Summer Summary

Fall is here which means the summer of 2009 is officially history. It was a really good summer growing and marketing season for us. the weather was cool and for the most part dry. but when we did get rain it was generally a lot and at just the right time. Still we are down over 4" on rain for the year but perhaps this fall will be wetter than normal and we will make it up.

We grew the best melons ever (and Eugene is an excellent melon grower). Maybe 2% of them were not absolutely excellent. we had several customers (and these are people who's opinions about such things I respect) tell us that our water melons were the best they have ever eaten.

The alliums out did themselves again this year, meaning they are better this year than last and last year they were incredible. Sublime garlic, gigantic leeks (and so far, all we have harvested are the small fall leeks, the winter leeks which should be 2x to 3x larger won't be ready for another month or so), beautiful onions and wonderful scallions.

The tomatoes, despite the plants succumbing to some sort of local blight (not late blight but rather something we contend with every year) fairly early, still produced a lot of huge fruits. Or at least most of them did. We did have some failures such as Black Krim which gave us few very cat faced fruits. I believe we got about 4 usable maters from 15 plants. I do not believe we will grow these again. The Paul Robeson did not do well for us but when the plants did produce typical fruit it produced some gorgeous tomatoes. I saved seed early on and this will get a second chance. The Green Zebra was something else-I believe a small red saladette type mater, something we have far too many of already. Baker Creek messed up on that and as this was about the 7th time they have messed up with us, we will not be ordering from them in 2010. I do like their philosophy but they will have to do far better with selling us correct seed, good seed and getting orders to us in a timely fashion. There are several other seed houses that do heirlooms that give us better service such as Seed Savers Exchange.

Ah enough ranting, back to maters. The great White tomato, while a bad seller, was a great producer of beautiful ivory white fruits with a good acid bite. they came on early and produced longer than just about anything else except early girls which, while early and prolific were a bit of a disappointment this year. The early girls were not as big as last year and found the flavor lacking. fortunately we had GL-18 (AKA Glick's Pride) as our mainstay red mater and they far exceeded our expectations. they were far bigger than they have been before. The shape was about perfect and they rarely cracked and had zero cat facing. It would have been nice if they could have held on a week or two longer but they got us through most of September and we had big red maters when no one else did at the farmers market, cha-ching!. The other reds we grew-the canners did really well for us but I don't think as well as last year (or was it two years ago?). We grew Amish paste and Opalka again. The Amish paste out produced the Opalka about 4:1. We grew enough of these to make and can ourselves plenty of tomato sauce, ratatouille and salsa plus we sold about 300 pounds to others so they could put up tomatoes.

The cherry tomatoes were only so so (which is actually a good thing since when they do really well that means someone has to spend several hours daily picking them and than we have to figure out what to do with the excess). We have decided never to grow green grape again since it does not sell. This means it will produce hundreds of volunteers all over the farm in the future. It is hard to get people to try the green maters. Though it seems when I can get someone to try a green grape they get hooked quickly. they are a very nice mater but for most it is hard to get past the color. The yellow pear barely produced and a lot of them were green again this year. I think it is time to get new seed. the Sun sugar did well for about 3 weeks than quit producing much and the plants now look like hell. This is good as everyone at the farmers market(s) grew this kind this year so the market was flooded and sales were way down. I think next year we will cut back a lot on the cherry tomatoes. We do not need all that many for the farm share-maybe 20 to 30 plants and it seems they have become passe at market. that will free up beds for something else next year.

Unlike last year, we have a lot of ripe peppers. Last year the peppers were very late and we got a killing frost before they got ripe. It did not help that on Sept 14th 2008 we had hurricane force winds for about 6 hours that knocked down all the pepper plants. This year things are completely different. We have a lot of huge bell peppers and they are getting ripe well before it gets cold. I have also learned to take them off the plants when they show color and they ripen up just fine indoors away from pests and diseases that tend to ruin about 50% of the ripe peppers (which is why red, yellow and orange (ripe) peppers cost twice as much as green peppers).

the raspberries out did themselves again this season. The Lathams, our early summer raspberry, was spectacular again. Heavy production and excellent quality. My only complaint was we did a piss poor job of pruning in the early spring which made parts of the raspberry patch almost impossible to harvest. Next year I am cutting back a lot more than Eugene will deem necessary (he has a problem with thinning out plants and wants to leave a lot more than should be left). The Heritage raspberries, which we mow down in early spring, had quite good production and the flavor has been sublime, far better than the Lathams (which, as I said were excellent). Eugene has this crazy notion that we should let the heritage grow and produce in spring. I have this crazy idea that he can do all the harvesting as well as tilling, seeding, transplanting and other spring chores if this happens. You see we do not need a second kind of spring raspberry when the Lathams are pumping out over 30 gallons of fruit. As it is we do not sell all the Lathams produce (we come close but in order to get rid of them we have to sell in bulk and drop the price 33%). We do sell pretty much 100% of the Late summer berries and if we allow the Heritage to have 2 crops we will lessen the fall yield by about 60% and not have enough for the FSI, store and farmers market in August and September. In other words, Eugene's idea of more spring/summer berries is a bad one on many levels.

