Happy thanksgiving. Tonight I write the obligatory what am I cooking for Thanksgiving blog entry. I am hosting 8 of my relatives tomorrow and we will be feasting on predominately locally sourced food. I am supplying the Turkey which is a 22 pound pastured raised certified organic bird raised here in Preble County by Dale Filbrun. I am brining the bird as I write this in a solution of 3 gallons of water, 2.5 cup of table salt and 2.5 cups of sugar. He will sit in that bath until 5 am or so, than be removed, rinsed and allowed to dry for a couple of hours before going into the oven to cook for 5 hours (basting every 30 minutes or so after the 2nd hour).
I am also making dressing/stuffing that will use organic bread cubes (which I already made this afternoon), organic celery from Kroger's (our celery got nuked several weeks ago by frost), our celeriac, our onions, our leeks, our apples, our pears, walnuts, the turkey stock I am making right now, parsley, sage , rosemary and thyme from our farm, mashed potatoes from our taters, Spring mix we grew, steamed chard we grew, biscuits and Eugene is making 2 pies-strawberry rhubarb and apple all with home grown fruit. My brother Scott is bringing a pumpkin pie from the Motor City, otherwise Eugene would have made a squash pie.
My sister in law, Doreen, is bringing Mac and cheese and sweet potato casserole with the marshmallows.
I have the silver polished up. It is my grandmother silver and I am also planning on using the chine she bequeathed to me. It is referred to as "The Spode". I seem to have 7 complete place settings and 8 big plates so will have a bit of mix and match in the table setting dept. Same with the silverware. There should be 12 settings but a lot of salad forks are missing along with a couple of dinner forks. Hmmmm...
So there will be a mix of really fancy silver and not so fancy silver. And a lot of great food plus various libations such as home pressed apple cider, home brewed beer, other beer, Oban scotch, water, wine
So you might be wondering about the title, Brining Birdzilla. Birdzilla came into being back in the late 1980's/early 90's. A friend of mine named Amy bought a turkey for Thanksgiving. Amy was (is) a person when food buying tended to go overboard. So for a party of 6 i believe she bought this huge turkey, maybe 30 pounds and put it in a mutual friend, Bitt's, fridge because it had nothing else in it and Birdzilla fit in his fridge. I did not partake in that first birdzilla feast as I had family obligations that year. But after that whenever I got a huge turkey (anything over 20 pounds) I have referred to it as Birdzilla. The biggest birdzilla was over 30 pounds. It barely fit in the oven.
This year Birdzilla is 22 pounds. Dale told me when I went to pick up the turkey at his farm (where I watched the flock of Christmas turkeys roam around with 3 chickens) that because of the long Indian summer the turkeys grew a lot bigger than expected so instead of getting a 15 pound bird I got a 22 pounder. He said I could have gotten a 40 pounder if I wanted (no thanks been there, done that). Birdzilla is brining for the next 10 or so hours and by this time tomorrow he will be history, and a tasty one at that.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
CSA: Week Two
I have just finished packing up the second installment of the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm Winter CSA shares.
It was a cold experience, let me tell you. All the food is in the store and we have yet to turn on the heater in there because we are cheap (and green). So it is no more than 35F in that building. It is definitely above freezing because nothing outside of the fridges has frozen yet, but it's still damn cold. It took a good 15 minutes for my hands to thaw out. Yow!
The shares this week contained:
1 6 oz bag of spring mix
1 pound of rutabagas
a pound of carrots
1 charantais melon
2 pints of strawberries from the hoop house
2 green peppers
1 pound of mixed chard (wasn't planning on including this but the weather dictated that it should all be brought in. Now we have about 20 pounds of chard.)
6 or so pears
5 leeks (we have a lot of leeks)
3 tomatoes
A bag of Italian Parsley and 2 other kinds of fresh herbs (Dill, Cilantro, Thyme or sage)
Not a bad haul for the middle of a cold November.
It was a cold experience, let me tell you. All the food is in the store and we have yet to turn on the heater in there because we are cheap (and green). So it is no more than 35F in that building. It is definitely above freezing because nothing outside of the fridges has frozen yet, but it's still damn cold. It took a good 15 minutes for my hands to thaw out. Yow!
