BHN-624

One of our most expensive seeds is this cherry tomato. We will buy 100 seeds this year and they will cost us $39.00 for those seeds. We could get the cost down to 26 cents a seed if we bought 1000 seeds, but $262 for one type of tomato is a little pricy for us!

Now we could find cherry tomato seed for much less. So why do we pay so much for this seed?

Because it is worth every cent! I would probably pay twice what they cost. They are easy to pick which is very important in cherry tomatoes. They are very sweet (Johnny's Seeds Trials rate them as one of the best tomatoes.) But most importantly they resist cracking. In cherry toms that is so important. Beautiful tomatoes can be ruined overnight by rain. And every single one of them will crack open.

We used to use Matt's Wild Cherries, which are a great home garden variety, but we found that some days as many as a quarter of them would crack AFTER we picked them! So frustrating in the time it takes to pick 10 pounds of cherry tomatoes. Then having to sort them all, and they are very small.

With these we know they will hold for us, and still provide a sweet, nice cherry tom.

Yummy day...

Sitting in the house after pickup I am so grateful for the life we are able to live. Yes, it would be nice if the farm was self supporting and I did not have to be at a desk at 7:00 tomorrow morning, but we have so many blessings.

We had a good day, with almost perfect weather after the morning clouds cleared, it was an amazing fall day. On days like this with the fall breezes and beautiful trees starting to turn it makes me remember why we have made this (probably crazy) choice.

After pickup I came in and started my favorite pasta sauce, which is so easy! As I sit here I can smell it... All you do is set your oven to 450. When it is heating roughly chop a couple peppers, a couple onions (or 1 big), a couple garlic cloves, and plum tomatoes. Before yesterday I would have cut them in half and carefully removed the seeds but yesterday one of our members showed me how you could just cut the top off the plum tomato and squeeze out all the seeds and junk, it is like magic, really!

Anyway, just roughly chop the stuff, maybe add carrots. Let it cook until everything is soft then broil it, mixing often. When it is nice and caramelized (they will be in the oven for 90 minutes or more) hit it with a stick blender, or put it in your food processor (or vita mix if you are so lucky!) I like adding a little balsamic vinegar & a bit of Parmesan. It smells so good and tastes even better...

Everything tastes better roasted! You can do the same with canned tomatoes come winter, but this time of year with the end of summer flavors, with a glass of red wine, and it just feels so nice....

First week of July...

The garden is finally growing well! Things are getting bigger and I figured now was a good time to do a little photo survey of our farm and how things are growing.

We have always had a hard time growing carrots, because we had pretty heavy clay soil before. Not so anymore. Our carrot rows have really taken off since we started to foliar feed them. Yesterday I was weeding and noticed two large tops right next to each other, so I thinned one out and got this! A real to honest little baby carrot!

A couple weeks ago our squash were just little baby things, now the leaves are as big as dinner plates and they are getting blossoms! Won't be long until we have summer squash! (Come over here little bees!)

This is photo of our beet row we have 3 succession plantings going. One after another 2 weeks apart. So members should expect lots more beets in their baskets! Yummy!

Lettuce is another one of those things which has been a little hit or miss for us in the past. So dependent on weather, it can be difficult to field grow. A little luck this year and we finally have gorgeous little heads. Sunday members, got only a tiny bit this week, Wednesday members got a lot more. Sunday members should expect a bigger share of lettuce this coming week.

It will be so strange to be able to offer onions! They are coming along nicely! Next year we are planning a 1/4 acre onion plot, hopefully everyone likes onions!

Time to stake the tomatoes! They are starting to spread out a bit. These are Matt's Wild Cherry a nice heirloom cherry tomato. AND they have little baby green tomatoes on them! These plants will bear all summer, so get ready for cherry tomatoes! Obviously these plants are benefiting from the foliar feeding, they have gone from being a light kellyish green to this dark green beautiful color.

Spring is here!

It is SO beautiful this evening! I got home and hubby was on the tractor, a sure sign of spring on the farm. After I changed I went to say "Hi!" and marvel at how well the ground was turning over...

We are so blessed to have good soil here, at our old farm we fought with a high water table and heavy clay. The two together mean MUD! At the old house there is still water in the yard, here we plowed today, and tomorrow will till...

Granted, it was not dry enough to turn everything, but we got enough turned to give us a good start at the early spring crops (remember it is still spring!) so if the weather holds (18% chance of rain in next 24 hours) we will be able to start some turnips, radishes, and spinach in the ground. We have 1800 onion starts and 1800 leek starts which need to go in as well, and we have a few hundred beet starts ready to go in a week or so (a new experiment.) We also have Chinese cabbage, regular cabbage, lettuce, and a few other starts which will be ready to go in within a week or two...

