Lettuce Stand Together!

The Open Gate Farm
Camano Island, WA
May 13, 2009
Lettuce stand together!

Dear Friends of the Farm:

Thank you one and all for a great opening day weekend! It was bigger and better than last year and a real joy. Make new friends, but keep the old, as they say. And the gathering of old friends and hearing these dear people in the garden talking about trips and cures and healthy foods was a great pleasure as was the warm reception to the lettuce. The red leafed butterheads were particularly favored.

And the new friends! We may see them only once a year when they come up for the art tour on Mother’s Day Weekend, but they too have stories to tell. We sure gave a lot of tours to out of towners who promise to return next year. It is fun to become part of someone’s tradition. And the lettuce left town with them too. Lots of it.

And the lettuce may be going faster. It may have been a mistake, but we sent the Stanwood/Camano News a press release announcing the opening of our produce stand and by golly, they printed it! Uh oh. This could be a long three days! But we can crank out cinnamon rolls pretty fast and other bread stuffs to fill in when we run out of lettuce…or, in the words of that famous French Queen, “Let them eat rhubarb!”.

Finally got the rhubarb weeded and freed from the grasp of the buttercups. Those guys are on the Washington State Department of Agriculture list of noxious weeds. Wouldn’t think so, with their pretty maple leaf shaped leaves and charming bright yellow flowers. But their roots are many and go up to three inches deep, wrapping themselves tightly around the rhubarb crowns and choking the poor dears to death. Only way to get rid of them is to pull them or use chemicals and being Certified Naturally Grown, the latter is out of the question around here. So, dig and wrench, dig and wrench, dig and wrench. Got about a pickup load full of the rascals!

There are three plants we do not allow here. Buttercup, Scotch Broom, and wild mint. We have found that putting a gallon of vinegar in the hand pump sprayer and hitting the buttercup kills the leaves. We have to make several applications as new ones come on until the roots finally run out of energy. And it seems to be the same with the Scotch Broom. So if you are driving by and you see one of us out with a sprayer, don’t worry. We are not using Roundup or any of the other ugly guys. Just the same vinegar you can put on your Ark lettuce you just bought at the stand. Mint, by the way, we pull easily and put in the trash to get it off the property.

The weather has been cool and rainy these last few days, but that has helped the lettuce hang in there and not bolt. We’ll take a measuring stick out and let you know the results, but some of those speckled Ark butterheads are at least a foot across.

And this is the weekend for the first of the Bibb lettuces! Ate one last week and discovered the core was sweeter than the leaves. So on to the stand it goes to accompany the Ark, Capitan, Bergams, Merlot, and Montpelier.

Made up some rhubarb sauce by taking a stalk, whacking it into pieces, putting a bit of water and sugar in the pot and cooking it on medium and low until it was mush. Poured warm over cold vanilla ice cream, it gave a reward that made all the hours of pulling buttercup worthwhile. And you get to enjoy it without so much as touching a trowel! Still $1.50 / lb and worth twice that.

Swallows, the violet-green variety, have finally moved into the little green roofed “Heidi” style birdhouse our son, Adam, and his wife, Joscelyn, gave us many years ago. Normally the swallow family takes up residence in one of the regular bird houses around the post from this one, but the English Sparrows beat them to those digs this year. Looks like it’s time for the house building to begin again. We like having the swallows with us. They show up each Spring just as the bugs become a bother and to watch them sweep and swoop across the lawn in the evening is to see poetry in motion. And fewer bugs at the end of the evening.

Well, come by when you can, for you won’t bug us. Not even with your questions. There are no silly questions here for we had to ask them ourselves once!

Happy Hoeing,

Jon and Elaine and Snickers the bird watching farm dog, Mystery the curious cat, Jerry and Harley and the girls from the egg department, and of course, Chai, DD, Quackers, and Cheese the bug gobbling ducks

The Open Gate Farm
269 Russell Road,
Camano Island, WA 98282
360-387-4449
Open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to dusk until September 19 or so. Or by appointment if you call 360-387-4449 first.

©2009 Internet Millennium Copywriter applies. May be reproduced without further permission if source is acknowledged.