_loonatics_

Tomato Identification

2008-08-05T01:18:19Z

We always add a few new tomato varieties each year to trial and see if they make the cut. I love growing new varieties of crops to see how they compare to our favorite stand-bys, but I am especially curious about rare and heirloom varieties that I've never seen before (other than the catalogs). I have a dream of growing hundreds of heirloom tomato varieties and devoting my whole summer to observing, tasting, and taking photos of each variety. It would fit hand in glove with our own farm restaurant (what foodie doesn't have this dream?). But then I wouldn't be able to be a CSA farmer (except maybe for a gourmand heirloom tomato CSA--don't want to go there really) and ultimately I'd probably get bored with just tomatoes.

I took some pictures of some tomatoes that are just starting to come in to introduce them by name and variety to our CSA members. We have too many to talk about in our CSA newsletter (that is precious writerly real estate afterall), so a brief rundown below:

1st row (from left):
Brandywine. Quintessential tomato flavor. I think this is _the_ original tomato flavor that we are all after. It is meaty, gorgeous, Huge, and sets the bar for all other tomatoes that come after it.
Green Zebra, followed by Red Zebra and a more unripe Red Zebra. G.Zebra was popularized by Alice Waters, bless her heart. It has a tangy, but substantial flavor, and you can't beat the coloring: A deep yellow with streaks of green stripes. Red Zebra is new to us this year, and from the moment I saw it dangling in the vines, I loved it. Here's what Seed Savers says: "Gorgeous fire-engine red overlaid with golden yellow stripes. Top quality, extremely uniform strain, very productive. Great sweet flavor."
Italian Saladette (Juliet, I believe). This is a hybrid, but I am sold on the Saladettes after spending so much time at Gardens of Eagan. They are like a roma, but also a great fresh eating tomato, perhaps for salads? With the bonus of disease resistance and high-yields. My one observation is that there could be more leaf cover at times--a few Juliets have already suffered from sunscald.

2nd row (from left):
Nyagous (2 next to eachother). I started calling this a black roma at market and it kindof stuck, even though some fruits are larger than a roma. They have a beautiful duskiness to their sheen that distinguishes them from the other black tomatoes we grow. I can't tell apart a Black Krim from a Black from Tula, but I always know a Nyagous. That's helpful when sorting them at market. Awesome flavor.

Currant (Gold Rush-Orange, Matt's Wild- Red). Itty bitty tomatoes that we usually snip off the whole truss once they are all ripe. Picking each of these babies by hand would equal $10/pint, but we did throw in a couple of the loose ones in CSA pints. Matt's Wild Cherry might have the biggest tomato flavor in such a little bite, and they are constantly neck in neck with Sungold sales at farmers markets. More about the unbeatable Sungolds later....

San Marzano Paste (4 next to eachother). High solid content which makes it great for cooking. An Italian variety, an heirloom I believe. First year of growing this--we've never grown a true paste tomato, but I've heard good things about San Marzano. They are beautiful--I do love the shape of the traditional Italian paste tomatoes. The taste test will come once we make a fresh tomato sauce with them.

3rd row (from left):
Washington Cherry. These are big red cherry tomatoes. So big that I barely consider them cherries. I like my cherry tomatoesa little smaller, however these have nice flavor and hold really well on or off the vine. Plants don't stake well, and they are the only tomatoes that are showing signs of blight. I won't grow these again--there are better red cherries, but that doesn't stop me from eating copious amounts of them.

Sungold. If I could only eat one tomato, Sungold would be it. They have nearly perfect flavor--very fruity, very sweet, literally they taste like a sunny summer day. They are the crack of the tomato world (in more ways than one, Ha!) and drive customers to do things they would never want to admit to doing over a few handfuls of orange tomatoes. BUT with good reason. These are fresh market treats only. They are prone to cracking and bursting with mere drops of rain and the cracking precludes any ability to ship cross country. This is always the best kind of produce no? Well, not always, even for us fresh market growers. The cracking drives a picker insane, especially towards the end of last season when it started to rain non-stop in mid-August. We would pick pints and pints of sungolds only to find that half of them cracked in the pints within a 1/2 day of being picked. Then the fruit flies would descend unto the cracked fruit. These will go in the hoophouse next year to control water flow.

Cherokee Purple OR Black Krim (below Sungolds). I forgot to keep track while I was picking, and I can never tell these black tomatoes apart. It hardly matters because they both taste so damn good. Seedsavers states that Cherokee is their favorite purple tomato (it is more a rosey color) that rivals Brandywine's flavor. I agree. It can be smoky sometimes. That goes for Black Krim too. I used to maintain that Black Krim was my favorite heirloom--now I cannot say that with certainty since I can't really tell Cherokee, Black Krim, or Black from Tula apart. They are both equally delicious I guess. More research needed here.

Eva Purple Ball (far right, last row). These are a purty deep rose color that are supposed to have a fine white mottling. It's our first time growing these. Recommended by Carolyn Male's 100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden. Carolyn stated that "there are no obvious faults with this outstanding variety....Taste is...sweet, luscious, and quite juicy." Very good yield, disease resistance, despite variable weather. "Originally brought from the Black Forest region of Germany in the late 1800s." I have yet to taste these since we want to have enough to give away to members tomorrow, but I'm sure we will not be disappointed.

