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On Monday evening, after he got home from work, Andy was able to rototill some of the beds we will use for our tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil.

On Tuesday, after planting 1,000 chard plants with Isaac (he volunteers here each morning), Shiela worked at laying the plastic that we will plant those crops into. We are trying a red plastic this year for our tomatoes. Research has shown that the red reflects the spectrums of light needed to ripen more fruits. So far we like the black plastic better. It is easier to lay. The red is thin and tears easily. We'll see what the tomatoes think.

Wednesday we finished up the plastic for tomatoes, and planted a bunch of them. Ethan even helped! We got about halfway through that when darkeness came and made us stop. The rains have kept us out of the field since then. I hope this pattern breaks soon. We have alot to plant in our fields, and I was hoping to get it all planted before the soil warms too much and the weeds really get growing.

Thursday Shiela seeded lettuces for the summer and transplanted a few straggler cabbages and kohlrabis, shile I ran to get some last minute supplies to prepare for our first pick ups of the season.

Today (because our fields are too wet and sticky to get into) we will work on the herb garden and transplant some of the perenials from what I thought would be a nice bed near our house. It is an overgrown grassy mess, and it gets worse every year. We are making a patch of flowers near our pick up area with landscape cloth that was left over from the floor of our greenhouse. I can't wait to have flowers that we can see!

Happy Mother's Day!

My everything is tired. It has been a busy week even with all the rain. For the first few days of the week, we were not able to plant crops in the field. Disturbing the soil when it is still wet will destroy the structure of the soil, making it tough for air and water to be exchanged. This leads to poor habitat for the microbes that support healthy roots and plant functions.

So we have taken the time away from our fields to really reorganize all of our supplies. We worked on making our pick up area more appealing. And we mowed our grass! Since the inception of our CSA our lawn has really faltered. Some day I hope to have a "regular" lawn again.

Today Shiela (mom) and I celebrated a few days of sunshine by spraying our bok choy with some Pyganic (an organically approved pesticide made from chhrysanthemums) and a bit of fish and kelp to try to knock down the flea beetle population. There is nothing like starting your Mother's Day with a nose full of fish. Then we planted 800 kohlrabis, 300 lettuces, and still had time for an early dinner. Great day.

We are still working on determining the best cell phone service for uploading photos to our blog. We are getting closer to selecting something. I can't wait until I can show you our flea beetles in real time.

Short day today

Friday night we all did some fun non-farm stuff. This morning I was up early and on my way to State College for Farm Business training. Now that we have a good handle on what is involved in growing, it makes sense to be sure we aren't flubbing up the way we record all of our business. Boy do I have a lot more recording to do than I first thought.

Some great things came out of the 6 hour class. I learned that there is a way that I can upload photos to the blog from a cell phone. Now I am in the market for some sort of cell phone and plan. I will definitely keep you abreast of this story. I would love to post photos from the field as I work there. There is nothing like real time farm updates....

We are doing well in the fields.

Wow! I am loving this spring. I don't even know where to start. Andy fashioned a rack that Shiela (aka mom) and I can mount on our Gator and now one person can easily install the drip tape. It used to take two people and much grumbling. Now we only have to park our Gator at the end of the bed to be planted, grab the ends of the two or three tapes, walk the 200 feet length of each bed, and secure the tapes with staples. In about one third the time as before we are all hooked into the irrigation system and can begin to "plug" our plants into the field. We are having so much fun planting your stuff this year! I can't wait to show you the results...

Shiela planted all of our cabbages today. The broccoli and lettuce are in the field and looking quite good. Ethan had taken some photos of the crops last night, but the ran the batteries of juice. I expect to post the photos here tomorrow.

Things live in our greenhouse...

Mom has transplanted our tomatoes out of their seedling trays and into cells with room for good root growth. They are living in our greenhouse! Finally I don't have a basement filled with tender sprouts that our cat loves to dig up. Today mom and I were checking out the greenhouse climate. It was almost 80 degrees in there. Not bad for a passive solar greenhouse. We looked out the window and outside snow was blowing sideways! Crazy stuff.

The peas have sprouted. Yahoo. This weekend we might be able to get some fencing on them. They need to be far enough out of the ground for us to be able to see the entire row. We will see.

Last weekend Andy taught me how to drive our "new" skidloader. I am not quite sure that it won't fall apart when I try to use it, but Andy assures me that I can't really hurt it. I might fall apart, but he can fix it - probably. I did manage to pick up a pretty big rock and relocate it to a place that might help to define our traffic areas. I will work on this more in the next few weeks. I will keep you updated on that endeavor.

