Harvesting at West End Farm

Friday was set to be a fabulous day.  No school which I will explain further in the next post.  To start the morning (because the fair does not open until 11 am), we headed down to West End Farm.  A small farm run by recently graduated college students investigating their path's in life and feeling a need to get a connection to agriculture.  The farm is owned by a Whitman staff who also hosts the Organic Garden on campus.  Jessie and Sarah, 2 of the folks on the farm had invited us over for a wonderful farm dinner earlier in the week and we decided to come back for harvest day.  

Wren is in love with chickens.  We have nick-named him the chicken whisperer.  He would have spent our whole time in the chicken coop catching, petting and just watching the chickens.  Dakota also liked being in the chicken coop but had a harder time understanding the rules about which doors needed to stay closed all the way.  I asked Alice, one of the farmers, if it was okay if the boys just hung out in the coop because I was worried that they were harassing the chickens but she said that it was good for the chickens to get socialized to people and she was happy to have them in there chasing and catching them.

About 20 minutes into the coop time, one of the doors got pushed open by a lot of chicken flapping and about 15 teen-ager chickens got into the adult pen.  We had a great time catching them all and putting them back in their pen.  Compete silly chaos.  Super fun!  Heidi's secret: I really like chickens too.  I just have to build the coop in the back yard, order some chicks and convince Stuart that we should have some. 

We were there to help with the harvest and chicken coop time was fun but time for some work.  Here we are picking tomatoes.  In Walla Walla, you can grow tomatoes like a ground vine because it is so dry they don't mold.  It is amazing just stick them in the ground and let them go.  Harvesting is like a treasure hunt because the vines grow all over the ground like a big giant mess.  I also learned that tomatoes sometimes produce more if they are distressed during the growing process so "be rough" not gentle. We just picked up the whole big mess of vines and throw it over to find the tomatoes underneath.

These next two photos are taken by Dakota.  Sweet Dakota.  Harvesting for him really was just about being on the farm enjoying the freedom and fun of being there.

Next we headed down to pick green and purple beans and then potatoes.  The beans were beautiful, especially the purple ones.  But potatoes are fun!  It really is like a giant treasure hunt when you are digging for potatoes.  There is just this big mound of dirt and you stick your hand in the dirt wiggle your fingers through the until you feel something round and then dig some more until you reveal your treasures.  And when you are digging for ruby red russets you really feel like you have found rubies when you are pull one out of the dirt.   Sorry no pictures of the potato harvest as it was too fun to stop and remember to take photos.  Here are the potatoes we received in trade for our hard work.

Lovely morning!  Home for lunch and then the FAIR! (See the next post!)