The strawberries have not been the best. I don't think we have them in the best place and they need to be replaced this fall with new day neutral berries. the yields have been down and disease problems up. We did get a very nice crop of April may berries because we put a hoop house over them. Granted, the hoop house got nailed twice in the winter-once by heavy wet snow and than a month later by high winds. But neither incident seemed to have any effect on the berry production. it is ironic that the first year the berries have been less than great we do a farm tour and in November a workshop on sustainable berry production. I will say the farm tour attendees did not seem to care what kind of shape the berries were in. Next season we should have a new crop of berries in a new and better spot and hopefully we will be swimming strawberries all spring summer and fall next year.

The greens have been around all season. In spring we had lots of lettuce, spring mix, arugula, kale and various Asian greens. Summer we lost the lettuce-we did try to grow some several times because it was cool most of the summer but every time we started lettuce we would get 5 to 8 days of heat and humidity, always a week or two after germination and that would cause the baby lettuce to get bitter and bolt to seed. now that it is autumn we have several beds of nice lettuce growing as well as volunteers coming up around the market garden. the same thing happened with spring mix. After late June it got impossible to grow it though we did try. We did get several harvests of arugula for our efforts through the summer but nothing else from the spring mix beds. Kale and chard were the summer mainstay greens, they always are.

Broccoli did badly for us but we did get some decent cabbages. I dunno why we have such problems with broccoli, perhaps we should quit growing it. Spring radishes were hit and miss and the early red meat radishes were a complete failure. But we do have a 1/2 bed of them now that are very nice. We got really nice early rutabagas as well as red turnips. the fall red turnips are ready to harvest and store for winter, though it will be early next week before that will happen.

Finally, the Farm Share Initiative has been a great thing for us. It allowed us drop a farmers market and make more money while being allowed to stay home and get more work done. Definitely a win, win for us and the fact very few people seemed to notice there is no longer a Tuesday evening market in Oxford (maybe 10 people have asked about this this summer) tells me that we would have made less money this year than last at that market. So it is good that we are doing the FSI.

I think I will change a few things on how the FSI is run next season. This season I allowed members to sign up for the entire season but pay monthly. That will stop as it is not fair to the members that ponied up the cash for the entire season upfront. And the members who did this have all dropped out for the last month, not good. They also got a few extra weeks as I was treating them like the paid in full members as I expected them to go through the entire season. I think the monthly farm tour/pot luck will go as well since we only were able to hold two this year mostly because of a lack of interest on the part of most of the members. I think a once a year farm tour/pot luck will suffice. I am having a hard time getting it through to the members that farm visits are a very important aspect of the farm share/CSA experience. This is how one connects to their farm and without farm visits one might as well buy their food from the farmers market. I also think it is time to drop the month to month deal. This has the potential of getting very confusing which will lead to mistakes -especially when the FSI grows to more than 30 members. It will be replaced by what I used call "Share Cycles" where I break the season down into 2 or 3 month increments for those who cannot do an entire season for whatever reason.

Well, that's the summery of our summer

The IFO Farm Tour

Tour goers gathering in front of the store before the tour commenced

We hosted a farm tour today in association with Innovative Farmers of Ohio. We talked about sustainable strawberry and raspberry production. Around 20 people came out for the event and a good time seemed to be had by all.

We got started at 3pm with Sharon Sachs introducing us to the tourees. We spoke about what we would be discussing on the tour than everyone was invited to introduce themselves and tell us what they wanted to do with berries (market farm or backyard gardener) Many were backyard gardeners though there were several farmers there as well

After the introductions we got started with the tour and took everyone behind the store and out to the market garden.

This is me explaining how to get bigger berries by pulling certain flowers off a fall

talking irrigation and ground covers

Now we are all done talking about strawberries and we are starting towards the raspberries and pointing out things as we go.

part of the tour group by the raspberries


talking about pruning raspberries

Look! Over there!

Enjoying the farm

Tour is almost over at this point and Eugene is showing off a cold frame

Store's Open for 2009

Actually it's tomorrow that I am opening the store for the 2009 season. Saturday and Sunday noon to 7pm. Regular hours will be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday noon to 5pm.

Check our website Boulderbeltfarm.com for more information

The asparagus is coming in and I have also begun picking strawberries, though I don't know if there will be enough to sell by Saturday. The hot, sunny weather today (it's 82F) should cause a lot to ripen in a hurry. Will have to play that one by ear. But asparagus we got, and it is really, really good

If I get out tomorrow morning before the winds pick up we should also have spinach, heirloom lettuce and maybe some scallions and leeks.