We have even more tomatoes, however these are just the ones that have started to ripen up first. Profiles will be forthcoming on the Yellow Riesentraube, German Pink, Green Grape, among others.

Guess what??

2008-07-15T02:46:24Z

In June Adam and I BOUGHT OUR OWN 40-ACRE FARM!!! Yes, it's true. After searching diligently over the past year, we finally found a farm that is a perfect fit for us. Although we were looking for a property in our current location (and a little bit south of us where land is a bit more affordable), we saw the listing for our farm (still not used to writing "our farm") which is near Hutchinson, MN (around 70 miles west of Minneapolis). We are so happy and overjoyed to have finally found something--the farm is already certified organic and has been operating a vegetable CSA in the local area. We will not close on the property and move until the end of the season, and then we plan on expanding and being full-time farmers finally! We have many plans, but season extension is high on our priority list and we will be putting up a hoophouse or two over the next couple years, hopefully extending our farming season into 9 months of the calendar year. Being able to grow more healthy, local food for a longer season and also serve some of the economically disadvantaged population with fresh produce are among two of our top goals. Of course, shoftly after we move to the new farm, I will atttend Terra Madre and leave Adam to tie up loose ends and plant garlic at the new Loon Farm. I think Terra Madre will be an inspiring place to be right before we begin a new phase in our farming career. I imagine that I'll be able to gather many great ideas from other small-scale farmers from all over the world and that I'll also be reminded of our solidarity with the community of farmers all over the world. A great thing to keep in mind if you are feeling isolated on the farm. In the meantime, we are trying to keep everything up here and enjoy the rest of our time here at this beautiful farm. It seems even more beautiful now--probably because we are taking more time to notice it. It helps that we are not having a killer, windy drought like last year at this time too! As always, we'll keep you posted and chronicle our many joys and trials in the future months and years ahead.

Next season, we shouldn't have many worries about space constraints, but in the meantime, we are still here farming our few acres and figuring out how to grow more on less. In our effort to grow more in a smaller amount of space, we are experimenting with pole beans and peas. That means that a lot of trellising--we already trellis our tomatoes and added pole beans and pole peas which adds up to a whole lot of T-posts springing up around the field. Along with our electric fence, we have something like 200-300 stainless steel T-posts. That's a lot of steel, but so far it seems that at least one planting of pole peas have done better in yields and health than previous years' plantings. We will see about the beans. We just had our first stellar harvest of bush green beans--I think we picked 200 pounds in a 200 foot row and another heavy set of beans is ready to be picked for tomorrow's CSA. It will be hard for the pole beans to beat that. The first pick of beans was beautiful with no trace of rust--that is, until it rained bucketloads on Thursday afternoon and Friday night. There was a moment on Thursday that we thought a tornado was forming above the farm. Luckily it didn't and we got just little pellets of hail for a minute or two. We were holding our breath there though, especially once we heard there was a tornado about 5 miles east of Farmington. I can't wait until we qualify for better crop insurance. Until then, we will be little stress balls everytime the dark and stormy clouds approach.
Two types of trellising the pole beans are below. Purple beans are crawling up steel hog panels tied to T-posts every 10 feet or so. 2nd photo is the traditional stringing from the top wire down to the bottom wire and the beans crawl up and up. Panels were easier but more expensive, although they might be easier to pick beans from.

June in photos

2008-07-06T03:15:09Z

Wow, how did it get to be July already? We just went to our 4th farmers market of the year this morning, we are about to begin week 4 of the CSA, and week 5 of wholesaling to a our local food co-op and Spoonriver Restaurant. After feeling that crops were behind about two weeks, all of sudden things seem to be catching up with more of the "hard" vegetables coming in: carrots, beets, zucchini, cucumbers and peas. Green beans in next week. We had a gorgeous crop of fennel mature into large, flawless bulbs and the pure aesthetically pleasing quality of beautiful, perfect fennel plants definitely makes it one of my favorite things to grow. Check it out after we harvested it yesterday and washed and packed it:

Our first farmers market displa (mostly lettuce!)

Salad Mix at market:

I was also terribly excited to find out a couple weeks ago that I was accepted to be a delegate to Terra Madre, Slow Food International's World Meeting of Food Communities happening this October in Turin (Torino) Italy! I will be a delegate to represent our local food community--the Cannon River-Hiawatha Valley Chapter of the MN Sustainable Farming Association. This was completely and utterly unexpected to me--to be accepted, that is. I applied, along with atinagoe, and another organic hay farmer and nutritionist that lives nearby to represent our food community and we got an acceptance e-mail two months later out of the blue! Terra Madre is a gathering of farmers, chefs, students, and educators to work towards traditional, small-scale, and sustainable farming techniques. 1/4 of all 7,000 delegates will be youth under 30. Yahoo! 151 countries represented--a cultural anthropologist's dream. And bring on the food by golly. this country bumpkin is ready to eat gelato. It should be a truly meaningful and inspirational event. Rest assured, I'll be taking many many photos throughout my trip and ready to share them with you all here. I can't wait.

