A Year in Pictures: 2010

Spring

Preparing a bed for planting peas.

Judy Laushmann, Ben Knowles, Mandy Fracchione, and Kazim Ali pull weeds and harvest dandelion roots for roasted dandelion tea at the same time.

Domenico Ruggierio of Oberlin College's Multicultural Resource Center uses a broadfork to aerate soil without disturbing its profile.

The Hawken School and Cleveland Oberlin College Alumni showed up in force to prepare the fields and plant leeks!  Thanks to Matt Young of Hawken School and Kira McGirr of Cleveland OC Alums for organizing this, and thanks to all the parents, students, and alums who came out.

Springtime greenhouse:  lettuces, scallions, Chinese cabbage.

Royal Oakleaf Lettuce.

Touring Old Haunts During a Spring Trip Away from the Farm

Stonecrop Gardens, Cold Spring, NY:  A plant-lover's paradise, and where I spent a year training as a horticulturist.

Stonecrop's Gunnera tinctoria.  The Chilean Rhubarb is the largest herbaceous plant on Earth.  The tallest leaf in this picture is about 7ft tall and still growing!  Though hardy to Zone 8, gardening wizardry keeps this plant alive in Stonecrop's Zone 4 weather.

Stonecrop:  A straw Gertrude Jekyll overlooks the vegetable garden.

Stonecrop:  the Flower Garden.

Stonecrop:  the Gravel Garden.

Stonecrop:  The Wisteria Pavilion.

Stonecrop:  The Horticulture Library.

The Cloisters, New York, NY:  A refuge of calm in the busy city, The Cloisters is a branch museum of The Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to Medieval art and culture.  It is so named for the series of open courtyards that house period-style gardens.  I was a horticulturist here for three years.

Hops climbing up the Bonnefont Arcade.

Trie Cloister.

The Village Zendo, New York City:  My home temple where I have practiced Zen for 11 years.

Summer

Garlic, garlic everywhere.  Summer interns Ben Agsten, Emma Cunniff, Gabe Baldasare, Patrick Gilfeather, Assistant Grower Freed, Ian Burns, and WIlly Wickham.

Garlic:  bunching and hanging.  For the next week the strawbale building was redolent with the pungency of curing garlic, somewhat yeasty like baking bread.

Oberlin Farmers' Market Stand:  Me and Freed manning the stand.

Fall

Oberlin College Annual Day of Service:  Every year the George Jones Farm hosts new first-years who come out for a day of volunteer service as part of their orientation.

Day of Service:  Weeding a greenhouse to get it ready for fall planting.

Day of Service:  Education Coordinator/Operations Manager Evelyn Bryant and a volunteer planting lettuce.

Day of Service:  Weeding turnips and lettuce mix.

 Day of Service:  the last big project of the day was replacing the plastic on this greenhouse.

It was a team effort.

Thank OC first-years for all your help.  Welcome to Oberlin!

November Markets at the Farm

We still had lots of produce to offer.

A happy customer with her edible holiday wreath.