Onion Skins Very Thin, Mild Winter Coming In

Photo Art of an onion by Claire Staples

When harvesting onions, you wait for them to weaken at the top of bulb and flop over onto the ground. When the scape of the onion has drooped to the side, you know it is ready to be harvested. Afterwards, the onions are moved to the greenhouse. The temperature of the greenhouse reminds me of hot yoga class, but it is appropriate for the onions. Cutting the onions involves snipping off the tops of the onions so that they do not mold. All you can hear is snip, snip, of the scissors and a rustle of the dried tops, sometimes a little crinkle of the outer skin of the onion. After snipping them we put them in harvest crates, only two layers to allow the onions to breathe. Sometimes it would smell like onions when snipping off the tops, but mostly it was not strong enough to make you tear up.  I discovered, according to the onion association, that sulfuric compounds in onions are what make you tear up. But crying is not the only cultural association with onions, they are also fabled in an old English rhyme to predict the coming winter: “Onion skins very thin, mild winter coming in. Onion skins very tough, coming winter very rough.” I think our onion skins our thin, but this could be wishful thinking!

Similar to onions, when you gather sunflower seeds, you should wait for the sunflower to flop over and for the petals to fall off. One interesting fact that Joanna shared about flowers is that there are ascetic choices to be made when making a bouquet of flowers but that it is also important to cut flowers at the right time in their growth in order to make them  last longer in bouquets. If you cut flowers when they are still closed they will bloom in the vase. For instance, when cutting sunflowers, the flowers will last the longest in a vase if they have a mostly flat seed section in the sunflower (as you can see in the photo). The seeds in the middle are flat before they start to grow and as the sunflowers begin to mature the middle of the flower will become more rounded.

 I think the sunflower's height is what makes it so exciting to witness. I like to imagine it counting "the steps 0f the sun" as William Blake puts it in Ah! Sunflower— 

Ah Sunflower weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the traveller's journey is done;

Squelch and Slap

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands. 

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.       
                                          Seamus Heaney, Digging

 Now when I read Seamus Heaney’s Digging, I understand the process that he is writing about: burying the edge of the fork, sometimes rocking back and forth to make it go into the soil, leaning on the wooden handle to unearth the potatoes. We kneel close to the ground, digging through the soil with our hands in search of a flash of red, feeling for the firm roundness of each potato against our fingers.  When looking at the dead outer stem, a blackened thin vine, the discovery of each potato seems unlikely, but this part of the plant is deceiving. You never know how many will be on each plant or what size they will be. This is the thrill of it.  Each one seems to be an unexpected gift—Red Norlands waiting to be discovered with each churn of the soil. Sometimes the potatoes grow in odd shapes, I remember one from last season looked remarkably like a bunny. The discovery of a particularly large potato or one with an odd shape also makes harvesting potatoes exciting. With each thrust of fork, we hope that one red treasure is not pierced straight through with the fork, ruined in a second. While it only happens occasionally, there is always a little sigh of relief when the potatoes are revealed unblemished and still intact.

Seamus Heaney’s Digging is my favorite Ars Poetica, beautifully linking the act of writing with digging potatoes.  He sees digging with his pen as a way to follow his ancestors. In his biography, the poetry foundation mentions that Heaney felt insecure about being a writer in his family of farmers (visit the poetry foundation to read the entire poem and Seamus Heaney’s biography). But this poem seems to reconcile the two worlds.  I can identify with his admiration of the skill of his grandfather. When I look over at the farmers at Rushton, I am often struck by their experienced and efficient ways of farming. Heaney seems to relish the messy nature of harvesting potatoes. The seed potato that you bury when planting each potato often molds and liquid oozes out into the soil, making your hands sticky—

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

Heirloom Tomato

Greetings from Cape Cod!
 I hope you are enjoying your tomatoes and looking forward to melons!









Heirloom Tomato
                            By Natalie Staples

The green vine digs deep and pierces its fruit,
shapes it like dough,
sends a crease down the middle,
skin is stretched like a child’s cheeks,
full of pent up air. It hangs
in its own teepee cradled in bamboo.

I know that kind of love.
I was working with my knees pressed
 into the soil when a farmer told me
that mulching was like tucking in a baby.
Pulling the covers of hay over its vines,
sometimes discovering a tiny watermelon.

But it’s a little more than that—
the crunch of fresh straw in the pitch fork
bits of it sticking to my legs in the heat
we slip and slide, it’s so new
I can’t shake off the feeling of wanting to roll
all of the straw fluffed and ready,
waiting for a horse to walk through
that cozy feeling at the close of the day
when the sweat is scraped and the pony
is left grazing, the lead line drags along grass
he wanders in for a bucket of sweet feed
nosing his way back to the barn
gone quiet except for contented munching.

                                                            
                                                            

The Precision of Tasks

This past week we were weeding the beans, two varieties, Providers and Edamame, while Cape Cod winds whipped through the fields. They are the kind of winds that send shirts and towels billowing on clothes lines. Wind that makes flags twist and yes, sometimes sends the row cover flying. It was the kind of wind that makes you glad you are outside, watching nature take the long meadow grass in its palm and let out a long breath. It makes the farm look neater somehow, freshly mulched rows, a little crunch of straw as you walk between the beds. This is the kind of weather where everyone looks around and smiles.

Fine-tuned weeding is a welcome, meditative task on these days. As we knelt to pull the grass between the beans, I thought of one of the aspects of farming which has always interested me, the precision of tasks. Weeding, sowing, planting, and even counting while harvesting each crop, the careful measurement that happens on the farm is significant. My favorite tool for such precision is the collinear hoe, which is so called because it allows the person using it to weed parallel to the beds. It is best for weeds that have just begun to grow.  As we carefully pulled weeds from between the roots of the beans, Noah told us that one of the reasons we weed these crops is to prevent fungus from growing and to increase airflow between the plants.  On particularly hot days, the lack of circulation creates an ideal climate for a fungus to grow and the need to create space between the plants becomes even more necessary. Another interesting aspect of the beans that Joanna shared is that the beans are able to fix their own nitrogen.

Virgil also believes in precision, but in the way of careful observation, believing that close attention to nature would allow a farmer to predict the weather patterns. In the Georgics, he provides advice concerning crops, trees and shrubs, livestock, and bees. The work was written in four different books and was completed in c.29 B.C.

You can readily predict impending gales
By shooting stars that blaze their way through the night sky
And leave a white trail printed there.
You’ll see airy chaff and fallen leaves afloat on waves,
Down and feathers fluttering there.

The Georgics of Virgil Book 1,Translated by Peter Fallon.