Green garlic and garlic scapes flew off our farmers market table this year thanks to a New York Times article: A Garlic Festival Without a Single Clove Sales of our garlic scapes and green garlic soared with hundreds of people requsting this previously unknown and highly seasonal item by name with recipes in hand. God it was great. Teh article and the newfound knowledge that people had! It really is amazing to see the power of the media in action. Maybe they could highlight the beauties of the turnip next, or perhaps a little-known but awesome leafy green: kale?

Scapes in our field:

summery showers

2008-05-25T04:46:01Z

The first summery thunderstorm just started about 10 minutes ago, and it is an absolutely gorgeous sound that follows an absolutely gorgeous day. It was pure pleasure to work outside today--hoeing, doing a bit of irrigation, planting our 3rd bed of salad mix, transplanting and seeding various flowers until dusk, and then the big storm clouds gathered in the West and slowly moved in at sunset. The rain came just in time to help all these little seeds and plants along.  Growth should really take off after this!

This week was my first back on the farm as a full-time farmer, and man oh man it felt great.  Even in the tasks I usually find loathsome--such as hand hoeing for hours--I still had this underlying feeling of elation and ecstasy? A calm ecstasy. Maybe it was the unbearably long winter, the increased Vitamin D from the sun, the thought of eating so much of our own fresh food--all of those things, plus the fabulous aesthetics this time of year. The flowering trees with buds on the verge of popping, and then weighing down their brances with thousands of fragrant blooms.  singing birds and humming frogs. Tall, verdant grass and baby cows lying by their mamas in the pasture.   I've seen at least 4 or 5 rainbows in the past 2 months and can go barefoot without freezing to death. The mosquitos aren't out yet either. Heaven!These things barely seem possible in February.

Plants are still behind--way behind in some circumstances, considering that we've had peas in the ground since late April and they are barely a foot high (on their way to 5 feet). But the push of heat and water can really speed things up, especially this time of year when days are so long and glorious.  The rain is certainly welcome, but I must say that I always have the window open a crack listening intently for the ping ping of the hail.  I think every thunderstorm we have once crops are planted triggers an unconscious awareness of the possibility of hail--it's happened ever since the godawful hail storm four years ago, which actually didn't turn out to be so godawful, except for our greens and lettuce. We had a fabulous crop of tomatoes that year!  Definitely looking forward to the tomatoes...

Cue the Electric Light Orchestra

2008-05-08T02:52:49Z

The electric tractor is a reality! I planted with it last Wednesday, and it is quite unbelievable to ride a silent tractor. You can hear the gears on the tractor moving--sounds that we had never heard before. Kudos to adam.

Here he is taking out for its first run:
To see a short video of me planting (longer, better, more informational video to follow--as soon as we catch up with our field planting and transplanting!): http://picasaweb.google.com/loonorganics/ElectricTractor/photo#5195472484800341026

As I mentioned above, it has been a late Spring. Especially in comparison to the last couple years when we've already had our early Spring peas, spinach, lettuce, onions germinated in the field and growing. Things are just starting to poke out of the ground and they were planted weeks ago. It is frustrating and so hard to wait!! We just want to get a move on. All in good time though. We've transplanted over 3,000 onions, and have got thousands of leeks to get in too. Strawberry plants as well.

Rant

2008-03-03T04:59:40Z

This N.Y. Times article was e-mailed to me by one of our CSA members, written by Jack Hedin from Featherstone Farms in Rushford, MN. He details a little-known aspect of the farm bill that prohibits and penalizes farmers receiving commodity subsidies from growing fruits and vegetables on subsidized farmland! I had no idea. Read this, get mad, and call your Senator/Reps.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?ex=1205125200&en=9e667ebba91a7259&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Farm Bill is still being worked on in the Ag. committee--If you live in MN, IA, MT, ND, or MI, call your Senator on the committee.

This article brought to mind something I've been ruminating on lately--the expectation of drastic price differences between local food and food shipped in from thousands of miles away. I hear the question bantied around at our farmer's markets and at retail produce establishments, "Why isn't local food always less expensive than stuff from California, Florida, Mexico?" The obvious implication being that there is less gas involved with the transport of goods. Sometimes local produce is less expensive (certainly less expensive than the prices we often see at this time of year). But I've realized the economics are dictated by much more than fuel costs and PLUS the big produce states are substantial lobbyists (even more so than I thought after reading Jack's article)!  It's really not a fair system, but back to the economics game.

At our local co-op, the price of faraway organic produce skyrockets this time of year and quality can be sketchy. Unfortunately, we have very little options for local produce in February and March. Believe me, there are a lot of local farmers figuring out how to extend the season through hoophouses, root cellars, and cold storage and their efforts will show up soon in the co-op aisles. In the meantime, when local farmers go to sell their produce in season, the California (I'm just gonna use California as the prime example--but it is not relegated to that state per se) produce prices are slashed, not just to competitive prices, but so low to the point of undercutting local producers below our cost of production. The CA vegetable producers run huge acerages, are extremely mechanized, and have year- round operations with a highly skilled, highly underpaid immigrant workforce that will travel as the farm operations move down California into Arizona and Mexico as the winter progresses. I would say that the sustainability of these operations is suspect, on a lot of levels. Growing lettuce in an Arizona desert with migrant labor?  The sheer mechanization of these operations also cuts costs--if you can wash and bag 100,000 pounds of salad mix a day, how can we compete (price-wise) with our 50 pounds (at most)?  We can't. But we can compete on quality, taste, freshness, better labor conditions, sustainability, likeability, and consciousness. I'm sure there are even more lopsided explanations as well--but these are the big ones to me. Anyhow, all the more reason that I'm participating in the Winter Eat Local Challenge for a week starting tomorrow! The challenge is to eat 50% of your diet from local sources (plenty easy just with dairy, meat, and grain products). We'll be cracking into our last stores of frozen peppers, canned soup, pickled beets to hopefully make it WAY above 50%. Even in Minnesota in a snow-covered March.

