cucumbers beetles or the squash bugs. Zephyr is sturdy, bodacious, prolific, and a beauty to behold.

Lest this blog start to seem too downtrodden, this week I want to write about the good things. It's summer time! I love it. It's hot, sunny, and full of flavor.

Virginia is an awesome place to farm. We have a long rich season. Spring greens come early and bountifully. You can get cucumbers and tomatoes before June! Fall broccoli thrives. Melons and corn love the heat. With a little luck and persistence, there are few crops we can't grow. However...

This winter I spent all of this time planning. I drafted so many different spreadsheets and hypotheses. I speculated about what people would buy at what quantities and planned crop successions to match my theories. I wrote and revised these plans at least 8 times. Then the season started and I went right to the greenhouse and starting carrying out my plans. Now, we're a few months in and the wheels are in motion, but somehow (no one could have predicted this) reality is a lot different then what I imagined...

This is a learning year. That's what I keep telling myself... So it turns out, we might not have much broccoli to sell this year. But we will have at least one head for dinner tomorrow night, and it has been very hard earned. This is the story of the little broccoli that could.

Why does our lettuce look so beautiful? I don't know, maybe because I sing to it at night? :) More probably (I'm a little bit tone deaf) it is because we condition our soil with lots of dark, rich compost.