Time to make the salsa
First batch of tomatoes have been harvested and one batch of salsa has been made and canned. This is the first time we’ve made salsa out of Cherokee Purple tomatoes (along with a few other varieties). It’s pretty tasty, overall. Looking forward to making more in the coming weeks. Here’s the recipe.
This made about 8 pints.
We used onions, peppers, and garlic we grew and the cilantro came from Basil and Beyond, our neighbor's farm.
About that fence…
The gopher(s) has been visiting our farm. Yep, the lovely carrots we have been watering, weeding and tenderly caring for have been nibbled to the stub. Spink says those carrots won’t grow and we should just cut our losses and replant the bed. I, on the other hand, still see some foliage and would like to give them a few weeks to recover. None of this argument confronts the main problem – the gopher. We have tried reason and considered the option of a fence. Right now we are trying to bait it with peanut butter with a Havahart trap with plans to remove it from our property. Why can’t he just eat the weeds? That would help us out a lot and he’d get a tasty meal without disturbing the produce.
And, remember that question about people stealing stuff? Well, the other day, Spink was out in the garden and someone was picking our cukes! They apparently thought this was a community garden and they could just take what they wanted. How would they know otherwise? There are no signs posted. Anyway, I guess giving away some produce now and then means people will not try to sabotage the garden. Apparently, Spink’s comment that they could take the cukes translated to come back anytime and take what you want. Simply a misunderstanding, but I felt kind of upset about people just taking produce without asking, especially considering all the blood, sweat, and tears we put into growing it in the first place!
So, yeah, maybe a fence for next year…add it to the list.
Harvesting Garlic
Well, the dog days of summer have arrived and the garlic tops have started to yellow and fall over. It’s time to harvest! Last fall, we used ag fabric as mulch and used a torch to put holes in the fabric for the garlic bulbs. We had some trepidation in harvesting it given this experiment, but all in all, it wasn’t too bad. We pulled the staples from the ag fabric and we plan to use it again this fall. And the garlic, for the most part, is huge! Spink wants to keep it for seed so we can double production next year. All I want to do is cook with it. The flavor is beyond compare!
Bulb just picked.
We took the staples out of the ag fabric and carefully dug out the bulbs.
When we finally got all the staples out, we just pulled the ag fabric up and over the top of the remaining garlic.
Garlic drying on an old swing set we picked up off the curb lawn.
Some Root Veggie Ideas
Now that we are selling our carrots and beets at the market, it’s time to sample the product! We’ve made a couple of tasty dishes with some of the product that didn’t meet the quality standards (funky looking carrots, small beets, etc.). After market we made a stir-fry that contained beets (gold and red), new potatoes, chard, green onions and fresh garlic (right from the ground!). It was super tasty. The potatoes were sweet-tasting and the beets tasted earthy (though we both contend the gold beets are a bit sweeter). We heated some oil and then threw the beets and potatoes into the wok for a few minutes. Then we added the other veggies and some salt and pepper. Yum!
Stir fry with Ohio City Pasta
The other dish we made is roasted root veggies, which included carrots, beets, onions, potatoes, celery, garlic, scapes and rosemary. This was mixed with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Smelled awesome, tasted delicious!!
Close up of the roasted veggies
First Farmers Market … Success!
We totally sold out of all our produce this Saturday at the Lakewood Farmers Market. There are so many people to thank for making this market come together. Thanks to the market organizers, our helpful friends, and all the wonderful customers who stopped by. We were pretty nervous about our first market day, but all and all it was a raging success. Here are some pictures of the day.
Annabel ready for customers
Two humble farmers
A very colorful table of produce
Big basket of radishes
Scarlet Nantes Carrots and they taste even better than they look
Detroit Red beets (from our lovely neighbor) and some Touchstond Gold beets
Giant swiss chard also from our neighbor
Great looking green onions
Empty farm stand after 3 hours
Harvesting
I wanted to share some comments about how we harvest our veggies. Since we are following the SPIN method, we harvest using our garden cart right over the rows. We generally each take a side and put the produce into a plastic tub placed in the garden cart. It is hard to believe, but we actually got 25 lbs of lettuce from one of our bins earlier this season. The more amazing part is that we actually managed to sell all of it and people asked for more! Sadly, our latest bed had to be composted (actually, we fed it to some local chickens, one higher option on the food chain than composting it). I think we left it out in the hot sun too long and it got bitter and tough. Lettuce is a cool weather crop and hot sun just doesn’t make for a good crop.
Since it’s been so hot, we try to harvest early in the morning before the sun starts beating down. We also hydrocool our veggies, which is basically a process of plunging the items into cold water to keep them fresh and crisp until they are washed, bagged and put in the fridge for storage.
Harvesting arugula in the rain. Notice the garden cart straddles the bed perfectly allowing us to harvest with ease.
