A Busy Weekend

The garden is shaping up nicely. Below are green peppers planted in hills. This year I am planting more in long hilled rows with drip irrigation. And I love it! I just wish all the hoses could run at the exact same time.

The head lettuces look fabulous! The bok choi did bolt slightly with the high heat so I am trimming off the tops. The bottoms are still really good but will have to be eaten this week.

Much better as a fall crop but I had to give it one more try in the spring.

This is the first week for CSA pickup! 12 lucky folks are getting great veggies!

A Surprise!

Well, I guess it doesn't take long for snowpeas and snappeas to grow. The flowers were just there a week ago. Guess what's for dinner?

Lettuce, spinach, garlic scapes, snap peas, snowpeas, swiss chard, french breakfast radishes, bok choi, strawberries----- all beautiful. What a great spring!

First CSA pickup Day - Next Week!

First CSA day pickup is next week.  Inside this lovely walkin fridge will be fresh veggies and strawberries waiting to be taken home and eaten.

Happy eating!

The Sustainable Fair

Thanks to all who came to the Sustainable Fair at the Farm Museum last Saturday and tried our food and took a business card.

Mike and I cooked grass fed burgers and merguez lamb sausage for the fair and we met a lot of wonderful people!

Although we didn't meet or talk to anyone during the blur that was 12:15-1:45pm when it took all our powers to keep up with the line. Thank goodness for our wonderful children who have great customer service skills. If we ignored you during that time, please forgive us and come visit the farm and we'll talk for hours!

It was great to meet the folks who know a lot about sustainable agriculture as well as the folks who watched Food Inc for the first time and got a big shock about their food. Welcome to the club-- knowledge is a dangerous thing and hard to go back and pretend you don't know once you do know.

Speaking of things that I didn't know. We are ready to take orders for Turkeys. This year we are doing Bronze Turkeys and we'll only do 40 birds so place your order now.

Did you know that there is no way that all the folks who want 'fresh' turkeys could actually get 'fresh' turkeys given the number of turkeys that can be killed per hour the week before T-day.

So 'fresh' is technically defined in turkey standards as anything that has not been frozen. Now turkeys have a high salt content so they can be in a fridge/freezer at 28 F and technically they are still labeled as 'fresh'. Have you ever got a 'fresh' turkey and wondered why it was kind of crispy cold? That's why. It's probably a month old as you can't process all the demand in 1 week. You need a good month prior to spread out the work. So it's not technically frozen but it is slightly frozen so that it can keep for the time before T-day.

Our turkeys will be 'processed' the Saturday or Sunday before T-day. So they will be fresh. Though if you've read my other postings you know that I'm also skeptical about fresh poultry being really tender so I've got more reading and research to do. I can tell you that my turkey that was 5 days aged was perfectly tender on T-day last year. And it cooked fast-- I mean fast. So a really, really fresh turkey will cook in almost 1/2 the time.

Preorder your turkeys now!!!

Fresh Pasture Raised Chickens

I've read lots of articles or blogs about someone killing their own chicken and then eating it fresh that same day. Best chicken of their life- is what they say.

Yeah, well I'm not so sure if I'm doing something wrong or these people just don't know tough vs tender chicken.

I've tried 4 times now to eat a chicken the same day it was killed, the 2nd day, the 3rd day..... and it's good but tough. In the end the best flavor and most tender chicken is one that is killed, then kept in fridge for a few days, frozen and then thawed and cooked. I don't know how long it needs to be frozen but we just had one that was frozen for 10 days and it was perfect!

So if anyone knows what I'm missing, let me know. I believe the same may be true about turkeys. We made sure that our turkeys last year that folks got had 5 days before being cooked on T-day because any less and I think the turkey would be tough. Our T-Day turkey was really tender on day 5. Though I also have 1 turkey left still in the freezer and I'm going to try out the theory and see if it's more tender. I'll let ya know....

I still think those folks eating chicken the same day of slaughter just don't know good chicken.... or they are doing some kind of fast tenderizing process that I want to learn about.

Definitely a June 1 CSA Start Date

These photos were from 5 days ago. Amazing what 5 days of warmth does to greens. This same area is tripled in size.

I am in love with a spinach called Gator Perpetual spinach. Oh my gosh-- I never knew spinach could be heavenly- but this spinach has big leaves that are sweet and juicy (funny word I know to describe spinach).

Since last year we had a lot of lettuce and not enough spinach, I made sure to get a few varieties so that we'd have more than enough spinach. And if we have too much then we can all blanch and freeze it. Lettuce is hard to freeze and store but spinach can be stored.

Rows of lettuce are coming up as well and the mustard greens have little holes in them from those silly bugs but still taste great.

The next few weeks are planting, watering, weeding weeks. Along with strawberry picking that is.... I would say starting next weekend you can call us up and come pick your own if you want. We've gone out every night and gotten about 4 pints and it's now kicking into high gear. You just need to know that there is lots of thistle and wear long pants and good shoes.

If anyone buys strawberries and gets those plastic containers-- save them as I'd love to have them and reuse them for picking. Also, if you get orange bags or onion bags that are mesh- save those for me as well. I want to do a better job of storing onions in proper bags this year.

Spring Garden!

The start of the CSA is just around the corner. It's looking as if June 1-4 will be the first week for pickup if the weather continues as it has with slightly warmer temps.

The strawberries have been shown in previous postings and the raspberries are also in full bloom. Now I have to believe that 5 rows of raspberries is going to be enough for all of us. The deal is this: if we have a bounty of raspberries then we'll pick the first container for you on certain weeks but if you ever want more then you go up and pick more for yourself. I won't fence off this area so you'll be able to find it easily.

On tap for week 1 so far looks like:

strawberries

loose mixed spring lettuce

loose mustard lettuce mix (has small holes in it from flea beatle)

swiss chard -- it grows like a weed in my garden

spinach

head lettuce

bok choi

pick your own herbs-- tarragon, greek oregano, parsley, sage, thyme, dill, cilantro, mint, basil and a few others that are still growing--- like rosemary

--the maybe list includes

Kale, carrots, radishes(french breakfast), celery, turnips, dill, cilantro, beets, arugula, kohlrabi

--these items are small but always amaze me at how fast they grow. So sometimes I don't know what is going to be the right size until a few days before.

The flea beatles get into anything spicy-- arugula, bok choi, mustard leaves..... so they taste great but they just look funky. Better in the fall when those bugs are gone.

Snap peas are coming along and starting to take off. This is another plant that looks like it will be 5 more weeks but then just takes off and suddenly you have snap peas all over. I think snap peas will be ready second week of June. That is the typical time of year.