_loonatics_ @ 2008-02-24T19:08:00

2008-02-25T01:48:11Z

Just got back from the MOSES Organic Farming Conference and my mind is full to the brim with new ideas and thoughts from classes, conversations, keynotes, overheard bits and pieces, and prime reading materials. As always, it was a great conference and my bag is busting at the seams with papers, books, and scribbled notes busting out of my bag. I also come away really tired. How many people can you talk to and how much information can you absorb in 2 days?

Some interesting and random tidbits I found fascinating. The Allelopathic nature of certain plants. Allelopathic plants have naturally occuring compounds that will suppress competing plant populations, and may also suppress nematodes and soil pathogens. I knew about this with rye, but there are a whole host of other plants that can be used for cover cropping or living mulches that will also do this. Certain varieties of oats, rye, and turnip-rape were found to have suppressed purslane emergence up to 100% (a noxious weed for us), along with a handful of other broadleafs. There are also weeds and vegetable crops that have allelopathic properties. The downside to allelopathic plants is that they may suppress or stunt the growth of the following cash crop. I bought the book Managing Cover Crops Profitably to satisfy my want for more information, but the presenter also stressed that allelopathy is still much of a mystery. Something like 2,300 papers have been written on allelopathy. It is a fascinating reminder to me that these plant processes still are and always will be mysterious to some degree--we humans cannot dominate and understand everything! There is still mystery in nature and therefore we have a bit of art served up with our science.

Atina gave an awesome, practical presentation on how to grow Brassica plants (many brassicas are allelopathic) from seed to harvest. The room was packed.

I also liked a roundtable discussion on small-scale equipment for market growers. It was interesting to hear about some innovative machinery for small-scale operations. A bulb transplanter from Japan that plants an onion plug in .2 seconds (that was 2/10 of a second)! You only need one person to operate the implement by pulling it--no person is needed to handle the transplants. There are only 3 in the U.S., although John Hendrickson, the presenter, is going to start importing them I believe. They are relatively inexpensive, especially when coupled with the time one saves from hand planting!!! In a couple weeks, I'll be heading into the greenhouse to start those onion seedlings.

Blasting through February

2008-02-11T22:48:36Z

Up to a few weeks ago, I was doing quite well in appreciating one of the most underappreciated seasons of the year. Then the frigid temps descended, 45 below windchills, gray skies, week after week, and the looming month of February gave way to the winter blahs. I felt like every time I opened my mouth all that came out was BLAH. Winter fatigue. It is bound to happen and it happens to us every year, but as soon as you think you can't stand it anymore and thoughts of warm summer breezes, t-shirts, and sweaty watermelon eating torment you as you scrape the ice off your car with a plastic tape case (i lose my real ice scraper every winter), THEN you get to go to a kick-ass farming conference and be surrounded by _thousands_ of like-minded folks. Talk about a breath of fresh air. MOSES Organic Farming Conference comes up in a week and a half or so, jam packed with so many cool seminars that our new dilemma in life is deciding between them all. Every year when we return from Moses we are renewed with inspiration, invigoration, and are ready to get to it. Plus, by then February will be almost over and greenhouse season looms, days grow even longer, and I can look forward to the possibility of peeling off my long underwear.

Our CSA is sold out though. Already got a waiting list for 2009 (!). I'm looking forward to the day when we don't have to turn people away--or at least not so many of them and to be able to delegate some of our CSA share boxes to go to the local food shelf. That definitely gets me excited. I'm just about to start David Masumoto's book, Epitaph of a Peach. Heard the story is fabulous and the writing even better. He chronicles a year raising his Sun Crest peaches in California--Sun Crest is an old peach variety that was left by the wayside for "better" peaches with brilliant color and weeks of shelf life. Bulldozers were about to come and demolish the last of Masumoto's trees when he stopped them and decided to try to market the fruit for one more year. Should be a doozy of a book and I'm sure I will be driven to consume the rest of the summer peaches still hanging out in our freezer. I'll keep ya'll posted.