Today I am cleaning the store. So far I have washed the sales fridge and all the racks that go in it. Man, that refrigerator was dirty. the bottom was full of goo, dead flies, veggie bits and the walls had lots of black mold (which the GSE I used in the wash water ought to stop). The racks were also nasty and much harder to clean than the fridge box. But now everything is sparkly clean and more important sanitary. I am grateful to my restaurant exp for getting the opportunity to clean out a lot of nasty reach in fridges and walk-in coolers. Makes this job seem easy.

Next I am going to wash down the shelves and windows and do some light vaccuuming. After that put up some posters of various heirloom roots and veggies and than harvest more asparagus for tomorrow.

Berries

It's raining today and likely tomorrow as well (and why not Saturday morning, after all we have a farmers market than and so far this season we have had maybe 2 rain free markets on Saturday). This means suddenly we are not busy today. Yesterday I spent a lot of the day harvesting 41 half pint boxes of raspberries while Eugene did weeding/hoeing and waiting on customers.

Today I processed some of those raspberries into jam. Some I will sell and some I will keep for use this winter.

I have a feeling the first raspberries are about over. I won't be able to pick them for a couple of days due to rain and the Japanese beetles are coming out enforce and they will do a lot of damage to the berries. I am sure when I can harvest again there will be some but it won't be like the past 7 days or so of 40+ boxes picked every 36 hours. That's a lot of picking. But raspberries are a great seller so well worth the effort.

In about 50 days the late summer/early fall raspberries should be ready to harvest. Until than we will have blackberries and strawberries.

Strawberry Jam

When I have time I like to read other locavore and farm blogs and today I had tome to go check out Val Taylor's Cincinnati Locavore blog and to my delight found a recipe for no-pectin strawberry preserves (click on the title of this post and you will be taken there).

We grow strawberries and at some point I will have a need to make strawberry preserves. Usually I am lazy (or because we grow day neutral berries I am making preserves in late summer or fall so have no natural pectin sources like green apples) and use commercial pectin but it has chemicals that I don't really want to ingest and I agree with Val that the commercial pectin makes the preserves rather solid. I was planning on making preserves using apple pectin though I will have to wait another week or so until the green apples are big enough to fuss with. I even went to the liquor store in Richmond, IN to get some pure grain alcohol (which they don't sell in Ohio for some reason) for the preserve making process. I need the moonshine to check the pectin, it does not go into the preserves themselves. No, I am not making high octane jam. I don't think alcohol and pectin will work together, than again... What I use the alcohol for is to check to see that the sugar to pectin ratio is correct. When I am prepping the apple pectin I have to mix ground apples with sugar and cook that for a bit, if I am remembering this correctly (I will consult with the Joy of Cooking before doing this so I do it correctly). Than I put a bit of the apple/sugar goo into an ounce of 100 proof alcohol and it will either jell or not. When it is correct than it is put with the strawberries and cooked and put into hot sterile jars and sealed.

But Val has a recipe that uses under ripe strawberries that she claims have enough pectin in them to set up the preserves. So check out her recipe. I know I'm going to try it when I have enough strawberries to make 6 to 8 pints of jam.

Hot Time In the Garden

It is not yet the solstice and already the weather has gotten HOT. After a long cool wet spring we have suddenly changed to hot humid conditions. Yuck.

I hate working in high heat. I have gotten heat stroke before and since than I do not do well with work if the temps get into the high 80's. So that means I don't do heavy work outside past noon or before 6pm. Eugene will and sometimes gets cranky with me for not going out into the hot noonday sun. I just remind him if I do there is a good likelihood that I will end up in the hospital and be useless for any kind of work for weeks or months. Oh and that he is nuts for working mid day when it is so hot.

Though I might not like the heat the summer crops do and the garden is thriving, especially after the 3+ inches of rain we got between Tuesday and Wednesday. Yesterday evening I helped Eugene put up pea fencing and noted that the garlic scape are ready to harvest on the Hardy German White garlic (and I did get in one bed of scapes so we now have them), the D'Avignon radishes are ready to pick, we have medium sized peas on the English pea plants and lots of flowers on the first planting of Snow and Snap Peas. The yellow beets look wonderful and next week I will be thinning them out so will have baby beet greens.

The strawberries are in full roar-we are getting around 15 pints a day from the 300' of berries that are producing and the strawberries we put in this year are desperately trying to reproduce by putting out runners and flowers. I dutifully pick off both. I will let them go to flower in about 3 weeks but since these are day neutral berries I will continue to take off the runners. By late July we should have double the output in berries and likely will be able to drop the price a little bit.

I will close here as it is almost 6am and the sun is just coming up enough so I can see to harvest leafy greens such as spinach, arugula and baby lettuce before it gets too hot today to do anything.

Weather Cancelled our Market

Did not make it to the Tuesday market today. there were severe thunderstorm warnings for Oxford at 3:45 and we decided that it would not be worth the risk to go. Though now i see it is getting sunny. If you were expecting us we are sorry but we really did not want to risk having our equipment destroyed in high winds.

