New Potato Digger

I saw this on our Local Facebook classified and I thought it looked neat and it would be very useful. So I just bought it and brought it home and for $25 how could I go wrong! I was build out of scraps laying around the farm. The previous owner said his grandfather built it and he remembers using it and using it along with his kids. They just don't have any use for it and nobody in their family was interested in keeping it. I am sure I will try it out and see how it works! I may even try to mount it on a 3 point toolbar so I only takes one person to operate. Enjoy! Jay

New Potato Digger

Thinking of Cooler Weather

It is hard to think of cooler days and snow on the ground when it is 110 outside and rain hasn't fallen in weeks. Luckily, we have gotten some rain and I hope we will be able to follow that up with some cooler weather. But don't worry, cooler weather will get here. It always does.

What does that mean with our garden and high tunnels, it means it is time to start to transition to planting and starting seedlings. We started hundreds of Broccoli, Cauliflower, Napa Cabbage, Hanging basket tomatoes two weeks ago. This week we will be starting lettuce, cabbage, more Napa Cabbage, Bok Choy, Kale, and direct seeding green onions. This week we have put in the final planting of Zucchini and started 5 beds of carrots.

What will we have to offer this fall and winter. We are planning on having the following crops growing into this fall and winter.

Until it Freezes Outside:
Cucumbers, Okra, Zucchini, Green Beans, and Peppers.

Until Thanksgiving time (earlier or later depending on the weather)
Broccoli, Cauliflower, Tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes, peppers, and Zucchini

Until Christmas:
Romaine, Rouge D'Hiver Red Romaine, Red and Green Salad Bowl Lettuce, Red Sails, Black-Seeded Simpson, Buttercrunch, and Winter Density, All-Star Salad Mix, Tatsoi, Space and Tyee Spinach, Rubicon Napa Cabbage, Green and Red Cabbage, Winterbor Kale, Red Russian Kale, Napoli and Amarillio Carrots, Haikuri Turnips, Everbunching and Guardsman Green Onions, Lancelot Leeks, and Radishes.

Until we run out:
All lettuces, Carrots, Green Onions, Leeks and Spinach.

This year we also will be offering the following crops from storage:

Butternut, Acorn, Spaghetti, Delicita and Sweet Dumpling Winter Squashes, Sweet Potatoes, Onions, Potatoes (maybe the heat has done some damage) Jams and Jellies, and Pork.


I hope it will be a productive fall. I know it is going to be challenging to get crops started, but I will pull out every trick in the book to make things work! I don't give up very easily and I always find a way to make things work. Sure there may be some late nights, early mornings and lots of weeds to pull but the best thing of all is to see the look on everyone's face when we deliver our orders and see the smiles of happy customer receiving the freshest, best tasting and healthiest food possible. It makes all the work worth while!

Stay Cool!

Thinking of Cooler Weather

Fall and Winter Salads

To eat local foods and what is in season, one has to think about eating salads here in the fall. We have a huge variety of greens that we are growing and selling this fall/winter. They are all being grown in our high tunnels.

Here are just a few of the different varieties we are growing this winter. We have over 10 varieties of lettuce, 3 varieties of spinach, 2 varieties of Bok Choy, Napa Cabbage, Arugula, Kale, Swiss Chard, Tatsoi and beet greens.

These greens are very cold tolerant and some will continue to keep growing through the winter. They all will be put under rowcover as soon as I can find the time to make that happen! We are continusely planting to keep a steady supply of greens available. I just planted spinach on October 3rd. With any luck it will be ready to harvest by the 5th of November. I have over 400 more transplants to go out ASAP!

Check out what we are harvesting currently.
8 ounces of Salad Mix
Kale
Black Seeded Simpson

Green Salad bowl

Red Saladbowl
Buttercrunch
Red Sails

8 ounces of Spinach

Spinach

Fall and Winter Salads

Fall Harvest Begins

I don't know if fall harvest is beginning or summer harvest is just continuing, but we have some new crops to pick this week. The habaneros are ready, in full force. We have red, chocolate, and orange habaneros and a tiny but powerful pepper called White Habanero. And now you know what goes in the Habanero , Chocolate, Hot Lava Jelly and White Lightning Jelly!

The second round of carrots this year are possibly more beautiful and plentiful than the first. Check out the result of picking just five feet:

And it's not just the garden that's looking good. The soybeans surrounding us are huge, especially for dryland beans. I grew up in an area where the only soybeans grown were double-cropped beans (aka planted after wheat harvest and harvested in time to plant the next wheat crop). So, these huge soybeans continue to amaze me. We can't take credit for any of them, but it's a nice sight to see out your window.

Coming soon: spinach, lettuce, Napa cabbage, and Bok Choy.

Fall Harvest Begins

Flowers for Fall?

Jay likes to grow a wide variety of produce, and this fall he even grew a few flowers. Of course, the girls thought this was an awesome, fabulous, great, stupendous idea... as long as they were pink. And so, they compromised:

Mobile high tunnel 2, filled with zinnias and sunflowers

Sunflowers, just before "harvest"

Maggie got special Daddy-time and the honor of picking the zinnias

Displayed at market, aka Maggie saying "Daddy, it's too hard to smile at 7 a.m. on a Saturday."

The flowers didn't sell very well, but most new products don't sell the first week we've offered them. Besides, think how lovely my house looks!

Flowers for Fall?

A Picture to Make You Cry

Okay, so maybe these pictures will only make you cry if you are the cutting these vegetables and don’t have an open flame nearby. (Learned that trick from Alton Brown!)

Jay just harvested the last of the onions for this year. We were happy with the onion crop, both in size and quality of onions. Of the 1800 onion sets planted, we sold all but probably 35 of them. Those 35, I chopped and froze for our use later this winter. We probably threw out less than 50 onions for the year, because they rotted before we sold them or got them froze.

I guess that means next year I can’t scoff at the idea of planting 1800 onion sets. And that is enough to make me cry!

A Picture to Make You Cry

It's harvest time!

Updating the blog is going to be a lot harder in the weeks to come. We're just going to be so darn busy! Not only are we heading to 4-5 markets per week, we are also picking and harvesting tons of produce. Well, not tons yet... last year it took until mid-July to reach an actual ton harvested.

Today, Jay picked 45 zucchini and 14 heads of broccoli, so far. He also finished weeding, mulching, and weaving the tomatoes and peppers, and has brother Anthony continuing to weed the leeks and onions. And, insane fellow that he is, he planted another 120 pepper plants, 70 of which are Habaneros. It's going to be a hot summer, in more ways than one.

It's harvest time!

First zucchini

So, yesterday's post showed us putting small zucchini plants in the ground outside. Today, we have the first zucchini! The zucchini in our high tunnels, planted on April 5 and transplanted around April 18, are about ready to harvest.

This variety is called Sultan, with a 48-days-to-maturity. Perfect Pick and Caveli are the other varieties yet to produce. This picture was taken late last week, so by Wednesday or Thursday, we should be dining on zucchini. And, if you are worried that your plants aren't near this big, keep in mind that these plants are in the movable high tunnel.

I love the excitement of the firsts. This tiny zucchini will be sauteed in a little bit of butter and divided among six plates...unless the other plants shoot out a few more for us to devour by then!

First zucchini

Broccoli Beginnings

All those hours spent planting, watering, transplanting, weeding, watching, waiting.... tah-dah!

This is the Blue Wind variety, which is an earlier maturing variety. The others, Arcadia and Green Magic, should be coming along shortly. We hope to be harvesting the Blue Wind variety in about a week!

Broccoli Beginnings