As I write this, there is a sweet rain falling outside, a welcome bath for the seedlings that are spending their first days in our farm field. And a welcome pause for me, a moment of stillness in the early morning. Unusual for this time of year.

This is the time of year when mornings are a race to the coffee pot, and a mad dash for the door for the short drive up Highway 9 to our Stuyvesant farm. There is no rest, no moment of reflection, certainly no morning meditation. The to do list is endless and we are at the center of managing its endless tasks. It goes like this: Tilling, planting, irrigation fixes, endless weeding, mowing, and a host of other farm and home garden chores that need doing.

This is what land stewardship looks like. We are caretakers. Charged with managing the day to day, and shepherding a vision forward that ensures the sustainability and long-term health of our soils. We are not young. Our aching joints and muscles tell us that. But we are moving and we tell ourselves that is a good thing. And we believe it. Because it’s true.

Truth is, I had no idea how much work this was going to be. David and I come from agricultural stock. Parents and grandparents on the other coast who were drawn to farming their own piece of land. My grandfather ran cattle on a ranch that is now part of the Point Reyes National Seashore in California. In 1959 he sold it to the government as part of the effort to create the national park. He never looked back. Simply moved the proceeds into another agricultural property in Napa, and started growing grapes. That was 1960. Good move. Inspiring.

My parents tended to that seem piece of vineyard land, studying its character, experimenting with different rootstock and grape varieties, making their way as best they could, understanding that the work of the land is never sure in any given year, that the rewards come, finally, and that being a part of an agricultural community was, in the end, the right path for them. Vine Hill Ranch exists to this day because of their vision and enduring commitment to stewardship.

Stewardship is a word I use carefully. It says something different than ownership. To own a piece of land is to hold a deed; to steward it is to accept that you are one in a long line of caretakers, accountable to the people who tended it before you, and the people who will tend it after. The deed is paperwork. The stewardship is the work.

My grandfather understood this, I think. When he sold that ranch, he wasn’t cashing out — he was handing the land to a longer caretaker. He could have subdivided. Coastal Marin was already starting to feel the pressure that would, within a decade, make that kind of land unimaginably valuable. He chose instead to let it go to the federal government for a fraction of what it would later be worth, because he understood that some places are not yours to monetize. They are yours to keep moving forward, in whatever form keeps them whole.

This is not something everyone does. And I am not at all clear on what the gene is that draws one into such an intergenerational pathway as land ownership. And don’t tell me it’s having money. There are plenty of people who have money who don’t own agricultural land. They’re the smart ones. The ones whose goal is to build wealth rather than lose it.

What is it, then? I’ve thought about this a lot, and I don’t think it’s any one thing.

Small-scale farming like the kind we do does not pay. We keep two sets of books. The first one shows a consistent and insurmountable loss. Truly, each year I’ve had this business I’ve questioned how and whether we should continue. Then there’s the other set of books. The one in which a row of garlic planted in October and pulled in July counts as something other than cost. It counts as a contribution to our community, putting food on people’s tables, physical life, and the joy of life in general.

The other part, if I am honest, is genealogical. To do this work is to test myself against a longer line. It isn’t nostalgia, exactly. It’s something more like trying to measure myself against the idea that what we grow, what we fix and what we leave in better shape than we found it, counts for something. And I think it counts for a lot.

In any case, despite the exhaustion that sets in around this time of year, I will say that this is the most fun I’ve ever had. To have the opportunity to care for our land is a privilege, and one we don’t take lightly. We are steadfast in our work to care for this place and committed to sustainable micro-farming. We are working on soil health and planting our fields with cover crops to manage invasives. Our touch on the land is light, a way to preserve and enhance what we have.

We are inspired by our community of farmers whose experience and skills in some cases span generations. Here in Columbia County, there are many of them. Some of the best of them are within a one mile radius of us. They have lessons in resilience, technique and quality to teach us.

The first farmer who showed me this was even possible was Sue Decker of Blue Star Farm. More than anyone, she was the reason I came to believe a woman could build a farm of her own. Skilled, patient, funny, committed in a way that doesn’t announce itself. What I have learned from her, watching her work over the years, is not technique so much as temperament: that you keep showing up, you keep paying attention, and the rest follows.

There are countless others. This past weekend I spent time with Adele Bueno of Feather Hill Flower Farm, who in five years has become one of the best flower farmers in the Hudson Valley by staying close to her land. She works hard. All the time. And she works with what the season gives her. Her enthusiasm for what she does and the work she puts into it is contagious and the result is in her beautiful flowers.

What I have learned is that the work doesn’t end and isn’t supposed to. The soil is never finished. The tomatoes need trellising, the beds need weeding, the field needs mowing. Stewardship is not a project with a completion date. It’s a way of paying attention. The land does not belong to us; we belong to it. We didn’t find this place, says David, it found us. And I am so lucky to be able to spend the rest of my time right here.

