Fresh from the Farm this Week

Squash bugs. Horrid little creatures. It's time to admit that we lost our entire summer squash crop. We kept thinking that this plant or that plant was going to make it. This morning, the last of the plants finally looked so bad we had to admit defeat. Sigh. We tried everything except chemical pesticides...and let me tell you, we are starting to see why they are so widely used in farming!

But we do have another set of plants currently growing. So far we have managed to protect them from the bugs but they are young yet and haven't even started blooming. So it will be a few weeks before we have any more squash...if we have any at all. What an infestation!

All baskets:

Red Norland Potatoes: The average person eats 75 lbs of potatoes a year. We are happy to provide a small portion of your annual intake!

Cucumbers: In the late 1600s, the cucumber was thought only fit for consumption by cows...and it was actually spelled cowcumber!

Fresh Garlic: The sticky juice from the cloves is actually used to make adhesive for repairing glass and china.

Parsley: Italian in the full baskets and curly in the half baskets.

Poblanos: A delicious mild pepper from the state of Puebla, Mexico.

Half baskets:

Ichiban Eggplant: A Japanese variety, but the eggplant originates from India...and is botanically a berry!

Beets: Cherry red beets with light interiors are Chioggia beets. The deep dark red ones are Detroit Dark Reds.

Empress Green Beans: An excellent source of vitamin C and vitamin K.

Full baskets:

Wax Beans: Don't worry - these aren't sickly green beans, they are supposed to be yellow!

Carrots: One of the few vegetables that are more nutritious when cooked.

Cheese of the week: Feta
Herb of the week: Oregano

Recipe:

Carrot and Beet Salad (serves 6)

8 carrots shredded
3 beets, peeled and shredded
2 garlic cloves
1/3 cup chopped parsley
1/3 cup rice vinegar

Combine all the ingredients, refrigerate for at least an hour and enjoy!


Almost ready!

Experimental Vegetables

When I designed the new garden layout last year I had a small area marked "experimental". I got some funny looks from Mom but she let it slide. Well, we haven't actually planted right in that area, but we have been experimenting with some new crops. Nothing for resale this year but I think we have at least one winner for a full crop next year! So what have we been up to?

Rhubarb: I think I've mentioned this one before. Rhubarb is not the most popular southern product. It's a perennial plant loves a long cool spring and a reasonable summer to grow big and healthy. Well folks, let's face it, that's not Texas! But I recently read about growing rhubarb as an annual from seed. In the north, it dies back in the winter and takes the whole spring to grow to harvestable size. But here we can protect it from frost so that it grows all winter and really takes off for the few short weeks of cool spring we have before succumbing to the inferno of summer. Well we planted a few rows of it and while we certainly made some mistakes in its care (didn't realize just how frost sensitive it was!), we actually got enough of a crop for a few pies! So next year we are sure to plant a decent amount and actually have some available for our vegetable subscribers!

Artichokes: Now, these aren't such a weird vegetable. But none of us at the farm have ever (successfully) grown them before. Mom and I enjoyed our very first homegrown artichoke last weekend and it was delicious! We only have two plants and we could easily eat all the flower buds from them so I'm not sure if we will ever have enough for the whole CSA - maybe enough to reward people for coming out and volunteering during the spring! But we will be planting more from this next year.



Cardoon: I had only ever read about this vegetable in books but when I saw one for sale at the nursery I had to get it. We still haven't tried it yet but I plan on it this weekend. It's a close relative of the artichoke and while the buds are edible like its' cousins, it is grown for it's huge stalks. Apparently they taste like artichoke. I sure hope so - it's all that wonderful flavor but in a HUGE vegetable instead of a little fussy thing that takes as many calories to prepare and eat as it provides (well, until you dip it in butter!). I'll let you know how it really tastes though!

Fresh from the Farm

Open wide for good farm food!


Did you know that the US wastes 40-50% of the food we produce? Wow! At first, I figured it was mostly due to things people throw out at home and at restaurants. But it turns out a huge portion comes from the production end of food. Farmers toss plenty of perfectly edible vegetables for cosmetic reasons. Cucumber not straight enough? No one will eat that! Carrot has forked roots? Disgusting! Lettuce has a few bug holes in it? Throw it all away!

In our continuing effort to make Sand Holler a sustainable farm, we strive to reduce food waste. However, this requires a partnership with the people that consume our products. Many people are already aware that fresh local food grown to sell directly to the customers might not always be quite as pretty as the wholesale production items that can be purchased in the grocery store. But many of you might also know that these 'ugly' vegetables are just as good - or even better tasting!

So why am I going on about this now? Well, let's just say I hope you enjoy your holey chard this week...(don't worry, as the spring flush of bugs dies down the chard and other veggies will recover and be more hole-free in the future)!

We are right in the transition from cool season to warm season crops. You would think this would be an abundant time of year. However, it tends to be a lean time - the cool crops are petering out in the heat, the warm crops still haven't taken off as the season is early. But its a unique time of year for the diversity and it doesn't last long. In baskets this week:

All baskets:

Red Norland Potatoes: These beauties are packed in plastic clam shells to keep them all together but they prefer a little more air circulation so be sure to unpack them when you get them. They've been left dirty because washing them prevents the skins from 'healing' as fast (which makes them last longer). Their delicate new potato skins mean that they won't last like mature store bought potatoes even after fully dried though!

Little Finger and Purple Dragon Carrots: Don't forget that carrot greens are edible too! The Carrot Musuem lists several recipes and other ideas to try out.

Ruby Red or Lucullus Swiss Chard: Wonderful green that lasts well into the summer and originates from Sicily.

Empress Green Beans: I knew these were almost ready but didn't expect them this early!

Sunburst Squash: The UFOs of the vegetable world.

