Those First Year CSA Blues

by Kim Peavey of Westmoreland, NH

BEGINNINGS

We were ready. We had spent five years apprenticing at farms and CSAs. We had worked a lot, read a lot, questioned a lot, even groused a little, and in the process, learned everything we needed to know about CSA farming, or so we thought. Why, we could even explain in twenty-five words (or more) to puzzled family, friends, and neighbors just what a CSA was:

“Ahem,” one of us would begin, “CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, a mutually beneficial relationship between farmers, members, and land.”

The other, without a pause, would jump right in: “A CSA is similar to a coop. Members pay a fee at the beginning of the growing season. Then they pick up their share of the harvest once a week at the farm from June until late November. It’s a great system!”

Then, chummily taking the arms and walking along with the politely-nodding, wondering-if-they-should-have-asked person, we would continue, “CSA members are assured of a variety of high quality, nutritious produce, grown without any chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. Farmers have consistent financial support and appreciation, and the land benefits from sustainable farming practices.”

“Oh?” the person would reply.

“Yes!” we’d respond enthusiastically, happy for such unbridled interest, “CSAs began in Japan, and are increasingly popular in the United States, and we’re just about ready to start our own CSA, and we’d be happy to mail you some information right away…”

Yes, we decide, caught up in our own excitement, now is the time: we’re going to start our own CSA!

We have no land, no tractor, no workhorses? No plow, no disc, no harrow, no cultivator? No fencing, no irrigation system, no greenhouse? No problem, we say. In the last five years, we’ve learned a lot: probably everything we’ll ever need to know about CSA farming. We are Ready.

The CSA spirits smile upon us. They chuckle. “Here,” they say, “here’s a place to live. Here are ten acres to rent. Go ahead! This will be fun!”

In the snows of January, we walk around “our” ten acres, dreaming of the beautiful and delicious vegetables we will grow, of the smiling members picking lovely flowers, of the inch of gentle rain a week.

We imagine how nice it will be when our first child is born in the spring: the baby can sleep sweetly in the shade while we bustle about, happy and busy, in our CSA garden. The CSA spirits chuckle some more.

THE GREENHOUSE

The greenhouse arrives. Well, pieces of the greenhouse arrive. We get to put it together. We start off enthusiastically: the first big exciting project of our own!

First we haul all the pieces to our greenhouse site. Then we realize that if we put the pieces on our greenhouse site, there’s no room for the greenhouse. We lug the pieces a little farther away. It is February and cold, but we are feeling plenty warm now, after moving hoops, anchor posts, ridge poles, and miscellaneous greenhouse innards three times, first from the truck, next onto the site, and finally off the site.

Luckily, one farmer, who is young and eager, is undaunted by all this preactivity activity. The other farmer, older and wiser, by a good margin of two years, begins to wonder if a nice sit-down would be in order, to contemplate the next step, perhaps. It is only a small coincidence that this Older, Wiser Farmer also happens to be the Pregnant, Ready to Rest Farmer.

Fortunately, the ground has thawed enough that both of us can proceed: Young and Eager sets the anchor posts; Older and Wiser sets a chair firmly onto the ground, and sets her eight months pregnant self firmly on it.

Next we insert the hoops, a two-farmer job, which means Older and Wiser’s brief respite is ended. The hoops slip in easily.

This isn’t so hard, we think. “I’ve done this several times,” says Young and Eager confidently.

“Don’t we have to measure, you know, line things up?” suggests Older and Wiser.

“Oh, no, not really,” Young and Eager answers, breezily.

Soon we are ready to bolt the ridgepole to the hoops. The first two bolts are easy. The third one gives us a little trouble. It seems that things aren’t quite lined up.

“Hmmm,” says Young and Eager.

“Hmmm,” says Older and Wiser.

We consider re-drilling all the holes. Instead, we decide it would be easier to skip a few and bolt the other end.

“Hey, we’re nearly done,” says Young and Eager cheerily.

“Hey, except for the half we skipped,” replies Older and Wiser, a little less cheerily.

Lunchtime approaches, and passes by, with no lunch magically appearing, and three bolts still unsecured. The farmers begin to mutter, not at each other, certainly, but at greenhouses, and anything associated with greenhouses, particularly those that are half in the air and half in heaps on the ground.

“Now how is it again that we’re going to get all these other bolts in?” grumbles Older and Wiser, speaking to the locking pliers.