winter projects

2008-01-09T17:28:29Z

We just placed our seed order (this is a record-setting earliness for us!) and we were excited to cross that project off our list of to-dos. Adam has an ongoing project with our little Hefty G tractor (s(seen above). It is kindof a funny looking tractor, very boxy--we got a great price on it last spring and we used it sparingly to plant with our Planet Jr. seeders. (the orange seeder can be seen belly mounted under tractor.) The original engine for this tractor is the smelliest, noisiest thing ever which dramatically decreased our use of the tractor. So. Last fall we removed the old engine and Adam is in the process of outfitting it with a new Electric engine that will run on four 12 volt batteries. A clean, completely noiseless tractor! Sounds like an oxymoron to me, (no ear plugs necessary??) but I hope to see the unbelievable become a reality this Spring. I profess to limited knowledge of mechanics, especially a project of this magnitude, however it is fascinating for me to learn a bit more about this conversion. We first got the idea here from Huguenot Street Farm. This farm got a SARE grant to convert their Allis G cultivating tractor to electric and they detail the steps on their website. The Hefty G is a similar tractor to the Allis G and Adam is hoping that our Hefty G might be even easier to convert than the Allis G which might be a great thing for like-minded small farmers that would like to get away from polluting and noisy gas engines. Hefty G's can also be priced thousands of dollars less than Allis Gs, since they are not as coveted among collectors and growers alike so converting a Hefty G could be more cost-effective than looking for an Allis to convert. At any rate, I'll be writing about our progress on the electric front in the next few months--more will of course be happening in later Spring as it becomes easier to work outside again.

Here's a photo of the (large!) gas engine, minutes before being taken off tractor--hopefully for good! Electric engine and batteries will sit here.

Happy Winter Solstice!

2007-12-22T18:39:53Z

Although daylight falls for just 8 1/2 hours on this part of the world today (sunrise: 7:47, sunset: 4:34), the minutes will imperceptibly begin increasing. For me, this is really when I think of the new year beginning, so yesterday we celebrated the passing of another successful and healthy year and the move into another cycle along with the Earth.  This past year was really a key building block for us, and the coming year brings another opportunity to improve, experiment, and explore crops, varieties, ways to improve efficiency, and as always, be better recordkeepers! Once July/August hits, our field notes trail off and we are left to our fuzzy memory of how each green bean variety compared to eachother. Beats me.

We have also started what feels like the official process of looking and getting financing for our own farm!  We are most concerned with the financing part, but we are looking to go through the FSA Farm Loan Programs for beginning farmers, and most importantly there is a local bank and lender willing to work with us and wade through all the paperwork. It is becoming a better time to buy--we are looking in about a 30-45 mile southern radius from our current location and prices are beginning to drop a bit.  The goose chase driving to look at properties has begun. We've got potential properties highlighted on our county maps, and mapped a backroad route to drive home for the holidays and check out four or five farms on the way.  We are in no hurry to buy something soon--we still want to do a full season here this summer, and ideally wouldn't want to move or buy anything until fall 2008.   But it is beginning to feel more like a reality and that is an incredibly exciting (and sometimes slightly terrifying) prospect.

Happy New Year to you and yours. Hope you all have a wonderful holiday.

_loonatics_ @ 2007-12-12T10:30:00

2007-12-12T17:12:52Z

For a seasonal off-the-farm job, my produce position at the co-op is great. I get to talk about produce and cooking, sample the latest and greatest seasonal citrus from California, and even peruse seed catalogs (at work!) for our store seed rack program. A week ago, on behalf of the co-op, I whipped up a presentation for jr. and sr. high students at a local charter school in Northfield. Feeling like a technological dinosaur, I embarked on my first power point experience and after an hour or two of grimaces and exploration I got the hang of it. Somehow, I'm old enough to have missed doing power points in high school and did a good job of avoiding them in college. I was pretty amazed at how easy it was.

Broadly my topic was teen nutrition: whole and natural foods, however it lingered into organic farming, talk about where our food comes from, and then onto junk food, fast food, processed foods and these food companies manipulation of and advertising towards children. I found this great article on Grist: By Amy Linn, The road to disodium inosinate is paved with good intentions. From Linn's article on Grist: "Engage (childrens) smarts and their natural sense of outrage -- about the disodium inosinate in those Doritos and the pesticide residue on that peach -- and they'll become allies in the food fight." So true. Nobody likes to be duped, especially by a corporation, and especially kids who hate to be patronized and manipulated as if they were little automatons, and I thought Linn's idea to appeal to children's outrage was such a great way to structure the argument for whole foods or at least make an argument against processed foods. The book Fast Food Nation was also indespensable. Re-reading exceprts from that book, I had forgotten what a fantastic expose that was. The movie (based on the book) came out a year ago or so, haven't seen that yet, but most of the children had. Anyhow, these kids were a well-educated food bunch, already knowing what whole foods were, so it made my job even easier. What I unanticipated was that I found myself being inspired by these kids and their breadth of knowledge about food--I didn't have half of their food consciousness as a teen, especially when i was a jr.high munchkin. It gave me hope that the generation that follows mine is not all cracked out on high-fuctose corn syrup and McCrap burgers. Or at least 100 of them aren't.

tasty recipes for the turkey day

2007-11-17T17:51:43Z

There is a nice collection of tasty recipes, recently featured in Thursday's Star Tribune, from local farmers. Atina's kale and stuffed squash recipes are staples in our house, throughout the year, and our beet salad is easy and beloved by many. Get the best, local blue cheese you can find, it is totall worth it. Article here.

it's that garlic time of year again

2007-11-07T16:09:49Z

Just in the nick of time, we got our garlic broken up, the beds worked, and the garlic planted. Three 200 foot beds at 5 rows per bed that alltogether contain thousands of garlic cloves. Planted mainly Chesnok Red and Porcelain hardneck varieties that hopefully are tolerating this blast of freezing temperatures. It was so windy the past 2 days that putting on our straw mulch would have been foolish and fruitless.