Field work already?

Yesterday was such a perfect day the I couldn't resist the call of the great outdoors. Mom has a cold and has been staying home to try to get over it faster, so Ethan and I headed to the greenhouse. We hooked up hoses to begin watering our plants more efficiently than we can over the winter. Our well set up freezes during cold spells, so in the fall we filled a black plastic barrel with water and put it in the greenhouse. We dipped out of that with watering cans through the cold days. Now we can use a hose with a nice water breaker that plants seems to love almost as much as rain. I have missed that piece of equipment.

While we were poking around our shed we watched a Mourning Cloak butterfly warm itself in the sun and get a drink from a wet area on the ground. I tried to take some photographs, bt Ethan got really excited and scared it away. On our way up to lunch, we dicovered about six Pine Siskins hanging upside down in our pine trees. I just love the diversity of early spring.

I checked on the peas to see if they had sprouted yet. No. They need a few more days. I peeked on the garlic that Shiela planted last fall, and found a few spring weeds. Thirty minutes and one cranky preschooler later, the weeds were chased away.

We are growing again.

For the past few weeks I have been trying to update this page with the latest news about growing food for our community. My computer did not cooperate with that intention, so I shipped it off to the local computer repair shop, and now we are rolling again! I am excited to finally be able to share this with you.

Over the winter we had 10 tons of high calcium lime spread on our fields. That was tough to work in between the freezing rains and the mucky thaws,but we did it. We will need to do it again this fall to get our soils as loose as we would like them. (We concern ourselves with the stickyness of our soil instead of the pH that many live and die by.) To get through this growing season with our soil's current levels of calcium, we intend to apply calcium through our irrigation system and apply foliar sprays. Other folks have had good results with both of these products, and I am eager to try them.

We plowed almost all four acres that we will be using this season with the 3-bottom trip plow that Andy bought a couple falls ago. He spent many nights over the winter fabricating the very heavy metal piece that allows us to hook the plow up to our Case 630 tractor. That tractor has a special hitch system that allows us to use almost no implements without altering them first. Andy loves that tractor though. Each time we get a new implement he buys bolts and metal stock, and cuts and welds it into his perfect creation. The plowing looks beautiful.

We used the dry spell that we had to get our peas planted. The rains came just in time to water them in, and we expect to see sprouts popping up any moment. The rabbit population is small and now that the grass is greening up, we don't expect too many of those tender, sweet shoots to be eaten by them. We shall see. We planted 800 feet of peas, so there should be enough to go around.

Our spring broccoli and cabbage seeds were planted almost a month ago, and now are nearly ready to be transplanted. They are living in the greenhouse, and seem to enjoy the environment there. The daytime temps are higher than I would like already, and the night time temps are a bit lower than I would like. It makes me think of global warming on a very small scale. I can't imagine what the Earth will be like once the greenhouse gasses really build up.

We have only 11 varieties of tomatoes this year, and fewer varieties of peppers. Those plants are living in the germination room we made in our basement. As soon as we are sure the nighttime temperatures will not dip into the dangerously cold range we will move them and the eggplants to the greenhouse so they can get sunlight. Florescent lights are no replacement for good ole Sol. Not to mention we need the space in our germinating room for more baby plants.

Mom planted our first round of lettuce seeds today. Green Ice and Buttercrunch. They are both rather mundane lettuces but a nice way to start our CSA season, I think. Right now they are in the basement getting up the gumption to send out that first sprout and those two beautifully thick leaves. Mom has a cold, and so she went home early. Tomorrow she or I will plant some more thing, and I will update you after dark.

Now accepting 2009 members!

Ahhhh. Finally the beginning is near. The days are getting longer, and all the seeds catalogs have come. Now they are all marked up with circles, and the pages are rumpled. We have ordered all the supplies that we need - irrigation system parts, environmentally conservative potting mix, and bits and pieces for the greenhouse. We have ordered too many pounds of organic seed potatoes. We have completed most of our seed order, and exerted great restraint in not ordering one of everything. In a few weeks we will set up the germination lights in our basement, and planting will be underway.

We have updated our website with the lowdown on our 2009 pick up days, more details about the other items that we will offer this season (including a limited number of egg shares), and our prices. We have slackened the working requirements as compared to last season.

Blog posts will be more frequent as the farm gets ramped up. We will report on the PASA conference once we return. We are thrilled to be signed up to attend an all day workshop on vegetable production, led by some of the most experienced vegetable growers on the state. We will update you on the break out sessions once we get back.