The shares this week contained:
1 6 oz bag of spring mix
1 pound of rutabagas
a pound of carrots
1 charantais melon
2 pints of strawberries from the hoop house
2 green peppers
1 pound of mixed chard (wasn't planning on including this but the weather dictated that it should all be brought in. Now we have about 20 pounds of chard.)
6 or so pears
5 leeks (we have a lot of leeks)
3 tomatoes
A bag of Italian Parsley and 2 other kinds of fresh herbs (Dill, Cilantro, Thyme or sage)
Not a bad haul for the middle of a cold November.
CSA Articles
I was perusing the IDigMyGarden forums and saw there were new posts on the CSA thread someone started about a month ago. One of the posts had a link to a series of articles about being a CSA member in the Washington Post. Each article Chronicles the weekly CSA haul.
I am still reading the chronicle (I've gotten to August 20th) and I have been struck at how small the shares are until late august. I guess we are better than most at keeping quantity, quality and variety. Even in early spring we can generally come up with 8 or 9 items to put in the CSA share. Even as early as early April I could find more than 4 or 5 items either growing in hoop houses, under row covers or still left over from storage. Granted, most will be leafy green things like kale, chard, cilantro, lettuce, arugula. But I could also include garlic (if it still exists that late in the garlic cycle) or garlic powder, radishes, chives, leeks, dried beans, dried herbs and/or honey. By mid May add to the variety asparagus, peas (shelling, sugar snap and snow), zucchini, cucumbers (both from a hoop house), strawberries, broccoli, cabbages, scallions, tarragon, oregano, sage, winter savory, red turnips, etc..
I am now reading the first entry for September. The late summer shares from this farm are quite nice; sweet corn (something we no longer grow), water melon, peaches (something we hope to be able to offer in 4 to 5 years-we have a couple of trees but the deer have had their way with them and well...) blackberries, heirloom maters, peppers, basil, etc.. the writer says her son questioned the need for her CSA share because she already had a lot of produce in the fridge. But she realizes she has to pick up this food and be faced with the challenge of what to do with it all (and so far, every week, she uses everything in the share)
All in all a really good read for either the CSA farmer or anyone who is a member of a CSA or is thinking of joining one. I know I am learning a bit and it is always interesting to see what other CSA's are doing and how the members feel about their CSA and CSA's in general.
I am still reading the chronicle (I've gotten to August 20th) and I have been struck at how small the shares are until late august. I guess we are better than most at keeping quantity, quality and variety. Even in early spring we can generally come up with 8 or 9 items to put in the CSA share. Even as early as early April I could find more than 4 or 5 items either growing in hoop houses, under row covers or still left over from storage. Granted, most will be leafy green things like kale, chard, cilantro, lettuce, arugula. But I could also include garlic (if it still exists that late in the garlic cycle) or garlic powder, radishes, chives, leeks, dried beans, dried herbs and/or honey. By mid May add to the variety asparagus, peas (shelling, sugar snap and snow), zucchini, cucumbers (both from a hoop house), strawberries, broccoli, cabbages, scallions, tarragon, oregano, sage, winter savory, red turnips, etc..
I am now reading the first entry for September. The late summer shares from this farm are quite nice; sweet corn (something we no longer grow), water melon, peaches (something we hope to be able to offer in 4 to 5 years-we have a couple of trees but the deer have had their way with them and well...) blackberries, heirloom maters, peppers, basil, etc.. the writer says her son questioned the need for her CSA share because she already had a lot of produce in the fridge. But she realizes she has to pick up this food and be faced with the challenge of what to do with it all (and so far, every week, she uses everything in the share)
All in all a really good read for either the CSA farmer or anyone who is a member of a CSA or is thinking of joining one. I know I am learning a bit and it is always interesting to see what other CSA's are doing and how the members feel about their CSA and CSA's in general.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Boulder Belt in Winter
Winter is here-it is cold, snowy and most everything that is not we covered is dead. This means things have slowed way down for us (yay!) It is nice to be able to kick back for a month or so before the 80 hour a week grinds starts again.
