Life on an organic farm is... up to the interns when the family's away!

Nothing beats the smells and sounds of sizzling sausage in the morning, and as the Noel’s were away this weekend for a family camping trip, us interns were able to take our time in the morning and prepare ourselves a true country breakfast. :) Taking a stab at other cooking endeavors we’ve been talking up for quite some time, Ellyn fried up some green tomatoes and as I whipped up some Swiss chard wraps. Swiss chard, a leafy vegetable I was unfamiliar with upon my arrival at Maplewood, has quickly become a favorite of mine. Some plants out in the field have yielded such enormous leaves, so I headed out to pick the big ones yesterday afternoon for my lunch, and pulled up an onion on my way out. The Swiss chard leaf is used as the wrap, add some shreaded cheese and onions, fold it up, and fry it up in some olive oil on the stove, and wha-la, you’ve got yourself a tasty little melted wonderland of a snack.

Yesterday, as I plucked plump and ready green beans off their stems out in the field, I stupidly let my eye wander across to the potato plants. To my displeasure, I spotted a group of potato beetle larva having a fiesta on a potato plant. Not being able to see them and not destroy them, Ellyn and I began our mission of what we called a massive genocide. The next hour or so, we weaved throughout all six rows of potatoes, picking the fat red larva off the plants they were eating as well as demolishing. The fat ones are easy to get off the leaf; they roll up and fake dead when you pick them off. The smaller ones however, prove to be more difficult, so it’s best to just squash them right on the plant, leaving a string of orange guts to project out of their bodies. We filled a bucket full of them, dropping in handfuls of the bugs in ever so often, before they started crawling too much up our hands! I’m not a girlie girl afraid of bugs by any means, but that feeling of all their little legs swarming around in your palm really isn’t the best feeling...

Today as we harvested, a warm summer breeze brushed across our faces, foreshadowing a storm ahead, which we’re in the middle of now. :)