“What about all this plastic?” mutters the Formerly Eager Farmer, directing his comment to the enormous roll of it.

“Yes, and that propane heater, how is that supposed to get hooked up?” the farmers say, glaring at it. “And the fans – they run on electricity? Which comes from where exactly?”

Happily, we are delivered, first by a late lunch, and then in the person of a Most Generous Neighbor, who Knows All: heaters, electric work, how to convince a bolt to go where it doesn’t want to go. Not only does he Know All, he has the tools, too, and makes time for his benighted neighbors, who thought they would be struggling on by flashlight into the wee hours. Instead, after several hours with our neighbor’s help, we stand back and admire our almost-greenhouse, just as dusk turns to dark.

On the day we are ready to put the plastic over the hoops, we call everyone we know. Unfortunately, we have just moved to the area, so it is a short list. Our Most Generous Neighbor appears. “Looks like there’s three of us,” he says.

We nod and giggle, a trifle nervously. We discuss the weather.

“It’s a little windy,” Older and Wiser remarks.

“You think?” says Young and Eager.

“Well, a little,” answers Older and Wiser.

Our Most Generous Neighbor, who also turns out to be Most Humorous, says “We can do it,” and, “We might as well try.”

Our neighbor’s first idea, which seems dandy to us, is to grab one side of the plastic, waft it up in the air, and let the wind gust underneath. Then the strong and clever wind will whoosh the plastic over the hoops, missing the electric wires, the trees, and the phone line, and settle the plastic down gently on the other side.

“Like a kite,” our Most Generous, Most Humorous, and Decidedly Most Optimistic Neighbor says. “Sort of. We just have to hold it down on this side to keep it from flying all the way across.”

We think we hear a faint giggling from the CSA spirits. Undeterred, we take hold of the plastic, then wait for a breeze. Actually, we don’t wait, since by now it is blowing right along. We get a better grip on the plastic, take a deep breath, and waft. The plastic goes up in the air, a tiny bit.

We waft again. It doesn’t go up at all. “Here comes a good gust!” we holler. We waft for all we are worth. The plastic settles gently down on the ground, in exactly the place where it started. We fall about, helpless with laughter. We are Charlie Brown, with our kite stuck right here on the ground.

Finally we sober up. We haul out the ladders. The farmer of the ninth month pregnancy acts as ballast. The other farmer congratulates her on her impressive weight. The Most Generous, Most Humorous Neighbor suggests finding more pregnant farmers, as the wind is picking up.

The pregnant farmer begins to feel as if she is picking up. “Help! Help!” she cries, “I can’t hold it!”

“We’ve almost got it, we’ve almost got it!” the other two shout.

The CSA spirits can hardly breathe for laughing. The wind dies down. The plastic is up.

BABY AND HORSES ARRIVE

In April, we welcome our daughter to the world, at 5:46 a.m.

“What a fine time for a farmer’s child to be born!” exclaims Young and Eager, who likes to get up early.

“Hmmm,” says Older and Wiser, who doesn’t.

Four days later, Young and Eager phones from the road. “I’ve bought a team of horses!” he says, thrilled.

“A team of what?” says the other farmer, somewhat puzzled by anything that doesn’t relate directly to diapers, breastfeeding, and uninterrupted hours of sleep.

The horses arrive: May and Bess, big, blond, and Belgian. They are goodtempered, easy to handle, and steady, a good first team for us. Soon we take our first drive, in the spring sunshine.

The baby seems to like the creaking and jingling of the harness. She sleeps. She seems not to mind the sudden pop of the tire, either, or the crunching of the tire rim and the flapping of the tire tube on the gravel.

“Is that tire all right?” says the Baby-Holding Farmer.

“Sure,” says the Driving Farmer, “Sure, it is. See, the baby doesn’t mind. The horses don’t mind. And I can see our house, too. See that little speck over there? We’re almost home. Isn’t that great?”

The Baby-Holding Farmer, definitely feeling Older and Wiser declines to answer this question. The baby sleeps, all the rackety way home. The Driving Farmer picks up a new title: Fixer of Falling Apart Horse Machinery, a title that seems to be almost constantly in use over the coming year.

The next day, it becomes clear that Bess, despite her tractable nature, seems to think an electric fence in only a minor deterrent. And May, despite her usual position as lead horse, is perfectly happy to follow Bess right out of the pasture, as we discover when our phone rings every morning at 5:30 a.m.