When will we accept new memberships?

I have received a few emails from people who want to get the 2009 prices and enrollment form. We apologize for our tardiness. We had heard horror stories of price increases for agriculture supplies and seeds that range from 20-50%. Our 2009 catalogs are trickling in and the rumours are indeed true. We are taking stock of our expenditures, and evaluating any ways that we can manage our property more efficiently. We want to keep our prices as low as we can and maintain a happily functioning farm.

We anticipate opening our membership in the next few weeks. A new entry will be posted here as soon as we open the memberships. It is my understanding that if you subscribe to the RSS feed, you will be notified when I post something here. I am not sure, though, how that works, so if you do, please post a comment. I will be checking the site often.

Have a safe and happy winter.

Still busy: Field clean up, hair cuts, and more fermentation.

Shiela has been working on getting things growing in the greenhouse, and when it is not raining, she had been working on taking out the last little bits of plastic. We have all the irrigation tape out and have only two beds of plastic mulch left, and then we can put our fields to bed for the winter. The window of fall planting only has a few weeks left, and it is looking like we will get all of our stuff in. Hooray! We might even get our saffron crocuses planted!

Yesterday I finally took the time to get the address for Locks of Love. I love growing and harvesting so much that I even grow and "harvest" my hair. In case you aren't familiar with Locks of Love, it is a non-profit organization that uses donated human hair to make wigs for children who have lost their hair to disease or treatments like chemotherapy. They need at least 10 inches of hair in order to do whatever to make a wig, and it takes six pony tails to make one wig. I watched the video on how to cut and package the ponytail on the Locks of Love website. Then I handed Shiela a pair of scissors. Ethan was ready with his scissors in case we needed some back up. Now, I am 12" of hair lighter and feel like I have helped someone just a little...

The other thing I am working on besides trying to get our fields ready for winter is fermenting the leftovers from our season. I tried to lactoferment hot peppers, but I forgot to add salt and a white yeast mold grew thickly on the top before I could say "whoops." I will have to try again. I have a bunch of cabbage ready to be turned into saurkraut. I got it at the farmer's market when they still had an organic produce vendor. (Our cabbages still haven't headed. I am quite convinced that they don't like growing under plastic. In future years, we will grow them the old fashioned way, and mulch them with straw.) We made a batch of kimchee with the unclaimed chinese cabbages and those itty bitty garlics that we are always left with. I fermented it on my counter for as long as I could stand it. The smell became very strong, as it bubbled out of its wide mouthed jar and all over the flat casserole that I placed the jar in as an afterthought - good idea. The smell actually woke me up in the middle of the night. I understand why it is traditional to bury that stuff... Tastes good though. Our experiments with mead making are progressing at mead making pace (slowly) and I am not sure that any of the three batches will turn out drinkable. The samples that we have tried thus far have had an odd metallic taste, and we think that the iron in our water (I used our well water.) is the main culprit. Time will tell. My first attempt at ginger beer was going well for a while. I was expecting some major fermention with the "bug" and it just never happened. I think the ambient temperature in our house was just too low. I will try that again too. Luckily I only had about $2 invested in it. I feel like my fermentation trials are teetering on the brink of success. I want to get good enough at it to preserve foods without using all the water and heat that is needed in canning. I will keep trying things and report updates as they come.

Recipes for Week 22.

Vegetarian Cabbage Rolls:
These go well with some sort of yogurt based sauce or tomato chutney.
Cook 1 cup of rice in 2 cups of salted water until it is fully cooked. Meanwhile chop 1 medium onion, and saute it in some olive oil. Wash one head of cabbage (any type with large leaves will do), and steam 12 large leaves to soften them so you can roll them.
Once your rice is cooked add it to the pan with your sauteed onions. Stir in 2 tsp. curry powder, 1/4 tsp salt, 1 beaten egg, 8 tbsp. shredded cheddar cheese, and 1/2 cup of chopped cashews. Spread this mixture on one side of your cabbage leaves and roll tthem up. Bake them in the oven for 20 minutes or until you are sure the egg is thoroughly cooked and the cheese is melted.

Do you have any recipes to share? Post them in the comments.

The milk never ends...

If anyone would like to participate in our milk orders through the winter, you are welcome to. We will be hosting milk pick ups on Thursday evenings from 4:30-6:30 each week. If you are interested in purchasing Apple Valley Creamery milk the order is due to Amy by Monday at sundown. You can email your request to amleber@comcast.net.
In case you didn't know Apple Valley doesn't use RbST, and their cows are grass fed. (So those of you who are looking to increase your omega-3 can do that with this milk.) They still sell some of their milk to Land O'Lakes, but wish to retail all of their milk. They don't get paid enough from Land O'Lakes to support the two families who run the Creamery without increasing the herd size. The current trends in food production are that farms must get big or go out of business. The milk you buy from them keeps them farming.