We have a love/hate relationship with our garlic--it is a highly labor intensive crop to plant, harvest, cure, and then clean. Many of these steps also fall during periods when you have a million other things tugging at your sleeve. However, the other side is that we love eating garlic, I think it is a health-promoting food, it is a necessary crop to include in the CSA boxes, and of course it all seems worth it once you have beautiful braids of cleaned, cured garlic. Plus, it is a marketable crop at many different stages of its life: green garlic, garlic scapes, un-cured fresh garlic, and then the cured, traditional garlic bulb. I say it is a marketable crop, but I can't say I think it is a profitable one. At least when you are doing everything by hand.

This is the Chesnok Red variety--voted number 1 in a taste test of baked garlic at the Rodale Institute.

_loonatics_ @ 2007-11-01T12:06:00

2007-11-01T17:26:41Z

Finished up our last market and promptly left on vacation the next day. As we had hoped, when we returned the fields had finally dried out. I feel that I have not felt or seen dry soil for months! Just in time as we need to get our garlic in and mulched. I think we will make it folks!

We headed to Northern California on our vacation to San Francisco where my sister, Sarah, lives. We camped at Harbin Hot Springs relaxing in the natural hot and cold springs there, then toured through some wineries, apple and pear orchards, camped in the Redwood forests, and over to Mendocino and down the coast. Fabulous sunny weather, chilly nights. It was harvest time there in the vineyards, apple and fruit orchards, and we ate some fantastic heirloom apples. Pinot Noir Grapes hanging on the vine at the Goldeneye Vineyard:

We tried some grapes off the vine--they were surprisingly sweet and had a thick skin. They had just finished harvesting this year's grapes the week before--a crew of 15 workers for 5 weeks picking all the grapes by hand. Over 300 acres I think. Here's another photo of the vineyard:
The wine was excellent.

We also attended theEmbarcadero Farmers Market. It is a pretty incredible farmers market--they had absolutely everything. So strange eating local satsuma mandarins and organic grapes. There was really too much, I wanted to take one of everything home with me. However, we were also scouting out their displays to get some ideas and inspiration. There were some impressive displays:

Mountainous piles of broccoli

Cascading Peppers (I really like this set-up--it looks like a lot of work to build though)....

In comparison, here's the display for r last market:

Not bad for an Oct. 20th market, however we want Spectacular and Bombastic next year.

come to our LAST market!!

2007-10-20T01:09:59Z

Couldn't really believe it today when I proceeded to harvest 1 and 3/4 bushels of sweet peppers of all sizes and kinds. The true winner is the Jimmy Nardello Sweet Italian Frying Pepper--a mouthload of a name, and an even tastier mouthloud after frying, sauteing, to put on your pizza, stuff, or even just gnaw on a couple in the field. Some of the plants still have many long green peppers--probably destined to stay green until we get a real frost. People at market assume these are a hot pepper, (they look so similar to a cayenne, I would hesitate to grow cayennes in case we might get them mixed up) and panic when their toddler kids reach up to the table and grab one. But, no they are one of the most delectable sweet peppers ever to exist. We have created many junkies for them this year. If you want to see if they really live up to the hype, come early, they'll be gone before the end o market. We also have some incredible, gynormous fennel, sweet and tender after being rejuvenated with 30 plus inches of rain. Guaranteed to make the supermarket fennel drool with envy.

Gardens of Eagan and The Wedge had exciting news a couple weeks back and if you read this blog, i'm guessing you peruse

atinagoe

If not, sorry for my delay in keeping you up to day, please check out Atina's blog and Wedge website, and we are overjoyed that this lovely farm will continue to be farmed and in great hands, hopefully feeding countless generations to come. No worries, we'll still be in our same spot here next year, just renting our farmland from The Wedge now.

for the birds

2007-10-09T03:23:28Z

On Friday, one of the most spectacular birding events I have witnessed this year, at least that I can remember. (My memory of the season seems to get fuzzy at this point in time—I can barely recall what happened in September! Good thing I have this journal to refresh me.) The farm served as the stomping grounds for thousands and thousands of birds on their journey south. In my limited but determinedly growing knowledge of birds (we are the loon farm after all) it was difficult to discern what kind of bird it was, but the calls were similar to red-winged blackbirds, and each one of them seemed to chatter, chirp, and trill as one continuous voice audible over ½ a mile away. The flock landed in the tops of the old oak trees next to our field, swinging the branches back and forth, and when they finally took off for another grove, they stretched in undulating waves across the sky, moving over our heads in a long train that lasted for minutes, like little small black commas floating against the bright blue sky and reminding me I am but a small, small creature in this world. Same sensation when I pass by the weeping willow bog and the loud barking of the Spring Peppers engulfs and surrounds one--the eternal rumblings of nature and I am always frozen with my mouth agape, humbled to be able to witness it. It was my most spiritual experience of the week, or probably longer, and the other end of the spectrum was a little voice in my head that was irrationally reminding me of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds--oh the horror.