“Hey, are you the people with big horses?” a grumpy voice says.

The next morning, a different grumpy voice, this time a little further down the road, says, “Hey, did you know your horses were out?”

And then, the third morning, yet another grumpy voice, yet another mile down the road, “Hey, your horses are pooping on my lawn!”

“Hmmm” says Young and Eager, pretty grumpy himself, “maybe we’d better spend a little more time on fencing around here.”

“Hmmm,” says Older and Wiser, who has vivid memories of a certain April dawn birth, including Young and Eager’s comment on the fine, early hour for a farmer’s child to be born. “Hmmm,” she repeats, “I thought you liked to get up early.” Older and Wiser finds this remark riotously funny. Young and Eager is not quite so amused.

PLOWING AND RAIN

In April and May it rains. It rains and rains. Rains and rains and rains and rains.

“The greenhouse seems to be full of water,” mentions Young and Eager.

“Oh dear,” says Older and Wiser, handing him a little child that also seems to be full of water.

The farmers peer out the window, trying to see through the downpour.

“How much water is it?” says Older and Wiser. “Let’s dig a ditch, and make a little dam right there. That’ll help.”

“Actually,” says Young and Slightly Less Eager, “I was thinking of buying a submersible pump.”

Still it rains. The little seedlings in their flats begin to look sad. The little farmers in their house begin to look sad.

Finally there is a tiny bit of sunshine. Since we have horses, but no plow, we call the only person we know who had one, hoping he might take pity on us and come over with his plow, handily hooked up to his tractor. We phone him, without success, all day. Apparently he is helping everyone else who has horses, but no plow.

The rain resumes the next morning.

A few days later, Young and Eager phones again from the road. “I bought a plow,” he says, thrilled.

“A what?” says the other farmer, still a bit confused by technical farming terms these rainy, baby-filled nights and days.

“A plow!” the first farmer repeats.

“But we don’t know how to plow,” Older and Wiser ventures.

“I’ll be home soon!” the first bubbles.

During a dryish stretch, the Plowing Farmer harnesses the horses for their first big job. He hooks up the plow, waves cheerily to the Greenhouse- Weeding, Baby-Feeding Farmer. She smiles back, in a hopeful manner. The horses start right in. But they don’t get far.

The farmer adjusts the plow. The horses heave. They go a few more yards. The farmer stops again, readjusts the plow. The horses, already sweating, struggle ahead again. A few more yards. The farmer stops, readjusts. Plow a little, readjust, plow a little, bang on another likely looking piece of plow. Still it does not go well. Is it the soil, in sod for thirty years? Is it the plow? Is it the horses? Is it the farmer?

Young and Eager takes a look around: are there any old-time teamsters strolling by? Taking a walk in the spring air perhaps? Looking for a young farmer to help out?

But the road is empty. The farmer is all alone, in a huge field of sod, with a plow, two unhappy horses, and a big headache.

By the end of the morning Young and Eager Farmer is feeling more like Weary and Discouraged Farmer. His voice is nearly gone from urging the horses on. He is plowing only a few inches deep, but the horses are jumping in their collars. Their muscles quiver.

It is more difficult than any of us thought. In fact, it seems rather awful. We despair for our horses, our garden, ourselves. We feel like giving up farming.

Finally, in the afternoon, there is barely a quarter acre plowed, not even half of what we hoped to have ready. It will have to be enough.

It is not until the second plowing, two months later, for the fall crops, that we find out the plow was set up for a team of three horses, with a sixteen inch instead of twelve inch plow bottom.

Four inches doesn’t seem like much.

Four inches nearly did us all in.

We lavish praise on our team, apologize, promise this will never happen again. We suggest, firmly, to the CSA spirits, and to any other sorts of spirits that might be lingering about, that a little more timely assistance would not be amiss.

The plowing farmer replaces the plow bottom so that the plow is ready for a team of two. “Wish me luck,” he says.

Older and Wiser does, fervently.

Young and Eager returns shortly.

“Uh-oh,” says Older and Wiser.

“It seems we planted the perennial herbs in the middle of the to-be-plowed-for- fall-crops area,” says Young and Eager.

“No. Really?” says Older and Wiser, in disbelief. “How could such a thing have happened?” she groans.

“I can’t imagine,” Young and Eager groans back.

Oh, the CSA spirits think we are fine and funny farmers, well worth their initial interest.