It's a shame too, as we have a lot of produce to sell and no market for it. the strawberries and spinach have been coming in strong the past few days and we have a lot of both along with lettuce & spring mix

I guess I will have to make the excess strawberries into jam this evening. Than I will have jam to sell at the store later this week. Jam is always a good seller for us

First Strawberries

Picked the first strawberries today. Picked 11 ripe berries and saw another bunch about 1/2 day from being ripe. if we get the warm sunny weather predicted for this weekend by monday we should be picking several pints a day and will have enough to sell to the public by next week.

The first one I ate was very sweet with a great berry flavor. it looks like we will have some of the best berries we have ever grown this spring (and hopefully summer and fall since these will keep on producing until frost puts them into dormancy)

Planting Update

Eugene planting leeks. they are so small you can't even see them in the picture

The Pepsi cup is not full of pop but rather a bit of water and powdered kelp and leek seedlings

So far this spring we have planted the following in our market garden
strawberries, 2 kinds of leeks (with 2 more beds to plant of King Seig, our huge beautiful leeks), 2 kinds of sweet onions (with several kinds of yellow and red still to go. Should have 10 to 12 beds of onions when we are done), shallots (we probably will not sell any this year. instead will use this planting to build up our seed stock for the 2009 season), garlic (3 kinds planted last November), shelling peas, snow peas, sugar snap peas, scallions, lettuce (many kinds, mostly heirlooms), arugula, spring mix, spinach, asparagus, 3 kinds of kale, 3 kinds of broccoli, cilantro, perennial herbs (these had already been in the garden but were in a very weedy spot so we dug them up, pulled pounds of switch grass roots out of the herb root balls and replanted them in what we hope is a better spot)-oregano, French tarragon, garlic chives, regular chive, winter savory, sage and thyme. I also have basil and parsley started but not planted in the garden yet.

Soon we will transplant cucumbers, zucchini, French melons, tomatoes and basil into the two hoop house we have erected for them. the hoop house will mean we get these items 4 to 8 weeks earlier than if we waited until our last frost date (officially May 15th but the reality of the past 10 years is last frost can be as late as May 31). We have lots of seedlings in our germination room and also in the cold frames just waiting for us to get the time to put down mulch and irrigation tapes (which might be today as it is too wet to till, transplant or direct seed anything that is not covered by plastic in the garden)

We still have leeks in the ground from last year. The plan is to dig all of them up for the farmers market next Saturday, Apr 19th. Than we will be out of leeks until august when the first leeks should be ready to harvest. We also have a few potatoes from last year that have not yet sprouted. Some may just make it to the market as well. As will the garlic from last year I had to put into a refrigerator to keep them from degrading any more. In spring garlic wants to either sprout or rot but keeping them cold tricks them into believing it is still winter.

In the cold frames we have celery, celeriac, two kinds of lettuce (that should have been transplanted yesterday but instead we spent the day transplanting hundreds of leek seedlings. This is a lot like planting grass one blade at a time), a second planting of broccoli, parsley, and pots and pots of of onions and leeks.

Inside we have more lettuce, around 350 peppers seedlings, cuke and zuke seedlings, early tomato seedlings (we have around 35 right now, 3 kinds, yellow taxi, Matina and early Girl.) In a week or so I will plant another 1000 or so tomato seeds, around 25 different kinds, for our main crop along with the eggplant and more zucchini, cukes, melons and basil. It will be a full house until late May/early June when we start transplanting them into the garden.

That's the planting Update for April 11th.

Rain Day Musings

It's raining today. Not a heavy rain but there was enough rain overnight to make the fields too muddy to work in so we have done other things like completing our state and federal income tax returns and writing appropriate checks (the self employed almost never get refunds from the IRS). This means this summer we should get hundreds of dollars in free money from the gummint. I thought the Democrats were the ones to hand out free money. Crazy world.

Went to town to buy things we need like food and envelopes. Also went to the post office to send out an order of garlic powder and to pick up any mail in the PO Box. We had a box of brown turkey figs waiting patiently for us along with a plea from the Farm Bureau to join up so they can promote our farm. Of course that costs money and Boulder Belt seems to be on their web site anyhow so why pay money? Especially to a group who has a history of not being on the small farmers side but rather on the side of big business. Local Harvest has an incredible website that does a great job of promoting Boulder Belt Eco-Farm and they do this for free (though I have been known to contribute to their cause which gives us even better promotion).

Scored some $1 a bottle Santa Cruz organic strawberry lemonade at Kroger's. I love marked down organic food. Made up for the $1.39 a can organic black beans (which I get because they are the only canned beans without a plastic liner in the can leach pthalates into my food).

Made arrangements to give away a sewing machine that was given to me and which I have never used. It has been taking up space for over 5 years and when I saw a request for a sewing machine on Freecycle this morning I sent the woman an email saying she can have mine. I really need to get some stuff together and post it on the several local Freecycle groups to which I belong. Time to get rid of useless (to me) items. Of course, many of these items make good fodder for the 127 yard sale and that is likely where they will end up. That way they will make us a bit of money, but I will probably lose Karma points.