Columbia County in New York State’s Hudson Valley has been a haven for artists and craftspeople for almost as long as it has had a name. Before Hudson was a weekend destination, before Warren Street was lined with galleries and shops, this was a place where things were made and, importantly, grown.

The county’s craft tradition…

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Summer is, at the moment, a glimmer of an idea. A distant and compelling vision of CSA boxes overflowing with produce and flowers being delivered to happy, engaged customers who care where their food comes from.

Every spring my friends tell me they’re considering signing up for our CSA, or have just signed their first CSA agreement with another farm, and the question they ask me is always some version of the same one: how am I going to eat all that food? So here, while the fields are still mostly bare, is an honest accounting, along with some advice for when the boxes start to land.

The best thing about a CSA, and the reason anyone sticks with it, is the moment you open the box. The week’s news is written in vegetables: the first real tomatoes, finally; a bunch of basil still warm from the field; a head of crispy lettuce; garlic that smells like garlic; a paper-wrapped bouquet of zinnias and sunflowers for the table. It is the best thing you’ll buy all week, and not just because the food tastes better than anything the grocery store can offer — though it does. It’s the best thing because of what it is: a standing appointment with the actual season, handed to you by people you can see.

The rest of the American food system is organized, more or less, to protect you from noticing what time of year it is. Strawberries from Mexico in March for instance. The CSA is organized to make you notice the season. To make you a part of the season, in fact. You get what the field is giving. In June that means strawberries and peas and lettuce; in August it means tomatoes and corn and basil; in October it means squash and the last brave things the frost hasn’t taken. You cook to the moment, not to a recipe you had in mind. A pound of garlic scapes shows up and you can turn them, by necessity, into an excellent pesto. The CSA is, among other things, a low-stakes cooking education delivered one box at a time.

But by the second week of July, another truth about the CSA begins to assert itself, and anyone who has ever belonged to one knows what I mean. The box can be overwhelming.

The first piece of advice I can offer, which took me years to learn, is: unpack the share immediately. Not after dinner. Not tomorrow. The moment the box comes home. Open everything. Wash greens in a sink of cold water, spin them dry, and roll them loosely in a clean dish towel inside a plastic bag — they’ll keep for a week and a half this way, sometimes two. Cut the greens off your beets, turnips, and radishes the minute they come home. Save the greens. Beet greens sautéed with garlic and a splash of vinegar are one of the great underrated suppers. Turnip greens ditto. Radish greens make a surprisingly good pesto.

A few quick storage rules that will change your July. Tomatoes never go in the fridge. Cucumbers do better at room temperature than most people think. Soft herbs — basil, cilantro, parsley — live longest with their stems in a glass of water on the counter, like a tiny bouquet; hard herbs like thyme and rosemary keep in a damp paper towel in the fridge. Don’t wash berries until the moment you use them. Summer squash, peppers, and eggplants are happy in the crisper. Corn loses its sweetness by the hour after picking; eat it the day it arrives if you can.

Once the triage is done, the other half of the CSA survival strategy is learning to cook with what the box gives you. Here are my 4 go to strategies:

Roasted vegetables. Cut whatever you have into similar-sized pieces, toss with olive oil and salt, roast at 425°F until the edges catch. Keep a container of these in the fridge; they go into grain bowls, eggs, pasta, sandwiches, salads, all week.

Summer soup: sauté onion and garlic in olive oil, add any vegetable you have (chopped), cover with broth, simmer until tender, blend. A zucchini soup, a tomato soup, a carrot soup — they’re all the same soup with a different starring vegetable. A swirl of cream or yogurt at the end, a handful of herbs, done.

Quick pickle. Bring equal parts vinegar and water to a simmer with a spoonful of sugar, a spoonful of salt, and whatever spices you like. Pour it over sliced cucumbers, radishes, green beans, onions, or carrots in a jar. Refrigerator-ready in an hour, excellent for a month.

Pesto, which does not need to be basil. Any leafy green, blended with nuts, garlic, cheese, and enough oil to loosen it, becomes pesto. Arugula pesto. Carrot-top pesto. Kale pesto. Freeze it in an ice-cube tray; in January you will be pathetically grateful.

And the flowers. Recut the stems at a sharp angle, strip the leaves below the waterline, change the water every other day. Keep them out of direct sun and away from the fruit bowl — ripening fruit releases ethylene, which wilts cut flowers fast. Some varieties dry beautifully hung upside down in a dark closet for two weeks: strawflower, statice, yarrow, globe amaranth. You’ll be glad of them in December.

A CSA’s gift, in the end, is the gentle obligation to pay attention. The box arrives, and you are asked to notice what is growing now — to cook what’s ripe, to store what isn’t, to pass the extra to a friend. The CSA rearranges the kitchen and the entire experience of home around the season, which is, I think, what it is supposed to do, and how we are supposed to live. Just a little closer to nature. A bit more connected to the season.

