In the Beginning - Hints of Green at Restoration Farm

The storm is hellacious – belligerent wind and soaking rain. Nature is throwing a chilling late-winter tantrum. Yet, in a well-lit basement work area, a small group of volunteers is painstakingly focused on the promise of sun-drenched organic vegetables. The first CSA pickup is months away. Sometime in early June, members will arrive at the Restoration Farm distribution tent, and delight in that first look and taste of tender greens. Some may never consider how the journey of that verdant lettuce, hearty kale or sweet crimson beets began.

Head Grower Caroline Fanning is instructing a group of volunteers in the process of seeding. She is carefully organized with detailed lists, labeled flats and packets of seeds grouped together. Seed flats are stacked tall throughout the room, each packed with soil and designated for a specific food crop, herb or flower.

I’m given the task of sowing seeds for Red Ace beets. Each compartment of the flat must be “dimpled” to receive the seeds. I plunge an index finger into the cold soil to make the indentation. Larger seeds require deeper holes.

Caroline gives me an index card folded into a v-shape. From the index card holder, two gnarled beet seeds are dropped into each hole. I seed eight flats in total. If all goes well, once the Red Ace seeds germinate and are planted at Restoration Farm they should be ready for harvest in mid-June for use in a Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese Salad. Can’t you taste it already?

Head Grower Dan Holmes arrives with Glen and Caroline’s grandfather George. They work to finish the flats – topping them off with more soil. There are flower seeds to be sown. It is eye-straining work. The flower seeds are tiny – some even dust-like.

Restoration Farm Head Growers Dan Holmes and Caroline Fanning, George and T.W. in the greenhouse.

Outside in the greenhouse, onions, leeks and scallions seeded several weeks earlier have begun to sprout.

The aromatic onion is the foundation for so many dishes. The onion has been cultivated for more than 5000 years, but even today is still seeded by hand at Restoration Farm. The fragile green tops of these aromatics are just one signal of the cultivation, the labor and flavor still to come.

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