I don't know what I will do with the rest of the day. I know some pepper seeds are beginning to germinate and there are several trays of lettuce to go out to the cold frame so they can be put in the ground next week some time. And I should start more lettuce plants for transplanting in 3 to 4 weeks.

Yesterday after planting asparagus all morning I spent a great deal of the afternoon planting broccoli seedlings while Eugene planted snow peas and snap peas and got the area ready for the new strawberry plants. Oh and talked to some guy who stopped by wanting us to sell his eggs for him. We are not licensed to resell eggs, dairy or meat products. Though I suppose now that we have retail refrigeration it would not be too hard to get an RFE (retail Food Establishment) License. Than again the store building has no running water and that is likely a requirement. The solution, of course is for us to get back into the pastured laying hen biz and raise our own eggs and sell those. Just need a coop for the girls and a supply of new egg cartons. Oh, and the commitment to never leave the farm for more than 18 hours ever again.

Soon it will be time to start dinner which is salmon with some veggies from the freezer. I am thinking wax beans and perhaps some boiled potatoes (which are not frozen) and brownies with walnuts for dessert.

Our Season So far

Despite the drought, we have had a good growing season. Not everything has grown well but most of our crops have done well for us this year. Roots have not been all that great for us. The carrots have been ravaged by carrot maggots and we have lost about 1/2 the crop. Beets have been hit and miss all summer. We have generally had a few but they have rarely been great beets. Some kinds of radishes have done exceptionally, other types have barely made roots. Onions, garlic, leeks and scallions, on the other hand, have done very well for us this summer (and will continue on into fall and winter).

Kale has been spectacular, though lately it has not been growing well. The chard was doing well until early August when it got some fungus that looks like black pepper has been sprinkled all over the leaves before the leaves turn brown and rot. The leafy cool weather greens did well in spring and we have had arugula since early August. Who knew arugula will grow well in hot dry conditions with no irrigation? Annual herbs have done especially well. We planted a lot of basil this year and all of it has produced abundantly. Parsley has also done well, though we had some major germination problems this spring so only have 12 plants. Dill has been a surprise. Eugene planted some in early summer and it got forgotten until late August so it went to seed all on its' own and has done a super job of thickly reseeding itself making for a gorgeous bed of cutting dill. Cilantro has been real hit and miss. It hates hot dry conditions so has not grown very well most of the season, that should change in a few weeks since fall has now arrived.

Winter squashes have done well but by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes were hit and miss. Probably because we were growing several new types and did not know what we were doing with them. Melons were decent. Not terribly prolific, well, they were but so were the voles early on. The voles damaged at least 75% of the early melons. But Eugene and the dogs got on the ball and got good control of the varmints so we got many cantaloupes, Winter squashes have done well though, by mid summer the summer squashes had begun to give up on life. Same with the cucumbers, we had great cukes early but the main season cukes, charantais melons and watermelons all through August and September.

Corn was another disappointment. We rarely do good sweet corn. It is very hard to get clean well filled ears producing it organically. We do not use treated seed so we cannot plant until the soil is at least 60˚F which this year was mid May, well after they rains had left. So from the get go we had some serious issues with the sweet corn. What we ended up with was basically crappy corn. About 10% was sellable another 15% we froze for winter and the rest was composted. I don't know if we will continue to grow sweet corn. In theory, we need it for the farm stand, though our sales were not horribly impacted by not having much corn this year and I believe that we can get our customers not to expect sweet corn but to look forward to over 100 other produce items we grow at the store. For all the time and cost put into growing sweet corn it is one of our least lucrative crops. But I am positive Eugene will hanker to plant sweet corn next year and so it will be planted.

The nightshades-tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, potatoes have all done quite well. I have noticed these crops tend to do much better in dry conditions than wet. Last year we harvested, maybe, 200 peppers the entire season and most went into the freezer and were not sold. This year we have already harvested close to a thousand sweet peppers and the season is far from over. The hot peppers have loved the hot dry conditions and have been extra prolific. Tomatoes would have liked a bit more rain, I think, but overall they did well, though it seems the season was a bit short as after this week we will likely not have any tomatoes and I noticed at market this week very few other farms still have 'maters. Eggplants have done better for us in the past but this was a good year for them, no the less.

The strawberries have been a real workhorse all season. Early and mid September was not a great time for the berries but other than that they have produced high quality fruit. The raspberries have been a disappointment. Between the Easter freeze, birds and Japanese beetles we have not gotten a good harvest from either the Latham which produce one time or the heritage that produce spring and fall. The berries we have managed to harvest have been excellent, just not at all plentiful.

Now that it is autumn we will be harvesting spring mix and lettuces soon. Hopefully, we will get some rainy weather this fall, though I am not counting on it. Lettuce, especially, likes rainy conditions. Thankfully we have a drip irrigation system and we know how to use it so the leafy greens will grow well enough for us.

