Rejoice, Urban Farmers, Rejoice!

 

Resurrection spuds

We have silenced the sieve and paused the wheelbarrow.  We have cast the munching snails from the basil and lettuces and thrown them over the fence.  

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

We have coveted the sidewalk strip farmers’ scaffolds of burgeoning peas and ueberwide rhubarb, leaf and stalk.

We have lamented our mustard greens’ too sudden maturation and our snail-bitten strawberries.  We have suffered the curse of carrot puny-ness and barren squash, steel-hard leek and tardy tomato.

carrotus punious

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

When will it flower? When will it molder? Can it be revived by sun or shade or water?

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

In these days of heat we have known temperature and become acquainted with dry.  We have relocated kale and mustard green to shade and strawberry to sun.   

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

We have mashed and spread the compost dregs about the gasping strawberries, hand-harvested handfuls of fava beans, separated the squash from the sun-loving beet and watered the thirsting strawberries.

gasping strawberries

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

We see growth in Garden Beds 1 through 4.  Snapdragons benevolently rule nodding heads of chive. 

obedient chive

Leeks stand sentinel over fledgling carrots.  Kale grows velvety in the apple trees’ shade.  Beets rise. 

Apple-shaded kale. Note velvetiness.

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

Entombed fingerlings tunnel their far-seeing eyes through a dozen inches of earth, and spread their leaflets wide.  Resurrection spuds!

Resurrection spuds

Rejoice, urban farmers, rejoice!

We see a mingling of berry and veg, tuber and flower. 

We have known the breath-taking delicacy of the slow-flowering carrot and bitten into the sweetness of the snail-bitten strawberry. 

The tomato flowers today.

Flowering tomato

Bonus recipe for those of you who made it this far.

Rasp-black-coco-soy fabulous frozen dessert.  (Practice safe seeds and whirl the raspberry and blackberry seeds down the garbage disposal.  Don’t put them in your urban farm compost.)

Bring 1 and ¼ cup sieved black- and raspberries and 1 c sugar to gentle boil, then simmer for 5 minutes.

Remove from heat.  Cool.  Dump in 1 can Thai Kitchen full-fat coconut milk (about 13.5 oz).  Fill can with like measure of your favorite kind of milk and add to berry mixture.  (Soy, skim, full-fat cow, rice.  Just because we like soy doesn’t mean you should.)  Mix.  Chill in fridge.  24 hours is good to assure maximum chill.

In the meantime, freeze your ice cream maker innards.  If you don’t have an ice cream maker, no worries.  Grab yourself a hand-held mixer or a serious whisk and a beefy bicep.  You’re going to churn your dessert into creamy cryogenicness the old-fashioned, Paul Bunyon way—by hand. 

OK.  Frozen dessert mixture good and chilled? Ice cream maker innards good and frozen? Beefy bicep ready?

Not quite? Stick chilled dessert mixture in freezer for half hour.  Now you’re ready.  One, two, three.  Go!

Dump super-chilled berry-licious mixture into ice cream maker and let the electronic churning begin, or… whip out the hand-held mixing device.  Give berry-licious slurry a good whip, return to freezer and let it do some more chilling, then chill whip freeze chill whip freeze until you hit the desired berrylicious frozen dessert texture.  Break out spoons and consume.