People want to know what we farmers do in the off season. For us, we spend a lot of November cleaning up stuff like the store, the garden beds, popcorn, catnip, onions. Crunching numbers on the various produce items we grow so we have an idea as to what is selling and what is not selling so we know what seeds to plant for the coming season. Eugene does not do much on the computer so it is me who keeps the blog and website updated and that can be time consuming, especially this year since it looks like Boulder Belt is back in the CSA biz and that means at some point I need to design an informative CSA page for the Boulder Belt Website.
December is too often spent removing snow from hoop houses and driveways. It is also the time we put in our main seed order with Johnny's Selected Seeds (our favorite seed house). In the past we have waited until after Christmas to put in our order but there are rumors that there will be seed shortages this year so I believe I will get at least part of the order in in early Dec. or even late November. December is usually the Month that we start the onions and leeks indoors, though this year I believe the onions will be started today or tomorrow (that would be mid November). The reason for moving up the date is due to the fact we have quite a few Copra onion seeds left over from last year and We decided that those should be planted to see if they have strong germination. If they do than we do not need to order more seed. If they do not than we will know by Dec 1st if the seeds are working or not and can get an order into Johnny's early enough to avoid the dreaded back order that can set one back several months.
If December, January and February are mild (which is the NOAA prediction for us this winter, but I will believe that when I see it) than the crops in the hoop houses will continue to produce pretty much all winter and someone has to go and harvest and package the crops periodically (weekly-as growth slows way down in the winter even if it is relatively warm and sunny). We than sell the greens, leeks, etc., at the Oxford Monthly Winter market and this year the CSA gets their share as well. We also sell through the store via email appointment and occasionally to a restaurant or Miami University.
If the winter months are cold with a lot of precip, than most things quit growing until Late Feb and cannot be harvested, the exception to this are the leeks and scallions. Than we sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting on the greens to come back to life. Okay, we don't spend much time thumb twiddling (but we do start craving greens in a big way and are delighted when things are harvestable again). If it is a snowy winter than we are spending lots of time removing snow from the hoop houses, otherwise they get flattened and are unuseable and have to be repaired or replaced. this has happened a couple of times to us and incredibly the crops under all the snow and plastic are generally unharmed and producing very well when we finally get to them
What we are doing by Feb is starting seriously seeds indoors. This starts out slowly with around 15 pots of onions and leeks planted in Dec/Jan. Those are followed by the brassicas-kale, broccoli, cabbages, etc., and lettuces in mid to late Feb. Those crops are repeatedly seeded indoors through April/May so we have a continual harvest April through June/July. By late March we are also starting early tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and melons to be planted in mid April in hoop houses. In April the main crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, celery, celeriac, parsley, flowers, etc., are started which fills up the grow room along with cold frames and hoop houses with thousands of seedlings.
Once the seeds are started we are tied to the farm. The seeds need daily tending-watering, fertilizing, pricking (this means to re pot into a larger container), making soil (we make our own soil mix for seed starting as we have a hard time finding soiless mixes that don't contain petroleum products or chemical fertilizers. Add to that, we start seeds in soil blocks and we make our own soil blocks so the soiless mix has to be just so for it to work for us. Making our own soil blocks means we use very little plastic when starting our seedlings. It probably saves us around a thousand bucks a year as well (of course it increases our work load by at least 100 hours as we have to make a lot of soil and a lot of soil blocks.)
So you can see that we small sustainable farmers really don't have much down time at all. Some day, perhaps, we will quit this idea of winter growing and marketing and will shut the farm down in November and go to the Caribbean for 4 months.
People want to know what we farmers do in the off season. For us, we spend a lot of November cleaning up stuff like the store, the garden beds, popcorn, catnip, onions. Crunching numbers on the various produce items we grow so we have an idea as to what is selling and what is not selling so we know what seeds to plant for the coming season. Eugene does not do much on the computer so it is me who keeps the blog and website updated and that can be time consuming, especially this year since it looks like Boulder Belt is back in the CSA biz and that means at some point I need to design an informative CSA page for the Boulder Belt Website.
