Feast of the Senses on Green Fire Farm

Carrot braid

Root Song — Callie Plaxco

Picking carrots in the morning
makes me think
of god,

the ceremonious unearthing
of roots
from garden beds,

the bright smell
that clings to the air
and to my fingers —

how, to die, for a carrot,
means being pulled up from the ground
instead of buried under:

dirt replaced
by lucid blue sky.

 

Written by a previous WOOFer after her time at Green Fire Farm

I have a new magical respect for carrots.  Harvesting them inspires carrot dreams, meals, desserts, and poetry.  Moving the earth with pitchfork lifts each carrot out of the soil revealing its’ voluptuous or conical shape, everyday with a special surprise — purple carrots, carrots embracing as lovers, carrots clawing at each other, carrots half eaten by gopher, and helix carrot spiraling around itself.  Then the sweet crisp raw taste draws me in deepening red orange sweetness with roasting.

Self love carrot

hug claw carrots

Also fun to unearth:

Beets!

Harvesting beets

Cabbages are surprisingly beautiful.  The outer leaves of purple cabbage shimmer with iridescent blue-green-purple.  I couldn’t help but imagine cabbage baby heads growing out of the earth.  Unfortunately the color doesn’t quite capture on our camera.

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Dan and Kathleen make sauerkraut and kimchi out of the cabbages.

Dan making saurkraut

Kraut fixins, onion greens, sweet onion and red chile peppers

I sigh with pleasure while working the vineyards.   Sweet air from the leaves and branches of the vines waft up just walking through the rows.  Goats love eating the greens and wood of grapes.

Wine grapes still have 2-3 months before they are ready for harvest.

Green Fire and Hoopa Valley offers much to titilate and relax.  Sarah and Garrett from Neukom Family Farm stop by and take us out a couple of weekends.  We luxuriate swimming in the bracingly cold Trinity River on typically hot 95 degree day.

Sarah and Stu enjoy chocolate super food and baby zuccini

Our crew constantly received treats from fresh baked breads and cakes, just caught salmon, smoked peppers, raw honey, peaches and plums and more from crew bakers, neighbors and friends to the farm.  It’s easy to inspire foodies and gourmet cooking in the crew when you have such amazing raw ingredients.  Mags loves baking without wheat.  She treats the farm crew with peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon sugar cookies, and oat rye sourdough bread.  With a rich bounty of wild blackberries she made jam, cobbler, and compote for buckwheat pancakes.

Mags made Oat and Buckwheat Peach and Blackberry cobbler

new free time hobby: picking and eating blackberries. Watch out for those thorny booby traps!

Nothing can compare to eating the best food from the earth.  Thanks Grady for having us at Green Fire, and thanks everyone we met to make our experience so warm!

Caroline, Heather, and Vanessa in the Cabin

More photos of Farm life here and here.