Where are the tomatoes?

Tomatoes have been largely absent from our market stand this year, with the exception of a few pints of cherry tomatoes over the last few weeks. This is partly by design, and partly by error/misfortune.

First, the design. We decided last year that we weren't interested in growing very many tomatoes. Like sweet corn and zucchini, tomatoes are something that lots of farmers and gardeners grow, and so are far more subject to competition and gluts that push down prices. For example, last weekend at market featured multiple stands with tables upon tables of tomatoes the growers were desperately trying to sell at discount prices. That's not our idea of making a living. So this year we dropped slicer (round) tomatoes entirely from our plans, and chose to grow only cherry tomatoes and sauce tomatoes, in moderate amounts.

We've done well with our cherry tomatoes in the past, growing six colorful heirloom varieties that produce a beautiful and tasty mix that customers loved. So this year we planned many beds of these. In addition, we like good heirloom sauce tomatoes better than slicers, even for eating, because they're meatier and less mushy. Our favorite variety, Opalka, has a flavor as good as any slicer we've eaten. So we planned a block of sauce tomatoes as well, intending to have enough to put away for ourselves for the winter and maybe to sell some extras if they had a good season.

Now for the error/misfortune. The tomato year got off to a bad start when almost all our indoor starts developed an odd disease that stunted and/or killed them before they were ready to go out. The symptoms were similar to damping off in that plants died when the stem pinched off near the soil line, but this disease affected more mature plants at warmer temperatures than is typical of damping off. Our research suggests it was a fungal disease, though we'll probably never know the specific identity of the disease or why exactly it caused us so much trouble this year in particular. In retrospect, we identified a number of factors that might have contributed, such as overwatering, insufficient air circulation, and growing shelves that could have been cleaned more thoroughly. Or perhaps potting soil or contaminated seed are to blame. In any case, by the time we realized the seriousness of the problem, we were already weeks behind.

Keep in mind that we always get a late start on tomato season anyway due to our microclimate in this narrow valley. We get frosts up to a month later than higher elevations in Boone County, and sure enough had one in mid-May this year. Any tomatoes are started late and go out late to begin with, so when several rounds of disease hit the seedlings, it really set us back. Finally, in desperation, we just started direct-seeding tomatoes in the beds and transplanting the few survivors regardless of size and health. Frankly, the direct-seeded tomatoes have done fantastically, far out-performing our transplants. There's a good chance we'll direct-seed a lot more next year, possibly under plastic cover to extend the season. They're much healthier and had no transplant shock, while costing us far less in labor and materials.

It hasn't helped that this year has been abnormally cool and wet, largely lacking the mid-90s and above that tomatoes love. So a slow start combined with slow growth means that our plants didn't even start producing until a few weeks ago, and the fruits are slow to mature in the continued cool weather. It was in the mid-40s here Saturday night, which does not please tomatoes one bit. Finally, the wet weather has encouraged the spread of fungus, which is marching up the plants and slowly killing them off. We're not the only folks having these problems, judging from conversations at market.

So all these factors mean our tomatoes are a near-bust. We've never had more than 5 pints of cherry tomatoes on the stand at one time, when we intended to have buckets. Our sauce tomatoes, primarily intended for our winter supply, have been maturing so slowly that we've gotten fairly worried about being able to preserve any meaningful quantity, much less sell any. Finally, we decided to bite the bullet and ensure our winter tomato supply by buying 80lb of canning tomatoes from our friend Bob Teerlinck at Sunny Acres Farm, who runs a very clean and trustworthy farm. Joanna spent most of Saturday (while I was at market) canning these, and at the end of a long day we ended up with 28 quarts of tomatoes and tomato juice, a good start toward a winter supply. Now, whatever yields we get off our tomatoes can be used as we need, knowing there's this background supply put up.

The best lesson from all this is that we love direct-seeding tomatoes. Not starting them indoors saves a lot of time and money on potting soil, lights, watering, care, and so on. Given that we never try to have early tomatoes anyway, it makes sense for us to try more direct-seeing next year and keep our costs and bother down on a product that's important but not integral to our sales. We'll see what happens.

Market plans, 8/29

This will be a small stand compared to the last month's worth. We're still getting very slow production from items like cherry tomatoes, due to the cool weather, and some items we just don't have very many of (like purple potatoes). Tomatillos are producing wonderfully, so this would be a good time to try the Tribune's tomatillo recipes or ones of your own. But this week will be a comedown for us.

NEW THIS WEEK

We might be bringing the first batch of saute mix, depending on our last-minute decision when we check the greens beds this morning. This would consist of kale, collards, pea shoots, possibly mustard greens, maybe others.