December is too often spent removing snow from hoop houses and driveways. It is also the time we put in our main seed order with Johnny's Selected Seeds (our favorite seed house). In the past we have waited until after Christmas to put in our order but there are rumors that there will be seed shortages this year so I believe I will get at least part of the order in in early Dec. or even late November. December is usually the Month that we start the onions and leeks indoors, though this year I believe the onions will be started today or tomorrow (that would be mid November). The reason for moving up the date is due to the fact we have quite a few Copra onion seeds left over from last year and We decided that those should be planted to see if they have strong germination. If they do than we do not need to order more seed. If they do not than we will know by Dec 1st if the seeds are working or not and can get an order into Johnny's early enough to avoid the dreaded back order that can set one back several months.
If December, January and February are mild (which is the NOAA prediction for us this winter, but I will believe that when I see it) than the crops in the hoop houses will continue to produce pretty much all winter and someone has to go and harvest and package the crops periodically (weekly-as growth slows way down in the winter even if it is relatively warm and sunny). We than sell the greens, leeks, etc., at the Oxford Monthly Winter market and this year the CSA gets their share as well. We also sell through the store via email appointment and occasionally to a restaurant or Miami University.
If the winter months are cold with a lot of precip, than most things quit growing until Late Feb and cannot be harvested, the exception to this are the leeks and scallions. Than we sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting on the greens to come back to life. Okay, we don't spend much time thumb twiddling (but we do start craving greens in a big way and are delighted when things are harvestable again). If it is a snowy winter than we are spending lots of time removing snow from the hoop houses, otherwise they get flattened and are unuseable and have to be repaired or replaced. this has happened a couple of times to us and incredibly the crops under all the snow and plastic are generally unharmed and producing very well when we finally get to them
What we are doing by Feb is starting seriously seeds indoors. This starts out slowly with around 15 pots of onions and leeks planted in Dec/Jan. Those are followed by the brassicas-kale, broccoli, cabbages, etc., and lettuces in mid to late Feb. Those crops are repeatedly seeded indoors through April/May so we have a continual harvest April through June/July. By late March we are also starting early tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and melons to be planted in mid April in hoop houses. In April the main crops of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, celery, celeriac, parsley, flowers, etc., are started which fills up the grow room along with cold frames and hoop houses with thousands of seedlings.
Once the seeds are started we are tied to the farm. The seeds need daily tending-watering, fertilizing, pricking (this means to re pot into a larger container), making soil (we make our own soil mix for seed starting as we have a hard time finding soiless mixes that don't contain petroleum products or chemical fertilizers. Add to that, we start seeds in soil blocks and we make our own soil blocks so the soiless mix has to be just so for it to work for us. Making our own soil blocks means we use very little plastic when starting our seedlings. It probably saves us around a thousand bucks a year as well (of course it increases our work load by at least 100 hours as we have to make a lot of soil and a lot of soil blocks.)
So you can see that we small sustainable farmers really don't have much down time at all. Some day, perhaps, we will quit this idea of winter growing and marketing and will shut the farm down in November and go to the Caribbean for 4 months.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Winter CSA; Week 1
The first installment of the CSA went very well. All the shares were picked up and I ended up putting far more food into the shares than I had planned on because we have a lot of stuff coming in that has a fairly short shelf life and needs to be used. And who better to use the food than the CSA members.
I realized this week that I made an error in planning this CSA. Past CSA's have been weekly affairs and I have created shares and charged accordingly. But this winter CSA is bi-monthly which means the shares should be twice as big as what I am used to putting together (though the shares for the first week are close to a 2 week share) and I should have charged the members twice as much as I did. So what is likely to happen is I am going to dole out big shares (except in January when I expect winter to come in and shut the fresh greens growing down for several weeks) and the members are going to be very happy and I am going to rip off the farm by selling food at too huge a discount. This is what I get for throwing the CSA together so quickly-I did not think out all the minute details. Ah, c'est la vie.
This is not all bad. We are getting additional income from the CSA that we would not have gotten otherwise and low cost with lots of food should make all the members happy campers and thus loyal customers and repeat CSA members. And this is making me think hard about the details of a main season CSA
So what did the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm CSA members get this week?