Luckily we still have woods and trees in this area. I think about the miles and miles of dried cornfields throughout the Midwest, their own man-made sea of undulating monotony and what a pity for those birds that they have no place to stop and rest. And pity for the farmers that miss an experience such as this. The daily communion with the birds has to be one of the most understated, yet joyous perks of this job.

This week is last CSA pick-up--the temperatures have finally regulated back to normal-ish October. Thinking about this week's end of our CSA while it was 85 and humid was just plain confusing. Especially since the end of the season always creeps up and I always find myself wondering how it all flew by so fast--the birds taking summer with them again and again. Hope you too get a moment to commune with nature in these fleeting days between seasons.

_loonatics_ @ 2007-09-23T21:12:00

2007-09-24T02:14:01Z

Didn't quite have the frost that we thought we would get a week ago, so we've still been picking peppers and a few tomatoes. The basil and green beans were kaput-much to the delight of our workshares who had picked over a hundred pounds of beans the week before.

I'm back to work part-time tomorrow, off-farm. How did that happen so fast??

_loonatics_ @ 2007-09-13T21:31:00

2007-09-14T02:39:22Z

We're expecting frost early Saturday morning, just as we load up our van and go to market. I keep thinking that it's too early for this, but there are no rules and regulations concerning the weather--that is certainly one thing many a farmer has learned this year. Anyhow, we are trying to harvest as many tomatoes and peppers (thanks to em for the beeutiful photo of our peppers and heirlooms) then we'll do our regular market harvest on Friday, trying to pick a little extra too especially basil, green beans, and we've got to cut down our garlic and find a warmer spot. We of course want to save as much as possible so that we can at least give our CSA members one last taste of summer on Tuesday. Summer eye candy:

Taking our goods to market

2007-09-05T15:32:14Z

Market has been brisk and we barely have room enough to display everything on our table. A dreamed-of tour of farmers markets (and farms)of the U.S. (or even the world) to get ideas about taking our display to the next level-literally. We would like to have a 2-tiered set-up next year, or at least more height.

I am also in a flurry of canning and freezing. Mainly tomates. Sauce, soups, straight-up whole canned tomatoes. 20 pints of pickled beets were put away a couple weeks back and I have 10 lbs of green beans waiting to get into the freezer. Every spare moment is somewhat focused on getting those too-ripe Brandywine tomatoes sliced, diced, and into the freezer, canner, or saucepan. We'll start in on kale in a few weeks. Seriously considereing buying a larger stand-alone freezer--probably won't happen until next year.

We are doing a lot of talking about tomatoes at market, heirlooms especially. The mixture of heirloom cherries of all different colors, mixed in with sungolds fly off our Swiss Chard tablecloth. A

can't complain here

2007-08-27T01:55:29Z

It has been a heartbreaking week seeing and hearing about flooded farms in Southern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Gets you right in the gut, especially when it's good people and bountiful farms that you know. As a CSA farmer, I can't think of anything much worse than having a major disaster to end your season at its peak and tell your shareholders that there isn't much of anything for them. CSAs have gained a lot of popularity in recent years, but it is this type of situation when the true tenants of CSA come into play--yes, farmers have very important jobs, but it can be a huge gamble and we can't do it alone. There was a brief article in the Star Tribune today about CSA farms that were affected by the flood and how their members are handling the shortage or even an early ending to the season. It was great to hear CSA members voice their support. The article is online at Star Trib website: Floods' pain spreads from water-logged fields to cities

To read more about the farms affected, go to the Wedge co-op's site here. Donations are also being collected at local co-ops and at the Sow the Seeds Fund website.

Life on our little patch of farm seems pretty good lately, especially once you put things in perspective. Enjoying some warmer, sunnier weather that gives energy and helps the drying out process. We planted 1000 feet of fall spinach today, trying a couple new varieties, in addition to planting 3 new 250 ft. beds of salad mix and Adam finally able to get in the field and disc in many old crops. We'll start planting patches of cover crop in the next couple weeks. We've been short on the salad mix lately, what hadn't been eaten by deer had started to rot because of all the rain, but our next plantings are starting to come in, we put up a 2nd smaller electric fence around our salad mix beds, so the crop looks good. I'd love to have even more than we need for once! I don't think we've ever made it through a farmers market this year without selling it out.

Take care and count your blessings this week!

_loonatics_ @ 2007-08-19T10:52:00

2007-08-19T16:25:05Z

My my it's been a long time! The past few weeks have been chock-full of visitors, in the most busiest month of the farming year already. Maybe June is busier than August, but we have all that Spring adrenaline, the days are growing longer, and it seems easier to work from sunup to sundown. August brings some of the best food of the year, but we've struggled to find the enthusiasm and energy to maintain our usual enthusiasm and energy. Now in the last 2 weeks of August, we feel that we can see the end and although we are getting way too much rain now in maybe the most inopportune time of the growing season for us (where was all this moisture in May and June??) it is also a relief not to have to irrigate every day. Really wears a guy out. The rain and heavy winds last Saturday blew down 300 feet of our towering Brandywines, laying flat against the ground, but still all twined up in the least in the basket weave. Monday was a muddy, sweaty, humid day spent pounding in more stakes and leveraging our weight against the massive vines, bearing many 1-2 lb almost ripe fruits, to get them righted and tied back to the new posts. It is really amazing how quickly everything changed from a depressing dust to a deep muddiness and puddles. This is certainly the most extreme summer we have experienced in terms of weather with the wind, the heat, the drought, and the recent humidity, and now the extreme rain. Honestly, the weather chaos may have toughened us up a bit--I'm not sure we can be surprised anymore. I'm also banking on the fact that every year is different and we can at least hope for some normalcy at some point.