ALSO AVAILABLE

Cherry tomatoes (more colors are becoming available, though in small quantities), okra mixes, mustard greens, garlic, tomatillos, a few purple potatoes, and herbs.

DONE FOR NOW

Edamame are finished for the year, and green beans are done for now until our later planting comes online. Onions and cucumbers are also pretty much at their end; may have a few last ones this week.

Sorting & selling garlic

We take a very analytical approach to our garlic, in part because it is both expensive and valuable to grow. Here's a walk through how we plan, acquire, and plant, and manage our garlic.

Good organic seed garlic, such as that we get from Seed Savers Exchange in Iowa, can cost from $2.50-$3.50 per head. While garlic can be gotten cheaper than that, we've stuck with Seed Savers for several reasons. A, their garlic is grown in Iowa and so is more likely to be adapted to our climate than garlic from, say, Washington state. B, we appreciate the work they do preserving heirloom garlics and wish to support their diversity. C, their seed garlic has consistently been very high quality and we feel we're getting what we pay for.

That being said, it is expensive and garlic is reasonably easy to save for replanting, so every year we move toward saving more of our own. This has the dual benefits of saving us quite a bit of money, and also allowing us to select our garlic strains for the best adaption to our unique conditions.

This year (fall of 2008, actually) we planted twelve varieties of garlic, in varying amounts. Some of these were purchased, and some were saved from 2008. When we harvested the garlic in June, we sorted each variety into four grades by size and quality:

From left to right: Seed garlic, A garlic, B garlic, and sub-B. Seed grade is the largest and best-formed; we save this for replanting, although it would be the most lucrative to sell. A and B are market-grade heads, in which A is full-size and well formed, and B is still high quality but smaller than we'd like. Sub-B is anything that's deformed, unusually small, or otherwise not up to our market standards. The photo is vague, at least at a small scale, but hopefully you can see the rough gradient from left to right.

Above, you see our yields for 2009. We had more Bs than we would have liked for some varieties, but overall it was a good year. The 200 saved seed heads will save us somewhere from $500-$700 on seed cost, though we're buying some to keep expanding our plantings. The As and Bs are the garlic customers see at market, while the sub-Bs form our winter supply. Figuring on averaging two heads of garlic per week from September through March, that's about 60 heads needed, so we're close enough. Below, you see some of our seed garlic and our winter B garlic hung in a back room of the house for storage:
Finally, consider the As and the Bs. We sell As at $2/head, and Bs at $1.50/head. Just this past week we ran out of As for all but Shvelisi, and so have started bringing Bs instead, so if you noticed a price drop, that's why. The garlic is the same quality, just a bit smaller, so you pay a bit less. We find it easier to sell all the As first, then start in on the Bs, rather than having a more confusing stand with multiple prices and sizes.

So if you do the math, when we've sold all the As and Bs by the end of the year, we'll have made around $720 gross. Add in sales of early garlic scapes and some green garlic, and it comes out to around $900 gross. Take away the $350 we spent on seed garlic, and you get about $550 net, not counting time, labor, mulch, marketing, and so on. This is why we charge what we do; $500 net is not a lot for 8 months of care. Our costs will go down every year as we save more seed, but that will just allow us a more reasonable profit margin on it. Good thing we love to grow garlic!

Update: In all this, I didn't mention rot. A certain percentage of heads will go bad; genetic variability means there are always a few clunkers. This risk increases the longer they're stored, obviously, which is partly why we sell the best ones first. I mention this in part because we do our best to check sale heads for signs of rot, but it's not always obvious at the surface, and we make mistakes. A recent customer noted that he'd had a partially bad one, which I happily replaced. Just another fact of life with produce.

Customer reviews

We've gotten a series of nice comments and reviews lately, so we might as well share.

First, we recieved a very nice writeup from Scott Rowson of the Columbia Tribune, who writes an excellent and thoughtful biweekly food column. This column ran last Wednesday, and resulted in a significant uptick in folks asking about edamame at Saturday's market. Unfortunately, that day I had the final harvest for the year, and sold all 30lb by 10:00, so had to give bad news to many later folks. Sorry. You can still get our edamame at Sycamore Restaurant, which purchased a large amount and is currently serving them as an appetizer on their bar menu.

We also had a nice interaction with Dr. Elizabeth Alleman of Harrisburg, who came out to the farm to buy her winter's supply of garlic after a friend's reference. She later wrote a nice piece on her website about the garlic and our farm.

There was also an interesting writeup in a recent publication from the Missouri Farmers Union, though there doesn't seem to be a version online. The writer including several paragraphs about our farm in two-page story about local foods, and though I don't remember ever talking to him, he did a good job of summarizing our farm and our beliefs. Must have read the website thoroughly!