We have a market to stock on May 31 (first CSA pickup is mid-June) and right now the only thing in the ground is Kale! We will start this years season as we ended last years, with LOTS of Kale! :)

Our hoophouse is here, but putting it up needs to wait, when you can turn the soil, that takes priority! In any case we have thousands of starts under grow lights in our basement. I need to remind myself, they always seem to grow slow at first, but they have 4-5 weeks before we'd even consider transplanting peppers, eggplant, or tomatoes. Our average last frost day may be early may, but that means that half the years see later frosts... So we will wait for the relative safety of late May, with the assurance of a warm 10 day forecast...

The season is going! Wish us luck, and good weather.

New seeder and starting...

Yesterday we recieved our Jang Seeder. This thing, while not cheap is amazing! It seems (based on rolling it around the living room!) to do a great job of percision seeding, just what we need! It is made of heavy steel and is a substantial thing! I need to take photos of ours but this is what it looks like... Now all we need is for it to stop raining for a few dats so we can start planting seeds!

Over the past week we have started thousands of little seeds in the march across our heat mat (to aid germination) before they go into trays. We are able to start about 360 seeds on one cookie sheet using 3/4"x3/4" soil blocks we make. Then one seed goes in each block and the whole tray goes on the heat mat. Problem is that trays are backing up, there is only room for 9 at a time on the heat mat and we still have thousands and thousands and thousands of seeds to start. So it is time to order a second heat mat!

But why would we need so many plants you may ask? Isn't 180 of one type pepper plant more then a small CSA needs? Arne't you growing lots of types of peppers? It is, and we are. But there may just be a late May PLANT SALE in our future... Lots of heirlooms, and some Ark of Taste varieties in there... Let us know if you would be intrested and help us gauge the demand...

$4.00 plus a gallon...

Diesel is over $4.00 a gallon. Wow! When we started farming 6 years ago we could get offroad diesel for a quarter that. Now, our cost will be slightly less a gallon, as we use off road for our tractor (which is not taxed the same), but still our bill will be high this year for fuel, and will only get higher in coming years.

But think about your pain at the pump. Now think about the poor truckers who work as independent contractors (owner/operators) and move most of products across the country. In China they are rationing diesel! In the US all our truckers have to worry about is fuel at $1.25 more a gallon then last year! Many are going bankrupt all the time.

Think of the fields in California deserts where we grow produce for our Ohio grocery stores. Diesel powers the tractors that till and hill the fields. Diesel powers the pumps that bring water for irrigation to an arid region. Diesel powers the tractors that help pick the items, or pull processing stations. And then Diesel brings the product 75% of the way across the country so we can have a styrofoam tasting tomato or bland lettuce in March?

All this as the dollar continues to fall, further inflating the cost of oil. There may come a time in the very near future when, as opposed to being a luxury to eat local, it will be the economical choice. Towards that end as a society we need to learn to cook from "real food" and not from boxes. And we need to support our local farmers so we begin to build the infrastructure we need for when we really need it...

Ark of Taste: Red Fig

This year we will be planting several items off of Slow Food's Ark of Taste. These are very special heirlooms and by purchasing seeds to these items we are encouraging them to be produced by commercial seed producers. Eventually we will save seeds from these varieties as well, but we do not plan much seed saving this year. (That will wait until we are farming full time.)

Here is a description of the Red Fig tomato from Slow Food, USA:

These 1.5” pear-shaped tomatoes have been grown in American gardens since the 18th century. They were traditionally dried and packed away for winter use in substitute of figs. They are also used fresh.

The Red Fig Tomato is named for a sugary delicacy that was made with this fruit and popular in the mid 1800s. To make the “figs,” boiling water was poured over the tomatoes to remove the skins and then the skinless tomatoes were placed in a stone jar with equal parts sugar to tomatoes. The resulting syrup was then removed from the jar and boiled and skimmed. The process was repeated over two days, with intervals of cooling. Finally, the tomatoes were dried in the sun for about a week at which point they were packed in small wooden boxes, with fine, white sugar between every layer. Tomatoes prepared in this manner were said to keep for years.

The tomato is currently available from only three seed companies in the United States.
Fresh Red Figs have a full tomato taste with very sweet skin. In addition to being a delicious plated solo act, they’re perfect for contemporary tomato jams and chutneys.

Sounds so yummy! I can hardly wait for summer....