We decide to plow another area altogether. Happily, it turns out to be the area where all the winter snow run-off has deposited the eroding topsoil! It is the best soil we’ve seen on the farm! Fancy that! And it is even plowed pretty well, by two much happier plowing horses and one much happier plowing farmer.

We begin to think the CSA spirits may have blessed us after all, in return, of course, for all the fine entertainment we have afforded them.

PLANTING

Six weeks past the baby’s birth, one farmer and one baby go to visit grandparents for a few days. The other farmer, free to devote all his time to the garden, plants tiny yellowing onions in amongst the enormous clods of dirt, by flashlight, until one a.m.

When Older and Wiser returns, she squints at the rows, trying to discern one. “You planted here?” she says, helpfully.

“Yes,” says Young and Eager, rather weakly, rather sleepily, “I did. I’m sure I did.”

Not quite the vigorous transplants we had imagined. Not quite the fine seedbed. But, hey, we’ve got something in the ground.

Next we bring out our magic fancy-dancy seeder to direct-sow carrots and beets. Young and Eager wrestles it across our lumpy seed-beds. Older and Wiser walks in the next pathway, watching the seed and the gears to make sure it’s really working. The baby happily nurses, enjoying the outdoor, in-motion meal.

“Look,” we say, “isn’t it clever? It’s covering up every seed!”

Then we uncover a few seeds, to see if it’s actually putting seeds in the bed.

“Well, they’re going somewhere,” Young and Eager finally points out, “because our seed bag is almost empty. Maybe we ought to quit uncovering them all and then covering them back up again.”

Older and Wiser giggles. “But it’s so clever!” she says, checking a few more, and pointing them out to the Equally Amazed Baby.

Soon the seed bag is entirely empty, and we realize our thinning work will be cut out for us. It seems we had the fancy-dancy seeder set at the wrong fancy-dancy setting.

DISTRIBUTION

At the end of May, nearly recovered from the frantic field preparation and planting, as well as increasingly more alert with every night of a Sleeping- Slightly-Longer Baby, we suddenly realize we have no place to distribute vegetables, should we ever get any to distribute. We look pathetically in our kind landlords’ direction, who, filled with the CSA spirit, so we guess, or else filled with the desire to be rid of our pathetic looks, allow us to use an old chicken-coop-turned-hardware-store-turned-distribution shed.

We clean out boxes of junk, sweep the floor, put plastic over what used to be windows. It’s not exactly high-class, but it has a certain decrepit-old-falling-down-farm-building charm. It’s dry. It has a door. It has a resident bat. What more could one ask for?

We are thrilled to have twelve CSA members by the beginning of June. Our signs, posted in February, featuring beautiful and delicious vegetables, and smiling members picking lovely flowers, did not produce the deluge of phone calls we had anticipated. But the recent good weather combined with the local folks’ big-garden-of-our-own dreams gone under have driven hordes of eager vegetable eaters to our door. We are happy to accept them.

“Even though it is so late in the season already,” we say, graciously, magnanimously.

One of these fine members donates an enormous chalkboard for our distribution shed. “Probably been trying to get this out of the house for years,” we giggle to each other, as we prepare to write harvest shares out on the board.

Another fine daughter-of-a-member, six years old, donates chalk: four quarter inch long stubs in the bottom of a grubby chalk box. We giggle again, and write small.

“Maybe next year, when we’re making lots of money farming,” Young and Eager says, “we can buy some long chalk at the store.”

“Colored chalk even!” says Older and Eager This Time Too.

HARVEST

Then suddenly it is upon us.

The first harvest day approaches; looms, rather; menaces, actually. Our promising crops look less promising divided by twelve. Harvesting doesn’t take long. We go from a little cross to quite cross to downright grumpy. It is a pathetic harvest. One arugula leaf per member. We get so far down in the dumps we start to laugh.

“Come on in, everybody,” we joke, “get your leaf, oops careful now, don’t drop it, that’s your salad for this week! What’s that again? The name of this fine CSA? Yes, yes, it’s Slim Pickins’ CSA! Slim Pickins’ CSA, where you don’t get much of anything! Not much arugula, not much tatsoi, not much food at all! Join up! Tell all your friends! Slim Pickins’ CSA!”

The CSA spirits take pity on us. They introduce us to a Friendly Local Farmer, who has lots of garden (organic even), and not enough hands. We trade a little work and a little cash for snowpeas and lettuce to “round out,” as we say brightly, our members’ shares.