We lifted this design for a wash screen from our friends at Urban Growth Farms. It is totally awesome for washing root veggies! Behind that you can see the basin sink we use for washing the greens. Spink built a table from an old counter top that we picked up on Craigslist, which serves as a great weigh and pack area. And, for storage, we bought an old fridge (gotta love Craigslist), which is meeting our needs currently. When we got that 25 lbs of lettuce, the fridge was packed to the gills with greens…pretty sweet!
The wash station for root crops
Tomorrow morning (at 6 am!) we will be harvesting green onions and carrots for the first time. We will probably employ the pitch fork or broad fork to help uproot both of those. Will post some pics of that later. Open to any harvesting tips you have to share!
What grows in clay and rocks?
We have been pleasantly surprised by the success of many of our beds, especially considering the poor quality of our soil (mostly clay) and the numerous rocks that still plague us! While we’ve had to scrap a few beds due to poor germination, the bulk of the rows have really produced. For example, last week Spink harvested 25 pounds of lettuce from one 30′ x 25″ bed! Here are some recent pictures of what’s growing. We add compost every time we turn a bed over, but we still find clumps of clay and rocks every time we go out there. We are constantly weeding and picking rocks (hard to know which we do more frequently!). Overall, though, we are thoroughly pleased with this year’s yield to date.
First market day is coming soon. Please come out to see us and support locally grown food at the Lakewood Farmer’s Market opening June 26th at 10 am in front of Marc’s Plaza on Detroit.
Carrots and green onions - planted April 2nd
D'Avignon radishes planted May 21st
Potatoes
Leeks and onions
This is supposed to be a bed of spinach, but all we got is rocks! Had to pull the rocks and start over on this one....
Whaddya wanna do that for???
Since we’ve been on this path and sharing this journey, there are a few questions that people tend to ask over and over again:
Farming? Really? Why?
For me it’s all about planting seeds and watching them grow. There is something gratifying about seeing that miracle of life evolve. And then there’s the taste…fresh food grown in living soil tastes so good. We have been truly blessed this year to have developed relationships with customers who appreciate and enjoy the food we grow. Selling something that we have sowed, weeded, watered and harvested brings real satisfaction.
Aren’t you afraid someone is gonna steal your stuff?
People always ask this! They usually ask after we explain that we don’t have a fence (our plot is fenced on three sides). The front of the garden is right next to the sidewalk. People walk by all the time and comment on how nice the garden looks. For the most part, everyone has been thrilled with the farm. When we are not on site, our neighbors keep an eye out for us, but so far we haven’t had any problems.
We planned to have a fence to keep the groundhogs and dogs out, but haven’t gotten around to it. Last year when we were just growing in raised beds, the groundhogs came over for a dinner party and feasted on everything! Luckily most of it grew back and the groundhogs never returned. This year, while we’ve seen them (they actually live under the porches of several neighbors), they have stayed out of our veggies. I think we have an understanding with the critters in the area. A few weeks ago we saved a squirrel that had somehow gotten itself caught in the downspout. That seems to be giving us good karma with the animals. Knocking on wood that the truce stays in tact.
How do you find the time?
This is always a challenge for us. Spink works 4 days/week, which allows extra time to work on the farm. We also devote part of our evenings and most of our weekends to the farm. I guess it doesn’t leave much time for other activities, but somehow we manage. Since we enjoy it so much, it all seems worth it. We have also been lucky to have friends come and help us remove rocks, shovel compost and do other odd jobs. This has been a huge help.
Can you make any money doing that?
We would like to think so. We personally know a few farmers that are making a living, but in general with the incredibly cheap food produced by the industrial food system, small local farms have a tough time. Our plan is to produce such a superior product that people will be banging down our doors to get it. Additionally our mantra of “smarter not harder” will hopefully put us in a profitable position and I must acknowledge with our current careers our farm is highly capitalized, a position most farmers are not in.
Selling Radishes in Tremont with Morningside Farm
Since the warm weather is upon us and we are still learning the ropes, we ended up with product and not enough customers! What to do? Good thing the local food scene is all about community. Today happens to be market day in Tremont, so we called up one of the vendors we know through the OSU Market Gardener Training program. George Remington of Morningside Farm in Hinckley, OH was gracious enough to give us a corner of his table. Super big thanks to him. Not only did we sell some radishes, we also got to learn more about good tips at the market….such as nice signage goes a long way to attracting customers (George has great signs with descriptions of all his plants), spraying down veggies so they stay fresh and glistening, the importance of knowing your product(s) so you can intelligently talk with customers, and it takes more than one person to set up and run the table. All in all a great day!
Turning over beds
Sunday, May 23rd we turned over two of our beds. We harvested the radish bed, pulled out more rocks (will the rock picking ever end???) and added some compost before planting more radishes. The other bed we turned over because we ended up with poor germination of our carrots and decided to start over from scratch. Not sure what happened there, but we only had a few sprouting. We are trying the burlap method again. Will post if this turns out better than last time. We do have another bed of carrots on which we used the burlap sacks and those are looking great!
