The intrepid Clark County Farmerette Brenda Millar of Rosemattel's CSA looks like she may yet make good on her promise to have radishes and salad greens for the opening of her Battle Ground Farmer's Market this Saturday at the Gardner Center.  The greens may qualify as micro-greens, but the radishes look like they just might size up in the next few days.  To round out her tables she will also be harvesting some over-wintered collard greens, leeks, chives, pea shoots, herbs, green garlic and our undiscovered delicacy the "sweet collette."  Visit her stand if you're craving the "first fruits" from this property in 2010.

Meanwhile, down in the Hunters' Greens fields, tiny baby bok choy, mustard and arugula seedlings are sprouting up between rows of tiny walla walla onion starts.  The carrots were actually able to break through the rain packed soil, the next question is whether it will be soft enough for their roots to swell.  Meanwhile around the green house a sea of plants in seed blocks is growing to cover Brenda's tidy plant benches.  Most of these are Jim's, Brenda's remain in the green house and in little shelters she builds with various plant protection fabrics.  Spinach and lettuce plants are sprouting true leaves, signaling they only await well tilled soil to drop them into so they can begin the race to June.   But ah, there's the rub, unlike Brenda who scratches what she can into the cold earth, Jim insists on waiting for the precisely correct soil conditions to do his final tilling, soil amending and transplanting.  Those conditions may have arrived during a brief window this week-end, but we'll never know because Jim was curled quietly in his bed sweating out the mother of all crud bugs; swine, seasonal or other, it was brutal.  In his early farming days he might have crawled out to the fields, but fifteen years of experience have convinced him that it WILL work out in the end.

Observing this sense of calm juxtaposed against Brenda's frantic efforts reminds of us of the great gift of owning land with a home, free and clear.  In the days of the family farm, such a gift was passed on from generation to generation, but today's new small farmers don't benefit from that tradition.  It is painful to watch the Brendas and David Knauses struggle to achieve their dream in the face of daunting odds.  Watch for a longer essay on this subject in our blog, Notes From the Margin.