Spring bounty in Nevada County
Farmers to share progress of the season
By Alan Haight
» More from Alan Haight
12:01 a.m. PT Mar 26, 2008
(Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of monthly articles being published this farm season by The Union. We'll follow Alan Haight and Jo McProud of Riverhill Farm as they work their farm to bring fresh produce to the residents of Nevada County.)
These days of early spring are pure luxury, a velvet-like balm of languid warmth on our skin. It's a deep breath after a wet, wild windstorm of a winter that brought down trees, knocked over our outhouse and swept across our farm like a giant broom.
With green grass on the pasture already ankle high, last season's dry grass looks less like summer's unkempt beard and more like peach fuzz on an adolescent's cheek.
What does it mean to farm in Nevada County? Mostly, it's remarkably predictable. We don't have to keep our eye on the horizon for funnel clouds that might run a path of random destruction through the center of our fields or a summer storm that brings rain at a rate of several inches in an hour and washes our soil into the creek.
The hailstorm of last June certainly set us back a couple of weeks, but would have been laughed off by any Midwestern farmer used to golf ball-sized torments that could convince a person of the existence of a wrathful deity with no respect for the labor of us mortals on the ground.
Yet we work hard to get what we gain. As the saying goes, we work half-time; the other twelve hours of the day we rest. And it's a seven-day-a-week occupation that can inspire a certain jealousy in us when our friends tell us what they did on the beach in Mexico during their vacation.
But if you stand in the center of our growing fields, surrounded by all the abundance that nature brings, and feast your eyes on the tended rows, the plants reaching skyward loaded with produce of all colors and shapes and the flowers humming with bees, you'd think it's a kind of heaven on earth.
It does get hot, but it's the heat and dryness of summer here that are just what we need for luscious, vine-ripe tomatoes that might spoil your shirt with chin-dribbled juice if you aren't careful. We give them the moisture they need, but they don't get spoiled by unpredictable rain that swells and cracks their tender skin.
You couldn't ask for better conditions for nectar-filled melons that are ambrosia on the tongue. We grow one sweet Italian pepper that we've come to call the "My God" pepper, because that's inevitably what people say when they try one for the first time. You don't get those flavors in cooler, wetter climates.
What really makes the difference for us are the local folks we meet through our subscription produce box offering or at our farmstand and at the Farmers' Markets. We count them as friends of the farm.
We sell all of our produce within 10 miles of our farm, and most of that at the farm itself. We farm, you eat, we all smile at one another, and life and all the best life has to offer is sustained for another day.
Giving and taking - the sharing of sustenance in the breaking of bread - is community of a kind that bridges most differences and brings us all within the circle of real life. That real life is a life that requires work and our best efforts - at times against some odds - but brings with it an earnest and simple pleasure in knowing that we give something of value and meaning and pleasure, and we are sustained in ways that keep us moving ahead for another season.
We'll be inviting you this year, through these monthly columns, to share in the progress of our season. There'll be ups and downs, successes and failures, days filled with song and with tears. You'll see the days shift from the hope and pleasure of spring to the unyielding pace of getting it all done. You'll meet some of our customers and come to know us a little too, as we do what we can to ensure that Nevada County keeps its beauty and its working farms and ranches while it changes, as it must.
Next month's article will feature "The New Farmers", highlighting the new interest in food that's locally grown.
Alan Haight farms with his wife, Jo McProud, at Riverhill Farm in Nevada City. For more information about Riverhill Farm, go to riverhillfarm.com. For more about Nevada County agriculture, go to localfoodcoalition.org.