It is So Wet

Wow, within 24 hours of writing the "It's So Dry..." post we got over 2 inches of rain (2.2" to be percise). This will help things out immensely. The last time we got over 2 inches of rain was back in April

Starting around 3pm we got hours and hours of heavy (but not too heavy), steady rain. This gave us time to harvest all the tomatoes that were either ripe or showing some color. Had we left them on the vines we would have had around 20 bushels of garbage and none to sell. You see, rain, especially after a long dry period, will cause full sized maters to crack badly. Thus making them unsellable. So Eugene and I spent hours harvesting maters as well as strawberries, okra and melons (which will do the same thing as tomatoes when exposed to copious amounts of rain).

The rain has stopped for now but is supposed to return this afternoon. If it does we may not go to the Tuesday Market which will be a bummer because we have a lot of stuff that needs to be sold. I guess I can always open up the store and sell a few hings there.

Dinner From the Garden

Tonight's supper is a work in progress. So far I have in a big saute pan 3 kinds of heirloom tomatoes (Crnkovic Yugoslavian-dark pink with almost black seed cavities, nice acidity, sweet taste, Boulder Belt striped-red with yellow stripes, inside yellow with a Bright red heart-low acid, very sweet and Dr Wyche's Yellow-huge orange fruit, low acid sweet), 2 heads of shivlisi garlic (aka chesnok red), a head of cauliflower, 2 yellow onions, a green patty pan squash that is coming up in the delicata beds (from seed we saved) Oregon giant snow peas and a Chinese giant pepper (or maybe it's a Marconi). I think I will add a can or black beans and some cumin, chili powder and cheddar cheese and let it simmer a while. Than eat it with tortilla chips. The salad is a skinned and sliced telegraph cuke, a couple of Siskyou sweet onions, sliced, chunks of charentais melon, halved strawberries, several kinds of tomatoes (mainly yellow and orange), chopped coarsely, olive oil, kosher salt and balsamic vinegar. Fresh Italian parsley is good in this too.

Should be good, few things more satisfying in oh, so many ways than eating from your garden.

It's Hot

I thought it was hot for the 127 Yard Sale (and it was) but this week is even hotter. Yesterday took a half day off and went to Richmond, IN for a late lunch and a movie (saw The Simpson's-an okay movie, not as good as many TeeVee episodes but the A/C was cold and kept us comfortable for 95 minutes or so) and it was 103F (41C) at 4pm.

This kind of heat makes farm work difficult. I work early before the heat sets in and try to get everything done before 11am. Today, for example, I have to harvest strawberries, haricot verts and tomatoes at the very least. I will also try and get some leeks in as a woman mentioned Tuesday she wanted to buy some leeks from us either today or tomorrow. Eugene is very bothered by the all weeds (mostly Queen Anne's lace, which is quite pretty) in the tomato/pepper area so he will likely get out the weed eater and whack weed this morning after the done with watering chores. By noon we will be done with work as it will likely be right around 100F and the humidity will be high (it already is at 6am) making it hard to move or think

So we will retire to the house for the afternoon (except for forays out to the store whenever a customer comes by). In heat like this we shut the house up during the day and close all the curtains. This keeps the hot air out and the house will stay below 84F even when it gets above 100F. With ceiling fans running it is pretty comfortable, even with 2 humans, 3 dogs and a cat generating heat. At night we open all the windows and put fans in a few (some are exhausting air others are bringing cool air in) to circulate cool air into the house. What I find ironic, is we do exactly the same thing when it is cold in winter-close all curtains/windows (only to keep heat IN, not out) only we do not open the house up at night in winter.

I am so glad we do not have chickens right now. This kind of heat is literally murder on the rock cornish cross birds. Once the temps get above 95F these birds get really miserable and if the temps are above 100F they will start dying in droves unless hey are kept cool. Since we have no AC out here in the sticks I guess we would run cold water on their portable coops to bring down the temps in those and make life bearable for them. The only thing is, we are in a drought, our well has to be getting low with all the irrigation we do and I don't believe would have the water to cool chickens, irrigate the garden and have water for the house. So it is just as well we don't have chickens at this time-fewer things to worry about.

I see the dawn is breaking so it is time to get motivated

A Strawberry Crisis of Minute Proportions

We had a very busy weekend that was quite profitable for us. Kona Bistro in Oxford does an annual local/organic foods week at the restaurant and ordered a lot of food from us and he Saturday Farmers market in Oxford was busy as well. That mean harvesting double the usual amount of food and having no strawberries for Saturday's market which bummed a lot of people out.

Harvest started on Thursday, mainly for the store (which is open Thursday, Friday and Sunday 11am 'til 7pm) because we were short on some things, like strawberries (because I made jam out of the ones picked over the past weekend and early in the week that did not sell at the Tuesday market) and onions which are just starting to come in and beans because beans need picking every other day or so.