They got:
2 pints of strawberries
3 leeks
4 peppers
1/2 pound baby heirloom lettuces
1 pound Napa cabbage
1 small bag of either tarragon, thyme or dill
3 heads of heirloom garlic
1 bunch Easter egg radish
1 charantais melon
1 pound turnip greens
2 pound keiffer pears
2 pound Dr Matthews apples
1 pound yellow onions
Which is worth $45 if I were to sell the stuff at the store or farmer's market. Great deal for the CSA members but not a great deal for Boulder Belt Eco-Farm if Boulder Belt Eco-Farm wants to be economically sustainable (and we do, otherwise we go out of the farming biz, sell the farm and get jobs as Wal-Mart greeters or fast food "cooks". Okay it probably would not be that bad). Now all that said, the winter CSA and it's huge shares will not shut down the farm. But if I were to continue to do this for into the spring summer and fall we could end up in financial difficulty.
I have learned in the 15 years of selling what we grow is underpricing one's harvest is a sure fire way to put yourself out of business (as can overpricing. Setting prices is an art and a science)
I realized this week that I made an error in planning this CSA. Past CSA's have been weekly affairs and I have created shares and charged accordingly. But this winter CSA is bi-monthly which means the shares should be twice as big as what I am used to putting together (though the shares for the first week are close to a 2 week share) and I should have charged the members twice as much as I did. So what is likely to happen is I am going to dole out big shares (except in January when I expect winter to come in and shut the fresh greens growing down for several weeks) and the members are going to be very happy and I am going to rip off the farm by selling food at too huge a discount. This is what I get for throwing the CSA together so quickly-I did not think out all the minute details. Ah, c'est la vie.
This is not all bad. We are getting additional income from the CSA that we would not have gotten otherwise and low cost with lots of food should make all the members happy campers and thus loyal customers and repeat CSA members. And this is making me think hard about the details of a main season CSA
So what did the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm CSA members get this week?
They got:
2 pints of strawberries
3 leeks
4 peppers
1/2 pound baby heirloom lettuces
1 pound Napa cabbage
1 small bag of either tarragon, thyme or dill
3 heads of heirloom garlic
1 bunch Easter egg radish
1 charantais melon
1 pound turnip greens
2 pound keiffer pears
2 pound Dr Matthews apples
1 pound yellow onions
Which is worth $45 if I were to sell the stuff at the store or farmer's market. Great deal for the CSA members but not a great deal for Boulder Belt Eco-Farm if Boulder Belt Eco-Farm wants to be economically sustainable (and we do, otherwise we go out of the farming biz, sell the farm and get jobs as Wal-Mart greeters or fast food "cooks". Okay it probably would not be that bad). Now all that said, the winter CSA and it's huge shares will not shut down the farm. But if I were to continue to do this for into the spring summer and fall we could end up in financial difficulty.
I have learned in the 15 years of selling what we grow is underpricing one's harvest is a sure fire way to put yourself out of business (as can overpricing. Setting prices is an art and a science)
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm Dogs
Every now and again a farm blog needs to post pictures of the farm dogs and here is that post for Boulder belt Eco-Farm. I give you Nate, Arlo and Danny, our farm dogs
Arlo and Danny looking busy by the chicken tractors
Danny by some ornamental grasses (that he has most likely just pissed upon)
Nate and Danny looking out the back door
Nate is helping Eugene hunt for voles along the edge of a hoop house. Actually Eugene is ripping up the edge of a hoop house in order to move it off one crop and to another and Nate knows that there have been voles hiding in the plastic just waiting for him to catch and eat them.
Arlo and Nate with the Buddha
This is a fake dog we found in the barn when we moved here. For 3 years he stood guard over the asparagus and was real looking enough to fool the deer and kept them from eating the spears. Sadly the stuffed dog, after 3 years out in the weather rotted away.
Arlo in the spring sun
Nate in warmth of an Indian summer evening.
Arlo and Danny looking busy by the chicken tractors
Danny by some ornamental grasses (that he has most likely just pissed upon)
Nate and Danny looking out the back door
Nate is helping Eugene hunt for voles along the edge of a hoop house. Actually Eugene is ripping up the edge of a hoop house in order to move it off one crop and to another and Nate knows that there have been voles hiding in the plastic just waiting for him to catch and eat them.
Arlo and Nate with the Buddha
This is a fake dog we found in the barn when we moved here. For 3 years he stood guard over the asparagus and was real looking enough to fool the deer and kept them from eating the spears. Sadly the stuffed dog, after 3 years out in the weather rotted away.