I'll catch up on the blogging more in the next few days--more photos are posted here at our web album.

a tease of rain

2007-07-25T13:38:01Z

Light pattering of rain for 30 minutes or so yesterday afternoon, didn't do much other than wet the dust. Adam was driving home from a CSA delivery on Cedar, directly east about 3/4 of a mile, and it was pouring so hard he could barely see. What he could see though was that the edge of the cloud ended just west of Cedar and we were missing it. So close yet not close enough!

Amazingly though, everything is starting to come in now and we are beginning to feel bountiful and gluttinous, swimming in cucumbers and zucchini. The peppers are loaded and are starting to turn from green to red, we have tiny beans that are 2 inches long, probably ready by Friday. Ate a huge handful of sungold cherry toms and ground cherrys yesterday and every night I dream about big, ripe red Brandywines and orange Nebraska Weddings (dontcha love that variety name?). The onions are big and tasty--they did really well this year. We've been enjoying the sweet tastes of sweet corn and watermelons from Gardens of Eagan and although it's hot and dry, i'd say we're in pretty good spirits. This week will probably be demanding as we are trying to get most of our garlic out of the ground--digging most every bulb by hand because it is so dry and I don't want to promote fungus or mold by watering. The garlic is quite beautiful this year though.

_loonatics_ @ 2007-07-10T21:46:00

2007-07-11T02:54:13Z

Found yet another use for the ubiquitous purslane weed of our field. I harvested some of the largest and most beautiful plants last Friday and brought them to market. We sold 3 lbs in no time flat after a bit of explaining and customer sampling. The magic words are "This is the hottest gourmet salad green in California right now. It also has one of the highest amounts of Omega-3s in the vegetable world." Sold.

Customers want more. Our tomato hornworms may lose their favorite food!

Afteredit: I stand corrected--it is not the tomato hornworm, but the caterpillar of the white-lined sphinx moth. From a brief google search, it appears that this caterpillar is commonly found in Southwest desert areas. Purslane is also an indigenous food crop and native plant from the Southwest and Mexico. A couple days ago, I came upon one of the caterpillars munching on a purslane plant and it had completely defoliated it within minutes. It ate each leaf in about 5-10 seconds. It's great watching bugs weed for us.

_loonatics_ @ 2007-07-05T19:55:00

2007-07-06T01:28:33Z

A metereologist reported that the Twin Cities and parts of Eastern MN are now officially in a drought--at least 5 inches below average rainfall since mid-April. It seems like beds that we have just watered are dry as a bone in a matter of days. The heat wave will continue to roll through this weekend and we will continue to hook up different drip hoses every day and work our way from bed to bed. Plug and play, as Adam says.

The heat really exacerbates any fatigue or stress that one is feeling so we've been eating kale and other leafy greens almost daily! Steamed with a bit of butter or toasted sesame oil and it is amazing how nourished and fortified I feel. I've been thinking a lot more about the healing properties of food recently and it has, once again, inspired me to clearly see one more facet of food: Nutritive, medicinal,but still pleasurable and tasty energy all in one forkful! One of those connections that cognitively I knew, but it hadn't yet synthesized into an I-get-it moment because there is such a disconnect between food and traditional "medicine" in our society. I'll try to pass this energy on to our customers and dream of the day when narry a farmers market customer will resist the mighty, medicinal, magnesium-scrumptious Swiss Chard.

_loonatics_ @ 2007-07-01T21:16:00

2007-07-02T02:55:12Z

We're in that betwixt period--no more early crops and the summer crops not quite ripening and plentiful. Beans and cukes got planted later than desired and those dang baby deers are eating the little zucchinis faster than they can grow. Tomorrow I'm putting up the fence.

In general though, it's been really enjoyable to be out in the field as what we do have planted is growing big and beautiful--there is just so much abundant life we see! Baby birds flying the nest, hawks and eagles stalking the field mice and getting the songbirds all in a hussy. Lots of insect life and their complicated relationships of predator/prey. Daily encounters with frogs and toads that make me feel like I am in a Beatrix Potter story. One neat little tree frog was peering out at me from the edge of our packing table, one leg hanging onto the edge and eyeing me surreptitiously while the radio blabs on about rising prices at supermarket hitting consumer's pocketbooks. I have to wait 30 minutes before I hear mention of who and where food is grown and the state of affairs for actual farmers.

I also notice a lot more bees pollinating our summer squash now that the wind has died down recently. (Basically at this point in time, no wind = a good day on the farm to me.) I love to watch the bumblebees rub their furry bodies in the gigantic, yellow-orange squash flowers. It seems to define the epitome of their happiness. Busy as bees. Gotta get a picture of that this week!