Finally, I want to thank all the customers who enjoyed our edamame and other products over the season so far. This past month especially has been good for us at market, with many loyal customers returning every week and a lot of interest in what we have to offer. Many folks have made a point of giving us reviews of the products they buy, and we really appreciate the feedback. So far it's been 99% positive, so we must be doing something right. Even so, please, please, please tell us if you ever get something bad. We need to know so we can fix it and prevent it.

We have a lot of items in the ground for the fall, and hope to stay at market through October and even November, depending on weather and all that. Thanks for your support so far and we'll keep seeing you at market.

Growing legumes

Legumes are neat, useful, fascinating crops, and we grow a lot of them. So here's a quick tour through the different types and uses of legumes on our farm.

Beans, peas, clover, and other legumes improve nitrogen levels in their soil through a symbiotic relationship with specialized bacteria which live on the plants' roots. These bacteria fix nitrogen into the soil through the nodules shown above, increasing the usable amount of this essential element for future crops without the need for artificial fertilizer. Thus, legumes are an essential part of most crop rotations, particularly on sustainably minded farms.

Legumes are a good crop for us, as they improve our soil naturally while being reasonably easy to manage. The fast growth and wide canopy of bush-type varieties, like the soybeans shown above, crowd out weeds pretty quickly and don't take nearly as much weed management as, say, lettuce. They are susceptible to some insect damage, but with healthy plants and soil we haven't had too much trouble with this. We also grow vine-type beans on tall (8+ feet) trellises, which have me up a ladder almost every day picking.

In fact, harvest is definitely the hardest and most time-consuming part of growing legumes, at least for us. Fresh items like snap peas and green beans need to be picked every day or two to get the individual pods at optimum size. We picked any given planting of edamame every 3-4 days, and at the peak of soybean season we were in the field for 2-3 hours almost every day picking along the rows. Some folks just let most of the plant mature and harvest all at once, but we feel our approach yields a higher percentage of edamame at an optimum size for the best quality. Another option is large mechanical harvesters, but heavy equipment brings a whole new set of costs to the table, including soil compaction and damage, pollution, and cost. We're a manual farm and prefer to keep our costs personal rather than mechanical. Manually picking each planting 3-4 times ensures that the customer gets the highest quality edamame, and really increases the overall yield as well.

Other legumes are meant to be harvested when dry, like cowpeas and the mixed heirloom beans shown above. These we let go until the plant starts to die back and the pod dries up, then we move along the row pulling whole pods. We prefer to let beans of this sort dry in the field, but this year has been so wet that we have beans sprouting in their pods before they ever fully dry. So we've been harvesting whole rows and bundling the half-dry plants, then hanging them from the rafters of our barn to finish drying. Shelling these is a major project, so we're likely to order a small mechanical sheller to make the task practical. The flavor of the above beans is truly fantastic, like nothing you'll get in a store. We're trying to decide whether and how many to sell versus keep.
Legume beds are also easy to turn around to the next crop. Above is a set of four early edamame beds that we were able to quickly clear, hoe, and replant into fall crops because the heavy bean bushes shaded out most weeds and kept the soil in good condition. I have a photos series from this vantage showing us clearing the old plants, hoeing, seeding, and mulching. When I have time, I'll convert that into a stop-action series showing how this quick turnaround is achieved.

So anyway, we like legumes, they're fun to grow, they improve our soil, and they provide us and our customers with some of the best-tasting and unique food on the farm. Pretty good for a staple plant.

Market plans, August 22

We're going to be in transition for the next few weeks, as some of our main summer products finish up and some new fall ones start coming on. Chances are it'll be a more diverse, but smaller, stand for a while. These ridiculously cool temperatures for late August are a mixed blessing; great for fall greens, beans, and root crops but terrible for tomatoes, okra, peppers, and other hot-weather items.

NEW THIS WEEK:

Several items will make an appearance. We'll likely have a first small harvest of fresh soup beans; we're growing four varieties this year and together they make a colorful and very tasty mix that will make excellent soups or bean dishes. We cooked a sample with nothing but salt and they were fantastic.

Okra and cherry tomatoes have been creeping slowly onto the stand. We're growing four varieties of the former and six of the latter, but as they each mature differently the full mixes are yet to come.

Fall greens are starting to produce; we sold a small amount of baby mustard greens last week and expect to slowly increase quantities in the next few weeks, along with collards, kale, and more as they become ready. We'll hopefully return to our popular saute mix as well.