Arlo in the spring sun
Nate in warmth of an Indian summer evening.Sunday, November 02, 2008
Boulder Belt on Facebook
Are you on Facebook?
Are you a fan of Boulder Belt (either this blog, the farm or both)?
Than join the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm group on Facebook
Are you a fan of Boulder Belt (either this blog, the farm or both)?
Than join the Boulder Belt Eco-Farm group on Facebook
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Garlic Time
A Picture of the garlic cloves at about the half way point. When I was all done I had broken apart around 30 pounds of garlicMonday and Tuesday were taken up with garlic activities.
Monday we spent all day (8am to 6:30pm) prepping garlic for planting and than planting around 2000 cloves. prepping means collecting the nicest bulbs we have and than breaking the bulbs down to the cloves. this is what I did Sunday from 8 am until around 3pm. Tedious work that has, in the past, made my left hand very sore and swollen (but not this year for some reason). After breaking up garlic bulbs so I have 3000 cloves more or less (more really since about 1/3 of the cloves in most of the bulbs do not make the cut for seed garlic due to size and/or quality) I count them to make sure we have enough (and for two of the 3 types I did not have nearly enough and had to go hunting for garlic bulbs that were big enough to yield suitable cloves for planting and spend another hour or so breaking them up).
While I was working with the garlic Eugene was up in the garden putting a hoop house back together. The plastic came off in some unexpected high winds that came through Saturday night. than he helped prep garlic for a couple of hours than went back to the garden to do final preparations on the 6 beds slated for garlic production, taking thousands of cloves with him. By the time I got up to the garden he had the German White just about laid out (I wish I had brought the camera with me to get a photo of this). I helped him finish laying out the cloves and than repositioning them (another tedious task, but if this is not done in an anal retentive, OCD way we pay big time in the spring and summer because things are not growing exactly where we need them to be growing) So after 45 minutes of repositioning the cloves and adding a bunch more to the 2 beds I started putting the cloves into the soil.
By this time the sun was sinking low in the sky but was not yet really setting. the air was brisk but the soil still had summer warmth. I sat down (this saves the back big time)and started poking cloves into the soil with the root end always pointing downward. We always plant 3 rows per bed with the cloves set 4" inches apart. I worked on the middle and one of the outer rows working my way north. While I planted the German White Eugene laid out 2 beds of Chesnok Red (AKA Shvlisi). By the time I finished the germ white Eugene was poking the Chesnok Red into the soil. I wandered over to those beds and got to work poking garlic cloves (root end down) into the soil and as the sun started setting we finished up 2/3 of the 2008/09 garlic planting.
Tuesday Eugene finished up the last 1000 cloves including the two new types we have-Purple Glazer and Music. So We have around 3000 cloves planted that should grow into around 3000 garlic plants that will be harvested in early to mid July 2009.
I traded tomato seeds with my virtual friend Natalie Foster (AKA The Garlic Lady) for garlic and she sent a lot more than I expected. I got a box with 4 bulbs each of two kinds of garlic. It will be nice to have two additional garlic types after growing the geopolitical trinity of German White (Germany), Chesnok Red (Georgia) and Persian Star (Iran).
While Eugene finished planting, I started the process of drying garlic for our famous and powerful Progressive Garlic Powder. First I had to clean up tarragon and cinnamon basil with which I had filled the two Excalibur dehydrators. That took about an hour. After that was done I was ready to load garlic into the dehydrators. I started with all the cloves that did not make the seed garlic cut plus any extra garlic cloves that were big enough to be seed but we did not need. I put those cloves on dehydrator trays. In the past, I would have filled up all the dehydrators I had (a small Excalibur plus 3 other cheaper models) and still had more garlic to do. This year, because I bought the biggest dehydrator Excalibur sells, I had enough room in the one big dehydrator for almost all the garlic. But all the garlic are not just the rejects from planting. I also use any deformed, damaged or small bulbs that are in the sales baskets. This meant I had to collect more garlic bulbs and break those apart so they would be ready for the dehydrator. Now the garlic just has to dry out for about a week and than it will be ready to be processed into garlic powder. And than we will have garlic powder again and that makes me excited.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Boulder Belt CSA Lives
So I did something I did not think I would do again for a long time if ever. I started up the CSA again. The market season ends for us in less than 2 weeks and the store has been dead for the past month and it is not looking like there will be carloads of people flocking to the store to buy fresh and local produce in November so I got a bit desperate the other morning thinking about how we have quite a bit of stuff planted for fall winter sales along with long storage items like garlic, onions, potatoes, etc., and no real market for it all.
