Food Comes Alive!

A day-in-the-life of Rushton Farm volunteer, contributed by Sarah:

Volunteer day begins before dawn. It is dark and the moon is a little less than full. I have been looking forward to an honest day’s work during my entire 40 hour week at the office I feed the animals and my husband, get my hat, gloves, and thermos of cold tea, and head out through the quiet streets, onto the winding country roads toward Willistown, West Chester County. Dawn breaks as I drive into the parking lot at Rushton Farm.

Ashley, the field manager, is talking with Joanna and Lisa, her hardworking assistants, about the harvest plans for the day. She greets me with a (somewhat predatory?) smile, and I think to myself- OK- what torture does she have in mind today, thinking back to the time I picked 50 lbs of peas on a hot day a few weeks ago.

But, there is no torture in store for me today. I head out toward the lower field to harvest cilantro and dill. There is mist on the fields, and the row of dill sparkles in the morning light. Ashley shows me how to create bunches of dill with rubber bands and I start harvesting, my hands getting muddy and wet. A powerful aroma of fresh dill pervades my consciousness, adding to the magical effect of the call of a bobwhite in the distance and the light dancing around on the water drops from last night’s rain. This has to be some kind of heaven.

That day I harvested 20 bunches of dill, 20 bunches of cilantro, 20 lbs of Lipstick peppers, 10 pounds of Carmen peppers, 8 lbs of Poblano peppers - the kind you make chile rellenos with. Then there were the 6 lbs of Rosa Bianca eggplant, 10 lbs of the Orient Charm eggplants, and a few of the tiny fairy tale variety. The beautiful okra plants with their large white blossoms, similar to Rose of Sharon blooms, yielded a few lbs of okra, with patient searching through the understory of the leaves from a squatting position.

Trellising the peppers was much more physically taxing, as the task involved pounding wooden stakes into the ground every 4 feet for 100 ft with a 8 lb pole driver. Running string between the poles was even more challenging as the string under the pepper plants, heavy with fruit, has to be tight enough to keep the peppers off the ground. At the same time, I had to avoid breaking off the fragile branches of the plants which had been lying on the ground for a month. Sweat starting pouring from my face, my glasses fogged up, but I persisted. This was my first solo trellising job. At completion, Joanna checked my work and it passed her meticulous standards.

Feeling quite pleased with myself, I took a break for lunch at noon. After 5 hours of constant activity I was ready for a rest. A glass of water tasted like ambrosia. Then I headed up to the cherry tomato row for my favorite summer treat, Sungold tomatoes. I picked two pounds of the ripe fruits that had cracked overnight in the heavy rain, added them to some sliced cucumbers, beans and carrots I found in the cooler, and added some coleslaw I brought from home. You can imagine how delicious my noon meal wa s- a far cry from the office fare I endure 4 days a week. A nap in the shade of a hedgerow, with my farm hat shading my face, completed my lunch routine.

At the end of the day, Ashley invited me to pick some vegetables for a dinner I had planned for guests the next day. I picked fresh tomatoes, harvested fresh basil, and found some garlic in the farm shed. I baked bread, and with mozzarella cheese and olive oil, these ingredients made me a splendid bruschetta. Fresh picked dill, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, purple string beans and peppers, plus a few carrots from the farm cooler became a salad dressed with a yogurt-dill vinagrette concoction.

Our dessert, just picked watermelons and cantaloupe, stunned my guests, who were already heady from the fresh flavors of the meal, straight from the Farm. After the meal, we went into my backyard and I proudly gave my guests a tour of my own vegetable garden of 8 raised beds, trellised beans and tomatoes, and medicinal herbs, all of which I learned to grow during my summer volunteer internship at Rushton Farm.