The store was reasonably busy Thursday. 6 people came in most wanting strawberries which has never happened before. Usually the berries are a slow seller. I didn't care because I had already sold 15 pints to Kona and any extras would sell at the Saturday market. Than I start getting emails from farmers market customer ordering large amounts of strawberries, Again, something that has not happened before. Than I go out in the late afternoon to pick more berries and find the patch that has been giving us 11 to 13 pints per day can barely cough up 6 pints. OH NO! We have hit he mid summer lull. So I quickly go back to the store and pull all the berries off the shelf, now realizing I will barely have enough to fill Kona's order and none extra for market if I sell any more at the store. I tell all the emailers that I will not have any berries at market so cannot reserve any for them.

Friday I go out late in the day to harvest more berries and once again find the harvest is low. But I do get enough berries to fill the restaurant order and all is good.

I should have gotten the berries in the morning but I had to harvest and pack a lot of chard, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, onions, carrots, peas, green beans, beets, basil and other items for both Kona and the Saturday market.

At 6am Saturday Morning I load the van with a lot of food and we drive down to Oxford and set up and sell a lot of produce at market, despite having no berries. After market we stop at the Top O' The Hill Day lily farm and buy a couple of expensive lily corms (which we will pick up next Saturday). I had never been to this farm since it stopped being a horse farm. I was well aquainted with it as a horse farm as I boarded a horse there in the late 1980's.When I was a little kid all the teenagers in my neighborhood (the subdivision across the street) had horses and boarded them here. And that starerd my addiction o horses which is in a lull a he moment. After the day lily farm we picked up our raw milk and han went home. Took a nap and than got back in he van and drove back to Oxford for a pool/dinner party at our friend Chuck's. Had a great time swimming, eating and communing. It was good but long day and we will do a virtual repeat next week minus a big restaurant order-have to pick up the lilies, and milk and in the evening we go to Lisa Biales's CD Release party in Oxford

Harvesting for Winter

I am waiting for rain that is not coming. A cold front is moving through the region this morning and it was supposed to bring a lot of rain our way but it seems that the rain has fizzled out. C'est la vie. The market garden will have to continue to depend on well water irrigation for now.

It is Wednesday and we have no markets to deal with today and we did not sell many strawberries yesterday at the Tuesday market so today I am going to make strawberry jam, something I have not done in years. I think I will also freeze some green beans and can the apple sauce Eugene made last night since it is going to be reasonably cool today and tonight.

A big part of gardening is being able to put food up for winter. This seems to be a foreign concept to most Americans and that is a huge shame. When I had a CSA, early on I would purposely give members a lot of food and instructions on how to freeze, dry or can the extra food so they would have pure local food in winter time, thus stretching their food dollars. In the ten years I ran a CSA I had maybe 3 members who got that idea. Wot a shame.

I take great joy in putting food by. Yes, it takes time and is often hot sweaty labor but come winter when we are feasting on beans, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, corn, pesto, dried herbs, garlic powder, peas, jams and jellies, applesauce, etc., it is well worth the work done in the heat of summer. It saves us boat loads of money in winter when money is always in short supply for us and we do not have to worry about where our food came from or with what it has been adulterated. That and it is very satisfying to have shelves full of beautiful jars of homemade food and freezers full of produce and chicken that we raised.

If you raise a garden and do not already can dry freeze and otherwise preserve your harvest you should start because otherwise you are not taking full advantage of what your garden is producing. If you buy at farmers markets buy extra and freeze or can it. If you belong o a CSA and cannot eat all the food each week, instead of giving it away or trashing it, put it up for winter. It takes just a few hours per week to do this. Your co-operative extension office will have loads of information on putting food by.

Strawberries, irrigation, dogs and rain

We got some rain this evening.

Saw on the TeeVee weather radar at 6pm a storm was headed our way. So around 6:30pm I went out to the garden to pick strawberries so we would have some tomorrow for the farm store. My friend Marge stopped by the farmers market Tuesday evening to ask if we would have any Wednesday or Thursday. I told her I would have some Thursday and to drop by. So I had to have something picked before the rain set in. I hate reneging on an order

I got 10 pints so all is good. It is funny how darkening skies and rising winds really speed up one's picking time. I think I took me about 20 minutes or so to do the first two rows (7 pints) and about 5 minutes to get the 3rd row picked (3 pints) as the rain was bearing down on me. But I got the berries picked and inside and almost got the laundry off the line before the first drops hit the dirt.

As I write I hear Nate running around the back yard barking at distant thunder. He is so weird about storms. He is very much bothered by them but instead of cowering he wants to fight them and run them off (and in the end always succeeds in chasing the things away) . It gives him something to do. The other two dogs, Arlo and Danny, are lying beside me happy to be in out of the rain but not at all bothered by it.

I am happy to say this is not the first rain we have had in the past week. Last Friday we got .4 inches and Saturday and Sunday we got another couple of 10ths. Tomorrow we are supposed to get around an inch. I believe this is because Eugene has finally gotten the irrigation system 100% complete as of yesterday afternoon. In the past when we have had dreadfully dry weather, within 24 hours of getting the irrigation system set up, the rains always come. And this year seems to be no exception.