So I thought why not see if I can get any interest in a short winter CSA so I sent out an email to everyone on the official boulder belt email list and within an hour had 5 seriously interested people and within 4 hours 4 of the five had committed (and I believe the 5th potential member is a go as well).
The ressurection of the CSA upset Eugene for a while but he seems on board with it. He's worried that we won't have enough food and if we were going the entire winter instead of November through mid January I would agree. But a 6 week CSA should be no problem for us. I also told him there would be no delivery so none of us have to drive food anywhere. The members will come here and pick up their food. And hopefully the members will take advantage of being physically on a farm and walk around and see the sights.
My ressurecting the CSA with a short winter affair now has the two of us thinking about doing the CSA pretty much year round and replacing the Tuesday market with the CSA. If we can get 10 members at $25 a week we will be making more than what we averaged this season at the Tuesday market. And we won't have to pack up stuff in the van, drive 30 minutes to Oxford and unpack it. Set up our farmers market stand, sell food in all weather, repack the stuff, load it back in the van, drive home and unload before we can relax at 9pm or so. If we can sign up more members, even better. But with the "you have to drive out here to get the food" condition I don't really expect to get more than 10 to 20 members for the summer season.
I really got burned out on doing the CSA and killed ours about a year ago (or was it two?). The CSA had become a delivery service and was not doing what I wanted it to do, which is to connect eaters with the farm. If we deliver the food and the CSA members never come out to the farm how can they connect? It got so bad over the years that we did not even know all our members. They would sign up through the web via our Local harvest Store and come by the drop point and get their food. yes we got our money and they got their food but the whole idea about connection simply was not there. Nor was their any community in our CSA (CSA BTW, stands for community supported agriculture). So after 10 years I decided it was time to not do CSA.
So Boulder Belt was no longer a CSA and we were pretty damned happy about the decision. And now I have ressurected the thing but with a deep change. We will not deliver food shares to our members (as has been mentioned several times in this post). They have to come to the farm to pick up their shares and it is my hope when they do they will become engaged in the farm and therefore much, much more engaged in their food and start paying attention to the state of agriculture as a whole. The fact the members have to pick up their shares here on the farm also means no longer will we have mystery members and thus community will be far better served.
So I thought why not see if I can get any interest in a short winter CSA so I sent out an email to everyone on the official boulder belt email list and within an hour had 5 seriously interested people and within 4 hours 4 of the five had committed (and I believe the 5th potential member is a go as well).
The ressurection of the CSA upset Eugene for a while but he seems on board with it. He's worried that we won't have enough food and if we were going the entire winter instead of November through mid January I would agree. But a 6 week CSA should be no problem for us. I also told him there would be no delivery so none of us have to drive food anywhere. The members will come here and pick up their food. And hopefully the members will take advantage of being physically on a farm and walk around and see the sights.
My ressurecting the CSA with a short winter affair now has the two of us thinking about doing the CSA pretty much year round and replacing the Tuesday market with the CSA. If we can get 10 members at $25 a week we will be making more than what we averaged this season at the Tuesday market. And we won't have to pack up stuff in the van, drive 30 minutes to Oxford and unpack it. Set up our farmers market stand, sell food in all weather, repack the stuff, load it back in the van, drive home and unload before we can relax at 9pm or so. If we can sign up more members, even better. But with the "you have to drive out here to get the food" condition I don't really expect to get more than 10 to 20 members for the summer season.
I really got burned out on doing the CSA and killed ours about a year ago (or was it two?). The CSA had become a delivery service and was not doing what I wanted it to do, which is to connect eaters with the farm. If we deliver the food and the CSA members never come out to the farm how can they connect? It got so bad over the years that we did not even know all our members. They would sign up through the web via our Local harvest Store and come by the drop point and get their food. yes we got our money and they got their food but the whole idea about connection simply was not there. Nor was their any community in our CSA (CSA BTW, stands for community supported agriculture). So after 10 years I decided it was time to not do CSA.