Parlsey: Italian in the half baskets and curly in the full baskets.

Half baskets:

Early Fortune Cucumbers: The Romans used this vegetable to treat scorpion stings!

Full baskets:

Ichiban Eggplant: A Japanese variety, but the eggplant originates from India...and is botanically a berry!

Baby Bull's Blood Beets: This beet variety is typically grown here more for it's leaves...but the bugs took over so these were harvested as itty bitty baby beets.

Herb of the week: Rosemary


Recipe:

Not an exact recipe, but just a serving idea. Roast potatoes with olive oil and rosemary. Sprinkle with chevre and salt and enjoy!


Soon to come:

It's amazing looking at the garden and seeing what we will be producing in a few weeks. Amazing...and making us all impatient! There's loads of green tomatoes, buds on the okra, and blooms on the melons. And some of the corn is even shoulder high now!

Five out of six...

We bred six goats this year (hopefully...our seventh goat is looking a bit pregnant but I swear she wasn't exposed to a buck!). Out of those six goats, FIVE of them had problems kidding. It's made us question all of our management practices. But each one has had a different issue so we are having a hard time pinning it on anything like nutrition, parasites or diseases. Hopefully it's just a fluke year and this is our last kidding problem for a long time.

Miranda is one of two does we kept from last year, along with her littermate Matilda. They were the only does out of the 7 kids. Matilda was rejected from the first day by her mother Savannah, so she never knew she was a goat. We HAD to keep Matilda since we were her family but she did also bond with her sister Miranda, so we HAD to keep her too! When they went off to get bred (the buck we have here, Val, is their father) Miranda was the only one to come into heat so Matilda came back unbred...supposedly.

This morning as Mom went out to milk, she saw Miranda was in labor. She quickly delivered a little girl! Miranda hadn't been very big so Mom was sure that was it (you'd think after all the surprises we've had, we would not be sure of anything anymore!). But another pair of hooves appeared. It looked like the baby was upside down - the bottom of the hooves were up. But Dale quickly realized that the next body part to come out was a butt and not a nose! Miranda was a champ and delivered the breach birth with no assistance. But things weren't right.

The little buck had severely contracted tendons - like Lilly but in all four legs and far worse. There was no way he could stand and the same cramped space he was in had also caused deformities of his head. His breathing was labored, his eyes were rolled in the back of his head, his tongue was lolling. Fortunately, Dale is made of sterner stuff than us wussy vegetarians and he did the only humane thing possible for the struggling buck. It was sad, but yet another part of farming life.

Miranda and the little girl, Dahlia, are doing just fine. Matilda never left Miranda's side during the birthing process and I'm sure she'll be a good auntie!

Farm cats

I can't really imagine the farm without the cats now.  They came to us from my brother Shea.  They had a bizarre back story that we really don't know the details of.  The momma cat and her two kittens showed up on Shea's doorstep one day and of course were given food.  A neighbor soon told them that he had brought them there - he didn't speak fluent English so it was a broken conversation.  But the gist was the neighbor had rescued them from an abusive household and he wanted Shea to take care of them (apparently, Shea has 'sucker' printed on his forehead since he raised another stray momma and her kittens the year before).  Alas, Shea was not actually thrilled to have yet more cats added to his household, so the trio was whisked off to the farm to become barn cats.

Well, barn cats they are not.  Momma Cinder and her now grown babes Momo and Barley, have never even set foot in the barn.  But this year they have finally proven their worth catching gophers!  The gophers made a mess of our garden last year and we hope that the cats actually prove a good deterrent because nothing else we did kept them at bay.  Here's the first gopher Momo caught - I'd never seen a gopher so up close and personal.  They are nasty things and could probably do some real damage with those claws!

And they are always a pleasure on a rainy day when we are all cooped up inside.  Nothing beats seeing some kitties snuggle!  Momo and Barley are champion snugglers.

Carrots

We've had a bumper crop of carrots on the farm this year.  In the desperate search for ways to use up the orange roots, I've learned quite a bit of trivia about what I thought was an ordinary vegetable.  I did know they come in a plethora of colors (we've grown them all!) and I just love this picture from the USDA:

The carrot is an ancient vegetable, most likely originating in present day Afghanistan.  Originally, the plant was grown for its medicinal properties but over the centuries has been developed into a sweet taproot that serves as a culinary vegetable today.

And then people went nuts and started growing bizarre carrots for county fairs.  You know those enormous pumpkins that are hauled on a trailer?  Well, carrots don't get that big, but I was still shocked at the world record holder...18.985 lbs.  And it's a horrible monstrosity.

There's carrot festivals and even a World Carrot Museum (though I think its just a 'virtual' museum, it's still kooky).

I'll be posting some of the carrot recipes that we will try in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned!

Nearly a month later!

It's a busy time of year for everyone.  I'm still making the hour drive to the farm with the new little one, but she keeps me occupied for much of the day and I haven't been as active in all the work.  But it doesn't mean anything has slowed down!

We started our vegetable subscriptions for the year and are now providing produce for 6 families.  We hope to add more customers as the summer veggies start to trickle in...speaking of which, I think we will get our first summer squash this weekend!  It's one of the eight ball squashes I've been dying to try.  Dale continues to dig new beds and get the entire garden under cultivation.  He's making amazing progress.  Also in the garden, the construction of a "shed" has been underway for a few weeks.  It's hardly a shed - I'll post pictures and a description soon.

And of course all the goat babies means that we have tons and tons of milk!  Mom and I have made two batches of cheese so far - feta and mozzarella - and I'm gearing up for more hard cheeses this year.  The dairy is a ton of work but I really love it.  I'm hoping to find an 'apprentice' this year to help out with the process.


Spring is fun on the farm - but boy, is it a lot of work!