You Say It's My Birthday...

That's right it is my birthday today.

My 44th, I'm middle aged fer sure fer sure.

Started the day with farm work. We have a farmers market tomorrow morning so this morning I was harvesting lettuce, strawberries and spring mix by 7am so the greens did not get damaged by the summery heat and I did not get damaged by picking berries in a hoophouse that can easily get 120˚F on a nice hot sunny day such as this by mid day.

The bed of spring mix I harvested this morning

After harvesting I wen in for some breakfast-Eugene made us eggs (locally grown pastured beauties), fried taters (the last of the 2006 crop) and toast. After breakfast I washed greens for an hour or so. After washing greens I was going to take a break but instead got involved neatening up the yard. Eugene was weed whacking around the store, signs and flowers and I got into following him around moving objects so he could get at the grass and weeds better and hand weeding in areas where a weed whacker might behead an iris bloom or peony bud. That took a half hour and left he yard looking MUCH better.

Took a break out of the heat and ate lunch. Noodled around on the web for a hour or so than decided I was was high time go out to the store/packing shed to put labels on produce bags and bag up lettuce, arugula and spring mix. So I did that for a couple of hours. Now I am blogging and waiting for Eugene to come in so we can enjoy the strawberry daiquiris I made a few minutes ago waiting for blogger to load.

After that we are going out to dinner somewhere and will also pick up some cat food. Than home and to bed early because tomorrow is an early 4:30am call.

Rainy Spring Days on The Farm

It's been raining for the past two days so we have not been doing much farming-the soils just too wet. That is not to say we didn't need the rain, we did. And the lettuces, peas, spring mix, spinach, asparagus, strawberries, radishes, onions, leeks, raspberries, kale, broccoli, chard, scallions, herbs rutabagas, etc., look quite happy about the rain

Before it rained we got almost all the onions in the ground. All that is left are some late planted seedlings that are not big enough for transplanting yet. Now we have 3 or 4 beds of leeks to get in and we are pretty much done with allium planting until October when we plant garlic.

The next big transplanting project will be tomatoes, peppers and eggplant that will go in the end of May or early June. Looks like we will have around 1500 plants to put out over a couple of days.

Meanwhile we will be transplanting broccoli, cabbages, cukes, zucchinis, melons, winter squashes, lettuces, pac choi, etc., and doing a lot of direct seeding of various crops like carrots, turnips, spring mix, radishes, basil, parsley, sweet corn, potatoes, etc., throughout May, June and July. Unlike home gardeners we have to keep planting over and over so we have a constant seasonal supply of produce so there is no putting in the garden over a day or weekend. We will be done planting sometime in November or December.

While it's been raining we have started clearing out the storefront of a lot of detritus (aka yard sale items) and putting that in the barn where the huge, commercial, 3-door fridge used to be and moving all the equipment we use to package produce (scale, plastic wrap, pulp boxes, plastic bags, wax boxes, salad spinner, wash tubs, chest freezers etc., from the barn to the back of the store which is being turned into a packing shed. This will greatly streamline selling produce out of the store having the refrigeration where things are being sold so no one has to run to the barn to get more bags of spring mix or strawberries or a chicken and than at the end of the day take everything back to the barn

We also bottled homemade pear wine and beer over the past two days. The beer ought to be ready to drink for my birthday May 11h

Happy Solstice

Summer came in with a bang. We awoke to severe thunderstorms this morning that included a 1/2 hour power outage and 2" of rain in under 45 minutes.

When the rain left the heat and humidity set in. It is definitely summer.

I was out picking strawberries, zucchini and cucumbers and after 15 minutes I was drenched with sweat. Not fun. A lot of the garden went under water during the torrential downpour but by noon most of that water had drained out of the garden (this place has excellent drainage, not like the other farm, which would have had standing water for several days after such a storm). This left a lot of the veggies in a muddy state but happy enough.

Summer means that the onions are growing fast, they love the long days and short nights. The garlic has had its' scapes cut (and to the person who got here searching for scape prices, we sell them for $2.50 for a 1/2 pound bag) and now is growing big bulbs. I dug one up this afternoon that had its' greens knocked off (either by Eugene and the weed whacker or a deer) and it was a good size already even though it won't be ready to harvest for another 2 to 4 weeks. The first potato planting is in full flower and that means we will be harvesting them in a few weeks (we have not gotten all our potatoes planted yet, we do our last planting around July 4th) and can start stealing the new potatoes now if we want, though that cuts back on the final harvest since the potatoes taken early do not grow back.

The peas are going nuts. We did 3 plantings and the first two snow peas beds are in full roar with the third flowering heavily but not yet producing peas. The sugar snap peas are bit slower. The first planting is going great guns and the second has skinny peas but the third planting has not yet begun to flower. Picking peas is back bending work and can get old after a few weeks of daily harvesting.

It's summer and the garden is bountiful.