Field of greens: Notes from the farm

Every spring brings warm breezes, the undulating flight of returning songbirds, and the mad desire of the earth to clothe herself in green. By the time the summer solstice rolls around, plants’ chloroplasts are working overtime, and our farm explodes in a riotous symphony with variations on the color green.

Lately, I’ve been more mindful of all those shades of green. Because my father’s eyesight is failing, it is now my job to bring the dogs down the steep back hill to the bottomland vegetable field each evening and back up each morning. Overnight, they are on guard duty, protecting lettuce and other greens from the deer. Although those deer have plenty of sustenance in the woods, they can’t resist the all-you-can-eat salad bar of radicchio, endive, escarole, and some 50 varieties of lettuce laid out in inviting rows. Before we started bringing the dogs down, the deer would take a taste of this and a taste of that, nibbling the tender center out of each plant. From a distance, the row looked perfect, but up close you saw that each plant was just a circle of outer leaves enclosing thin air.

To thwart the deer’s gourmet impulses, the dogs and I travel each morning and evening through a world awash in chlorophyll. Most often we start at the hilltop, passing under the ancient white oak. (I’m not quite sure why it’s called white, given its glossy, deep green leaves; perhaps white refers to its light-colored, ash-gray trunk.) As the breeze ruffles the palm-sized leaves, shiny dark green on top and matte silver-green on the undersides, I remember when those leaves emerged newborn just a few months ago—a delicate, downy, silvery pink.