“At least we’re supporting local small farms,” Young and Eager chirps.

“I suppose,” sighs Older and Wiser, as she enters yet another minus in the checkbook.

Amazingly, the members seem thrilled with whatever we have to offer. We begin to think of the advantages of CSAs being little known entities: nobody knows quite what to expect, and nobody seems to expect much. “Well, that’s perfect for us,” we say, “old Slim Pickins’ CSA.”

But finally, in August, we have enough vegetables that we don’t need to bargain for more from our friendly Local Farmer. We have good amounts of eggplant and tomatoes, all from the greenhouse. The sweet peppers, also in the greenhouse, are turning red. We have zucchini and yellow squash, endive and escarole, lettuce and carrots. The broccoli is coming along. Zinnias, cosmos, and salvia are merrily blooming.

Late in the month, the resident bat in our distribution shed makes an appearance while a member is picking up her share. Slightly alarmed, but excited by August’s bounty, she continues, albeit more speedily than usual, to fill her basket with produce. We are used to the bat, ducking our heads in a casual and lighthearted manner, as if gee, it’s all part of the fun of joining a CSA!

Gamely, the member picks up a head of lettuce, remarking on its lovely color, nice size, and fresh appearance. Then she notices a slug clinging to one of the leaves. We consider remarking on the slug’s lovely color, nice size, and fresh appearance, but decide it would be wiser to remove the critter without fanfare, and divert our beleaguered member’s attention to the bounty.

“Ah, the bounty of August!” says Young and Eager, “Have you seen the glorious sweet red peppers? They’re right over here, and you get three this week!”

“Oooo,” says the member, more than willing to be distracted from the bat and the slug.

We are thrilled to see her harvest basket fill up, and also thrilled to see her leave the shed without further incident. No one else that day suffers from bug or bat troubles, and they all go home with lots of food.

Part of August’s plenty is an extraordinary harvest of edible soybeans. The half row we planted didn’t seem very long in the first exhilarating flush of sowing with our magic seeder. Now those vigorous and productive soybeans are coming in quickly, and they don’t seem to be leaving the distribution shed nearly as quickly.

So we talk them up: “Mmmm, mmmm, delicious, we have them every night for dinner, and so healthy, too.” Of course, we do have them every night for dinner, and at lunchtime as well. And are considering how mmmm, mmmm delicious they might be at breakfast. We can’t bear to waste any.

“What a great way to learn how much we should sow next year!” says Young and Eager.

“Hmmm,” says Older and Wiser, surveying a kitchen heaped up with soybeans to pick, soybeans to cook, soybeans to freeze.

In the distribution shed, the members edge away from us and our towering piles of soybeans, preferring the tomatoes, the green beans, the broccoli, even the peculiar skinny Asian eggplant we grow.

WEEDING

In July, we send our first “Ice Cream (and weeding) Party” invitations to our members: homemade, hand-cranked ice cream in return for an hour or two of weeding sounds like a great deal to us. What a pleasant surprise when three people actually show up: never mind that two are under six, and more interested in ice cream than tidy garden beds.

In August, since there still appears to be weeds in the garden, Older and Wiser, also known as Clever Farmer-Mother, sets up a wire hoop, dangles beet greens and bolted lettuce from a string, lays down a blanket, and props up an umbrella over the whole thing. Farmer-Father seems perplexed by this activity, which takes nearly half an hour to complete.

“It’s for the baby,” Farmer-Mother beams, “so that I can weed the carrots!”

“Oh!” Farmer-Father responds, wisely refraining from further comment.

Farmer-Mother lays the baby on the blanket, walks the few feet to the carrot row. She looks at the baby, happily grabbing for the beet greens. She begins to weed.

After about thirty seconds, give or take a few, Clever Farmer-Mother hears a little mewling noise. The baby appears to be sucking on its fist. The baby appears to be hungry already.

Farmer-Mother sighs, collects the baby, lies down in the pathway next to the unweeded carrots. The baby nurses. Farmer-Mother weeds everything, including a few innocent carrots, within a two foot radius of her outstretched arm.

Farmer-Father, sympathetic as always, lies down in the neighboring pathway. “Isn’t the sky beautiful?” he says.

“It is actually,” says Farmer-Mother, looking up.

IRRIGATION

We worry a bit about a late August dry spell, and decide to give our expensive and complicated watering system a trial run. Despite our horse prints on the lawn, our middle of the night diaper changes, and our muddy boots in the hall, our Tolerant and Helpful Landlords, who live right downstairs, offer us the use of the old hand-dug well for irrigation.