We have made it to the end of our growing season...

First, thank you everyone, for participating in our CSA this season. I was wonderful to get to know you all a little better. We appreciated sharing our successes (and miserable attempts) with you. (Of course, we wish there had been more successes this year.) A giant thank you goes to all those who came to our farm to help us do chores. We would not have been nearly as successful without your help.
We hope that you had a good time coming to our farm this year, and consider coming back next year. We haven't thought much about how many members we would like to have next year, or what the prices will be yet. If you are interested in us holding a space for you next spring please let us know. We will reserve a share for you until April 15. After that, if you don't send a deposit or get in touch with us, we'll let someone else have your share.
Everyone have a safe and happy winter. We'll be here playing in our greenhouse, and planning the perfect garden for 2009. I can't wait to see how it all unfolds.

Thursday's Pick up will be on Wednesday

Because Thursday is trick or treat night in this area, we are moving pickups for that night to Wednesday instead. If you are unable to make it Wednesday night, please let us know and we can arrange for you to come another time.

Recipes for Week 21.

I thought I'd take a minute to open a thread in case anyone wants tp post a great recipe or menu combination that worked for them this week or last. Just post it as a comment. Some tme I will post a recipe for cabbage rolls that will be great with next week's chinese cabbage.

We have a big day ahead tomorrow...

Tomorrow night the low is predicted to dip down to freezing in Harrisburg. Since our thermometers usually read a few degrees colder than Harrisburg, we anticipate our first hard freeze. We spent today picking peppers that we had covered with a polyspun fabric designed to keep frost off of crops. We also pulled out all the celery to ensure that it didn't freeze. The eggplants were stripped and tomorrow we will strip the pea patch of anything edible. The peas that we have now are frost bitten but still a nice side dish. They were covered, but it blew off during the night on Friday and they got frosty. A hard freeze will make them all crack and get mushy. We will put the polyspun fiber on the baby lettuces, and the chard in an effort to stretch their usefulness one more week. The rest of our crops like chinese cabbage, turnips, and radishes should survive hard freezes. We will do all that we can to make the last week of our CSA the greatest last week we have ever had. We want to end with a bang...and then fiddle around with our greenhouse production through the winter...

Frosty mornings...

Brrrr. It was cold this morning. I am very glad that Andy and his dad finished up putting insulation in our house yesterday. (It was 49F in our great room on Sunday morning. There is nothing like seeing your breath at the breakfast table.) Our peas froze on the vines. We are picking them anyway, though they are limp and floppy. Our lettuce did manage to survive the freeze. Our basil in the field has been toast since the first frost, but the basil in the greenhouse was doing well until last night. It is a pile of mush now too. Our nasturtiums froze, which was a bummer because I was going to give them out in the salad mix this week. The baby lettuces are hanging in there (except for the amaranth leaves, which are all curled over from being nipped by frost. The celery has weathered the cold fine. The broccoli raab has hung in there (I think), and should be sweeter for its efforts. The cabbages are fine, and some may head up in time for next week. The turnips are little, but the tops are delicious. Radishes are coming along, and some will be available for you this week and probably next. We dug the sweet potatoes this morning after we were sure that they were not going to get any larger. We decided that the white fleshed ones are really hard to be pleased with. If you plant them early, they grow one 6lb potato. If you plant them later, they grow one 1/2lb potato. We were hoping for a greater quantity of spuds of a managable size. We will probably grow them again, so we might hit the golden mean next time. And if not, save them for dinner parties. They store amazingly well.

The raised bed in our greenhouse is built and about six more wheelbarrow loads of dirt might get us enough to start planting things in it.

Look out! Shiela has broken out her knitwear.

Shiela is a chronic knitter. Every night she unwinds from the stresses of growing your food by knitting a few rounds. Since last fall, she has amassed a mountain of socks using a variety of natural and synthetic fibers, a couple of shawls, some fingerless gloves, hats, baby wear, and scarves - both wacky and mundane.
For the remainder of the season we will have a display of the hand knitted articles that you can purchase to warm you through the winter. There is still time to have gifts custom knitted for holiday presents. So if you know someone who goes wild for orange socks and Shiela has sold out, she can still knit you another pair.