Here’s the recent news from Kristin Kimball at Essex Farm in Essex, New York:

“The vegetable team has worked to get the new greenhouse staged and ready for raising, lots of transplants and seeds in the ground, and, already, hours of the never-finished work of weeding.

The very first asparagus has emerged, the long-awaited taste of spring. I’m hoping they will come on fast now. The lettuce is coming along in the field, and the tomatoes, which are hardening off outside the greenhouse, are pushing the limits of their four-inch pots. They are lovely, stocky, healthy looking plants. We had a scare this week, when Anya and Kirsten found a couple of plants with bad-looking damage, but the lab analysis shows it’s nothing more than a fungus and not the dreaded late blight that we all know and fear.

The dairy cows gave us a rough time these last few days. On Monday, Kelsie, who milks four mornings a week, told me that they had been particularly kicky, but I was distracted, and told her it was probably because their udders were so full on this nice spring grass.

Then, that evening, I milked, and realized what she’d meant. My meditative gentle hour in the barn turned into a full-on two hour rodeo. Cows who have never raised a hoof during milking were trying to take my head off, and the touchiest cow managed to kick the milking machine apart. I couldn’t figure it out. Their teats were tender and red, as though they’d been… burned. That was it! Of course. They had been bathing in the sweet May sun, teats out, like a bunch of tourists on the beach in Ibiza, with the same pink, hot, sunburned results. We slathered them with aloe…” Continue reading this Essex Farm Note.

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• Essex Farm: The Peasant’s Recompense (www.essexonlakechamplain.com)
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• Anson’s Dairy (www.essexonlakechamplain.com)