We’re planting this week, running against time to get our seedlings in the ground. The summer CSA is full of promise. Get ready to celebrate the season.

We are living in a sea of sunny yellow. Daffodils, forsythia, dandelions and other early spring arrivals in the garden have opened up to the sun and warmth and are making our world just a little bit brighter. The forsythia comes first in its own wild, unbound way. Its yellow blooms come off bare wood, no leaves, just spikes of bright yellow laid on the branches, as if it can’t wait to show off. Then the daffodils, their predictable, cheerful heads bobbing around the landscape. I never tire of the energy and life they bring to the spring garden.. I’ve planted them in the woodlands of our field in a tribute to a wonderful old friend whose daffodil garden lured us outside for early spring picnics back in the day.

Last fall, in an inspired moment, David seeded a planting of rapeseed in our field. Today it blooms bright yellow too, the first sign of life in our field, after the long, cold winter.

Even the light itself, particularly on this sunny morning, is a shade we don’t see any other time of year. More yellow, reflecting the citron, half-neon green of the unfolding leaves of the willows and locust trees in our landscape. And, those trees in turn spin off pollen which lies on the hood of my car in a sheet of yellow.

I’ve learned that there’s a reason for this in the natural world. Early pollinators see yellow especially well. These plants that bloom in our landscape are actually competing for the attention of the bees and others who emerge from their winter state to feed on them. Everyone’s saying “pick me” as they vie for the sweet first kiss of the insect world.

David and I commented on all this the other day as we walked the fields behind our house. We’ve come to think of these weeks as their own, singular season, distinct from the muddy brown of March and the lush green of summer. It’s yellow season. It’s fleeting, lasting only about 3 weeks, before it gives way to the new season, when the daffodils slump and the forsythia is overtaken by green.

And so on this beautiful sunny Upstate New York day, I say, go outside. Find something yellow and give it some extra appreciation and love. Yellow deserves it.

This, to me, is of course a welcome turn of events. There is nothing more perfect than California when the sky is an eternal sea of blue and the warm breeze is soft and dry on your skin. It’s physically sensual and evokes memories of languorous childhood summers. I sink into the heat and the familiar smells. I am transported.

I love California. I will never not love my home state, as I will never not be a Californian. I love the Pacific Ocean, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the vast agricultural valleys. I am proud to be from a state with a history of progressiveness, both social and environmental, that is a model for the rest of the country. And I am so happy to have lived a good portion of my life in a place of such natural beauty, where the sea meets the land.

I spent the week thinking about my past and future here. What it means to be an intergenerational Californian, and how it feels to now live in another place, and on a property with its own, longer history. California left its mark on me. The land in particular. When I could, and when I needed to, I retreated to the land. And, finally, I found myself in the Hudson Valley, Columbia County, specifically, in a landscape whose wide open agricultural spaces remind me so much of California.

We found our little slice of the Hudson Valley over time, after a long search for a new place to put down roots, The little slice of farmland we found first, in Stuyvesant, with its tiny Victorian-era farmhouse much loved by 3 generations of family, needed work, and the 10 acres of field was an overgrown tangled mess of a corn field. What was clear, though, was that the soil had potential for growing, and the vista out over the fields made my heart sing. It was love at first sight for me. The little house’s front porch sealed the deal. I wanted nothing more.

And it kept going from there with the help of a fantastic construction crew that made our rural farmstead dreams come true. We renovated the little Victorian into a sweet little jewel box of a house. We planted a little plot of vegetables, a Mexican vegetable garden, specifically. We grew hot peppers and tomatoes, kales and lettuces. It was so exciting. And, in doing this, we found a sense of purpose and a new place we wanted to call home.

It was 2017 and in an act of pre-Covid foresight we purchased an old stone house nearb and proceeded to renovate 2 historic barns on its 40 acres, removing truckloads of agricultural waste from the structures to unveil their essence. Peeling back layers of invasive and dead trees to reveal the landscape. Removing the detritus of centuries to allow the beauty of the site to shine through, We moved so fast and so deliberately that we didn’t even reflect on the Herculean effort we had taken on. It took at least 2 years to get that place in shape. And during that time, we slowly moved from California to the Hudson Valley, until, in 2020 life began anew in a new home, during the middle of a pandemic.

When I think about the effort and resources that began with the purchase of a little Victorian farmhouse in Stuyvesant, I can’t believe we made it through. But we did, through sheer will and a desire to create place, for our family, and our community. And now, this place, where we live with the ghosts of so many, and reckon with history, is our home.

I guess the real question is do you ever really leave a place?

As I write this, it’s 45 degrees outside and we have until May 15th to be safe from frost. No heat wave here. But Spring is unfolding. The daffodils are coming up, I hear birds in the morning, and the days are longer. These are sure and consistent signs that Spring is near.

I will always love California. I hold two places in my heart. And while I may not be able to be in two places at once, my heart is expansive and can hold both simultaneously, together, both as part of the grand experience that is life.