We farmers are neither subtle nor abashed when it comes to Valentine’s Day. In fact, we write to our CSA members every year around this time, saying “Gee, we love valentines, and wouldn’t you like to send us a valentine, and by the way, you could sign up for a CSA membership for the coming year, and send us a first payment at the same time, because pretty soon we’re going to be cranking up the propane heater in the greenhouse, on March 1st, and the heat will come pouring in, and the bills will come pouring in too, and gee, we love valentines!”
This clever method has always resulted in at least one valentine, which warms our ever-lovin’ farmer hearts. Sometimes the valentine plea brings in several valentines in one season, from store-bought fancy valentines to hearts cut out of flower catalogs and pasted on construction paper. “We love the farm!” says one, and “Oh beautiful curly kale, will you be mine?” says another.
Sometimes a CSA member simplifies the process and writes a cheerful Happy Valentine’s Day! right on the CSA membership form, which we also count as a valentine. We feel the love. (Things got even simpler when one long-time, very busy yet very affectionate member had the bank send a check with “Vegetable Valentine” right in the memo line. Honestly, we must have the cleverest, kindest CSA members in the universe.)
But our shining moment came on the Valentine’s Day when we had a hand-delivered valentine, in a paper bag painted red, with hearts, feathers, and sparkly jewels attached. The bag was filled with homemade cookies, sweet red pepper dip (made with our own sweet red peppers, and incredibly delicious, and just the right color for Valentines’ Day), chocolate, and farmer-loving limericks. We were in valentine bliss.
Now, lest you think we depend on our CSA members to fulfill all our valentine desires, and thus neglect our romantic farmer lives, I will tell you what we do for Valentine’s Day.
This is what we do for Valentine’s Day: we build up a warm fire in the woodstove. We close the curtains against the draft. We spread out a beautiful velvet red cloth.
Then we lay out every single valentine we’ve ever received, and admire them, one by one. (Well, we put the check in the bank, and we have the CSA forms in the CSA folder.)
Our valentine display also includes a little golden and white wooden box with a heart on top, a heart shaped trivet, a red glass heart, a red beeswax heart, a red felted heart, a tiny red bird, and two red and white handkerchiefs with many many hearts.
We also have a lot of valentine constructions that involve copious amounts of glue, string, paper doilies, and tape, with “Happy Valentine’s Day Mommy and Papa, I love you!” in crayon. Then there are the funny valentines we’ve made for each other over the years: “Don’t squash my hopes, be my valentine,” complete with garden catalog pictures of winter squash varieties, or a “Cheerfulword puzzle” with valentine clues (as opposed to a crossword puzzle, get it?). There are also many charming valentine rhymes, as in “Don’t gallop away, be my valentine today,” featuring drawings of our four horses.
Then, if we have any chocolate, we eat it, and if we don’t, we make cookies. We give our valentine kitties a little cream, and we give our valentine horses, who are not galloping away, a few carrots. We end our Valentine’s Day with a kiss, of course, and a surge of valentine love: wow, do we love that Valentine’s Day comes in the cold season, and not the garden season, so that we can lovingly make, open, display, and admire.
Originally published in the Monadnock Shopper News, Feb 9-15, 2022