But at Adamah, and likely all across the Northeast, we’re quietly starting up the season.

(Baby kale plants, Adamah, Summer 2007; photo by Jackie Topol)

Farm time is a quite remarkable way to think about the year. Here I was yesterday with Megan Jensen, our Greenhouse Manager, in a sunny, 75-degree greenhouse (we do use oil heat to warm the benches, but when the sun is out, it really heats up), holding a packet of scallion seeds. In front of me was a tray with 200 little square cells. We’d filled the tray about 3/4 full of soil, packed it down a bit, and then the idea was to drop ten of those little baby seeds in each hole. (When you buy a “bunch” of scallions, in fact, you’re buying ten little plants that were seeded and planted and harvested together.) And to look at the tiny seeds, and the tiny soil blocks, and think of all the scallion omelettes, diced scallions in salad, garnishes and other delightful uses of these tasty alliums was kind of a trip, because the warm summer months of harvest time seem so far away.

Adamah is a program for Jewish 20-somethings to live in community, learn about sustainability and environmental issues, and grow food. This year, we’ll be growing food for the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center; for our line of pickled products, which includes half-sour pickles, dilly beans, pickled beets, sourkraut and kim chi; and for a Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA in White Plains, New York. The long term planning that we’ve done ahead of the season has been really exciting.

For example, we had to figure out how many vegetables to grow. Take the scallions. If we want to give our 40 CSA members, say, 8 bunches of scallions over the course of the season, we need to grow at least 320 bunches. If we plant the scallions in three rows, 6″ apart, we need to plant 53′ of scallions, plus the extras for the kimchi. We have about 130 beds in the 3-acre sadeh (field) where we grow our food. For every one of our 57 or so vegetables, we did this kind of math, figuring out how many beds of which vegetables to grow.

Of course, my friend Stephen Gallagher, farmer at the Tuv Ha’Aretz CSA in North Vancouver, BC, who helped me with some of the planning, kindly said this at the end of one of our long planning emails:

“I laugh (at myself) because my most detailed, elaborate, variety specific and, ultimately, irrelevant planning effort preceeded my first year of full time farming. It is SO much easier on paper.”

So…. already I am feeling one of the constant realities of farming: we plan, and must plan, but we also know that so much is out of our hands. Rain, sun, flooding, animals, who knows what…the numbers and the little seeds do offer a glimpse to the future, but it’s not carved in stone. It’s growing in the ground. Remembering this is one of the greatest joys, and challenges, of farming.

Stay tuned for more updates — I’ll try to keep you regularly updated about what’s going on at the farm. And if you’ve got questions, or want to come visit, or are interested in applying to the Adamah program, do be in touch!