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| The Lettuce at Greene Family Farm |
I think that the lettuce at Greene Family Farm is incomparable. I mean that. I have never had lettuce that compares to it. It's not just one thing that makes it that way. It begins and ends with the care that Sherri takes in planting, tending, harvesting, and packing, but there is a lot that is mixed in with that. We usually use the Rocky Top blend sold by
Baker Creek (they are wonderful people, and we buy much of our seed from them). Sometimes we mix our own blend from seeds that we buy separately. What you see in the picture above is a fifty-eight foot row of lettuce and a fifty-eight foot seedbed that is ready to be planted. It's planted now, though it wasn't when I took the picture. I was waiting for Sherri to get home and give her approval and sprinkle the seeds. Why fifty-eight? Because that's how much room there is between our new row of strawberries (out there in the shady spot) and a big cherry tomato vine at the end of a row of okra (where I'm standing taking the picture). I'm confident that you cannot find any other lettuce that grows on a fifty-eight foot row between the new strawberries and the old tomatoes and okra. But there's more to it than that. This lettuce is growing where we overwintered our laying hens last year. We put in lots of leaves and some wood shavings. We mulched it with straw and let this spot rest this summer (except for the part that I planted sweet potatoes in). We fertilized with COF (see the previous post) before we put in the first row last month. Today, I raked back the straw and forked up the new seedbed. No plow, no harrow, no tiller. A $20 fork and a middle-aged man's back and arms. The carbon footprint for Greene Family Farm produce is a size 9 Wolverine work boot.
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| The Seedbed and the Fork |
The result is beautiful soil and delicious lettuce. Those two rows will produce dozens of pounds of lettuce. Lettuce the likes of which you can't find anywhere else.
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| The Lettuce |
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