We spend days setting up tripods, the flippety-flappety tripod tops, the drip lines, the headers. We have to run the main hose across the lawn and driveway to reach the garden, a fact which does not seem to unduly bother the Tolerant and Helpful Landlords, happily for us. Finally we are ready.

We carefully and admiringly remove the well’s old slate cover, then start dropping in the hose. It goes about four feet, and then stops. We try again. Four feet and one inch. We are flummoxed. The hose bends and gets stuck, and we don’t know what to do about it. We know the well is hand-dug, but it must be deeper than four feet.

We consider calling Our Lovely, Tolerant, and Helpful Landlords. We consider calling Our Most Generous Neighbor. We consider calling the Friendly Local Farmer. We consider calling all our CSA members, hoping there might be a well-digger among them.

We consider a more fervent rain-prayer effort. We consider going in the house for a nap. We consider lying right down by the well for a nap, as all our considering has worn us out mightily.

“I know!” says Young and Eager excitedly, sitting up.

“What?” says Older and Wiser, deciding to stay prone until she hears the well-fixing/hose-fixing/water-fixing idea.

“It must be time for lunch!” exclaims the first farmer.

“Yes!” says the second, rolling over, gathering up the baby, and fairly leaping towards the house.

Over lunch, we get an idea. We think our idea would best be conducted in the presence of at least one of the Lovely Landlord/Well-owners. He thinks our idea isn’t so bad, so we tie an iron bar to the twisting hose. We tie it firmly. In fact, we have the landlord tie the final firm knot, hoping he will view this as a sign of full compliance with the idea of an iron bar being irretrievably lodged in his well.

We take a deep breath, smile winningly at Our Lovely Landlord, and lower the hose attached to the iron bar. It goes down, and down, and down! It works!

We start the pump, prime it, run to the garden to see the beautiful water soaking our dry beds. It begins to come, in one tripod, in two, three, in all the tripods! We jump up and down, jump up and down, jump up, and …down. We stay down. The water is…going…down. The water…is…gone. The well has run dry, right before our eyes.

“Just about two minutes,” says Young and Eager, looking at his watch.

“Was it a full two minutes,” says Older and Wiser, “or just a minute and a half, say, or a minute and three quarters?” The CSA spirits are quite amused by the latest farming feature. We, however, are not.

But it does rain the next day. And isn’t that why all farmers set up their irrigation?

WORN OUT

September. Chance of frost on the sixth. It doesn’t come.

“Heck,” says one farmer.

“Shucks,” says the other.

We are not dreading the end of this first season. In fact, we are positively looking forward to it. Longing for it even.

Older and Wiser says, as dusk falls one day, “Oh, we were supposed to weed the spinach!”

Young and Eager says, “I’m satisfied with what I did today.”

“What did you do today?” inquires Older and Wiser,

“Oh, nothin’,” he answers.

The weary farmers collapse in laughter. Happily, they collapse directly over their unmade bed.

The next day is Harvest day, and when the farmers hear a member pull into the driveway, Young and Eager claims he has greeted members the last two times, or maybe it’s three, or four, so Older and Wiser must do it today. Older and Wiser objects, chronicles her extensive and friendly greetings over the months.

“You,” says Young and Eager.

“No, you,” says Older and Wiser.

It is just after lunchtime, when a farmer might like to take a brief, but refreshing, nap. “I’m so tired,” moans Young and Worn Out weakly, head in his hands. “I’m so tired,” moans Older and More Worn Out, as faintly as possible, slowly slumping onto the couch.

In the midst of the deliberations, which are frequented by snoring noises, yawns, and piteous groans of exhaustion, the farmers hear the members’ car drive off. Apparently, the member is quite capable of picking up her vegetables without any farmer at all.

The farmers leap off their respective rug and couch, and peer frantically out the window. Half the CSA fun is seeing how excited people get about what’s new from the garden. “Who was it?” says Young and Eager, “Did they see all that broccoli? All that cabbage? Those red peppers?”

“How will we know what they thought of our beautiful and delicious and abundant harvest?” says Older and Wiser, “if they leave in such a hurry?”

The next member pulls in almost immediately, and the farmers, refreshed from the recent dramatics, if not from a nap, race each other outside, giggling, the baby bouncing and giggling too, enjoying the ride.