So Boulder Belt was no longer a CSA and we were pretty damned happy about the decision. And now I have ressurected the thing but with a deep change. We will not deliver food shares to our members (as has been mentioned several times in this post). They have to come to the farm to pick up their shares and it is my hope when they do they will become engaged in the farm and therefore much, much more engaged in their food and start paying attention to the state of agriculture as a whole. The fact the members have to pick up their shares here on the farm also means no longer will we have mystery members and thus community will be far better served.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Things That Happened in the Past Week or So
The dogs all got baths this past week. Here is Danny all wet and unhappy (he hates the idea of wetness). After his bath he felt much better.
We invited Jules and Rosie out for dinner and pear wine making as we have for the past 5 or so years. here we have (from left to right) Rosie, Jules and Eugene busily cutting up pears.
The pot of pears that we planned on making into wine. but so far this has not happened. the pears were heated (it turns out too much) and than cooled and than wine yeast was pitched (added) but so far after 3 or 4 days nothing has happened. The yeast was old (expired 2 years ago but usually yeast vacuumed packed last many years beyond expiration dates) and so far has not worked. because of that we went to Dayton yesterday and bought fresh wine yeast at Belmont Party Supply on Smithville Rd (if you brew beer/wine or just like drinking great beers go there they have all the brewing wine making supplies one could ever want (or they can order them) and they have one of the best beer selections I have ever seen). While there we picked the owner's brain for ways to deal with this potential wine disaster and he gave us lots of ideas and sold us stuff we may or may not need for the wine. So plan B is to reheat the pears, cool them again and pitch the new yeast and see what happens. It may be we start over with new pears and instead of using whole pears put the fruit into the cider press and use the juice (which would take a lot less time, actually). One way or another we will have a 2008 pear wine vintage.
We went to the farmers market. And here is a rare picture of me at the West's stand across the way from our stand at the Saturday market. We have 2 more weeks of Tuesday and Saturday markets and than we are done with regular markets for 2008. that said we are not done with harvesting and selling food. If you need our food check out our farm store page for instructions on how to get our food when there are no longer 2 markets a week in Oxford and our farm store is not holding regular hours
Monday, October 13, 2008
Cleaning Red Turnips
People often comment on how beautiful our produce is but it did not start out that way. What you see at the farmers market or on the sales floor of our store is the result of many hours of wet muddy work on my part (Eugene does some post harvest/cleaning of produce but I do most of it-like 85%). The produce generally comes in muddy.
Some things, like these red turnips are dirtier than other things like tomatoes or peppers which hardly ever need washing
I had 6 crates of red turnips to clean and what you see here is a crate of turnips yet to be cleaned up, a compost crate over stuffed with turnip greens that were not usable and next to the pears in the corner turnip greens that were sellable being put aside to be cleaned after the turnips got washed.
Some turnips that have had their greens removed and have been tossed in the wash water.
The wash tub late had about 10x as many roots as are shown in this photo.
The finished product. A crate of beautiful, clean turnips ready to go in the fridge for storage so we can sell them for several weeks. They will store beautifully in the fridge for about 3 to 4 months but we will likely sell them out well before that.
Some things, like these red turnips are dirtier than other things like tomatoes or peppers which hardly ever need washing
I had 6 crates of red turnips to clean and what you see here is a crate of turnips yet to be cleaned up, a compost crate over stuffed with turnip greens that were not usable and next to the pears in the corner turnip greens that were sellable being put aside to be cleaned after the turnips got washed.
Some turnips that have had their greens removed and have been tossed in the wash water.The wash tub late had about 10x as many roots as are shown in this photo.
The finished product. A crate of beautiful, clean turnips ready to go in the fridge for storage so we can sell them for several weeks. They will store beautifully in the fridge for about 3 to 4 months but we will likely sell them out well before that.
39 items
I was just updating the Boulder Belt website's farm store page and noticed we are offering 39 different items at the store and farmers markets. Not bad considering we are winding down for the year
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