In mid-September, we offer Take Your Chances Melons and Don’t Look Too Close Corn. We showcase bouquets of pick-your-own flowers, hoping to inspire the members to hop, skip, and jump to the field to pick their own bouquets.

One member says she adores the flowers, and the vegetables are “all right too.” “Our beautiful vegetables!” we say to ourselves. “What is she thinking?” The next member says she couldn’t care less about the flowers; she adores the vegetables. “Our beautiful flowers!” we say to ourselves this time. “What is she thinking?”

A third member interprets pick-your-own flowers as pick-your-own flowers right from the showcase bouquet.

Older and Wiser, arranger of these eye-catching, beautiful, even stunning bouquets, asks, a trifle suspiciously, of Young and Eager, “Where’s the bouquet? Did you do something with it?

“No,” he answers, “Why would I?”

“I don’t know,” says Older and Wiser, “Where is it?”

“Somebody must have sneaked in and stolen it, it was so stunning,” Young and Eager giggles, highly amused with himself.

“Very funny,” Older and Wiser replies, “I think someone was a little confused about the location of the pick your own flowers.”

A fourth member, overhearing the end of conversation, says, “Oh, you have flowers?”

“Yes,” we say cheerily, “Here, we’ll show you where they are in the garden!”

The member says, “Oh, another day maybe. It might be too wet there.”

We sigh, dispiritedly. Our beautiful flowers! Our unread newsletters detailing the beautiful flowers! Our unnoticed chalkboard announcements about our beautiful flowers in beautiful bloom!

Then we decide a little farmer cheering up is in order. We pack a picnic of leftover vegetables, then meander out to the field, as if we had all the time in the world, with no weeds or worries. We settle into our flower area, which is perfectly dry, and perfectly lovely.

Our very sleepy baby looks at the flowers, and the sky, and at us, and then dozes off, her little arm raised above her head: a sweet cotyledon. We lie down too, sigh again. This time it’s a “It’s not so bad after all,” kind of sigh, even a “We’re doing all right, aren’t we,” kind of sigh.

CLEANING UP

First snow, on October ninth. The horses run and kick, exhilarated. So do we. We’ve almost made it! The first year is always the hardest! Next year will be a breeze.

The CSA spirits, easily amused, hold their sides and roll about, hooting and hawing. “Hee, hee, hee! HO, ho! Ha! HA! Ha!”

“You don’t hear laughter, do you?” says Young and Eager.

“I don’t think so,” says Older and Wiser, “It must be the horses snorting.”

We harvest still from the greenhouse, as well as cold tolerant crops from outside, such as spinach. In fact, we harvest mountains of spinach. The members begin sidling away from us, not quite meeting us in the eyes: acting downright edible-soybeanish around our mountains of spinach. We think of changing our name again: Nothing But Spinach CSA. “It’s a step up from “Slim Pickins’ CSA,” we giggle.

We begin cleaning up the garden, putting it to bed for the winter. We pull up stalks, roll up hoses, take down tomato fences. We return jumbled up tools to their proper pegboard places. We tidy up the distribution shed.

At our last distribution, we feel sentimental: our nice first-time-ever members! How will they get along for six months without our beautiful and delicious vegetables to keep them nourished? We send them away with twenty pound bags of carrots, potatoes, and beets. They seem a bit taken aback by all this nourishment. Nevertheless, they thank us for the season. They say, “See you in the spring!”

We can hardly believe it! They want to sign up again for next year!

After a brief foray into nostalgia, including a few hours spent thinking of the passing of first things – first year with our own garden, our own team of horses, our own members, and of course, our own baby’s first spring, summer, fall – we find ourselves dreaming once again.

An exquisitely organized garden. Fine particles, smooth, and tender seed beds. Harmonious, enjoyable, and excellent plowing. Early and abundant harvests. Copious members, who sign up early. An inch of gentle rain a week. A toddler, happily playing in the shade, while we are busy and cheerful in our CSA garden.

We do one final tidying of the distribution shed, and find our harvest notes – remarkably complete, compared to our planting notes. “Maybe that’s because the harvest was remarkably small!” says one farmer, giggling. It seems much funnier at this end of the season. Everything seems much funnier. Especially the way we kept saying in January, “We know a lot! We’re ready!”

But, now, we agree, we do know a lot, probably everything we’ll ever need to know about CSA farming. Now we are really Ready.

The CSA spirits giggle.