We expect to dig a few purple fingerling potatoes Friday, so hopefully we will have some of those if the voles didn't beat us to them. They're a deep purple all the way through and very, very tasty as new potatoes.

Also, we'll have some pints of small pearl-type onions, yellow and red. These were pretty popular on Wednesday, so I'll bring some more. They're nice for roasting or stews, or for folks who don't like to use a lot of onion at once and hate cutting up a big onion and putting half back in the fridge.

ALSO AVAILABLE
This will be, guaranteed, the last day for edamame. We got a pretty good second harvest off the final few rows and sold some Wednesday, but the rest will be available Saturday. Then we're done. We'll also have some more of our heirloom green bean mix, and of course a wide variety of garlic. Basil, parsley, mint, sage, tarragon, lemon balm, and dill heads will likely be available.

COMING SOON
Our fall planting of the very popular Fin de Bagnol green beans is looking very healthy, so sometime in September you can expect those to return. More of most of the new items will start showing up in the coming weeks as their production reaches stride.

Setting prices at market

One of the more interesting challenges in market farming involves deciding how to set prices. There are a lot of philosophical and practical elements that go into this, and I thought customers might have an interest about how we approach the problem. Overall, I think there are two ways to approach pricing, which I'll call comparative and production.

In comparative pricing, you look at what at item is already going for, whether at the grocery store or at market, and decide where to set your price relative to others. So if the store has tomatoes at $2/lb, maybe you choose to go to $2.50 or $3 because you think yours are better and fresher. Or maybe you decide you want to give customers a deal and go to $1.50 and sell lots of tomatoes. Or maybe you decide that your tomatoes look better or worse than others' at market and set your prices based on that. However the decision is reached, you're basically setting your prices from the demand end of the economic scale: what's the going rate customers are paying, how does my product fit into that, and how desperate am I to move that product?

Production pricing means ignoring outside prices, and looking just at what the product cost you to grow in terms of time, material, loss, and profit margin, and setting the price at a point where you're going to make the amount of money you want to make. Frankly, this is a lot riskier, because often the production price isn't particularly relevant to the comparative price. This is one reason why local foods are often perceived to be more expensive, because most of us aren't getting the steep cuts in production cost granted by things like irrigation subsidies, cheap migrant labor, industrial efficiencies of scale, or unsustainable use of resources. Production pricing means paying pretty close attention to all the time and inputs you use on each product, and trying to back-calculate from that what it's actually worth to you.

Frankly, I think far more growers need to keep production pricing in mind, especially hobby or non-full-time growers. If you're just doing this for fun, or side income, you're far more likely to go the comparative route and unload product at whatever the going rate is because it's not really a business. I know one person who has proudly proclaimed that their prices are cheaper than Wal-Mart's, despite the near-impossibility of achieving that with any kind of reasonable profit margin (this person has a spouse with a full-time job and benefits). I've seen many people selling produce at prices that simply don't work in an economic sense (like garlic for $.50/head) for an actual business, though maybe they're breaking even on their fun hobby. Basically, production pricing works from the supply end of the economic scale: this is what I produce, this is how much it costs to produce, and this is the income I need to make on it regardless of demand.

Although the reality is obviously not that black-and-white, on our farm, we are working very hard to rely more on production pricing than comparative, especially because we do intend to make a full living on this business, not just supplement other income. That means that like a garage or a restaurant, we have to not just cover costs, but actually make a reasonable income that allows us to cover things like health insurance and retirement planning which hobby growers don't have to rely on their vegetables for. We have actively chosen not to grow certain popular products like slicer tomatoes and sweet corn, for which we don't think we can get a price that makes it worthwhile to grow, regardless of the demand for them. We see no point in having a popular but unprofitable business.

Obviously this consideration is going to be different for every farm, and customer reaction to prices partly depends on their opinion and knowledge of the farm in question. Are you looking for a good deal on tomatoes, or trying to support a certain method of farming? Does it matter that we're a self-sufficient organic farm, or should we have to find ways to meet the best-deal price regardless of other factors? Certainly our choice of no-till, deeply organic methods raises the cost of our produce somewhat compared to a highly chemicalized, highly mechanized local farm (of which there are plenty), but we believe there is long-term value in our methods and ask our customers to consider all factors of their economic choices, just as we do in our personal lives.

We believe that the strongest votes are cast by wallets, not ballots, and people who buy from us are very much voicing their support for the way we're choosing to farm and to live. This is especially true given that we're very open about our practices and willing to have customers out to see what we do. Really, I see it as equivalent to any other values-driven economic choice, like the concept of a "Christian family business" or "American-made". We're grateful to those who choose to support what we do, and hope they'll tell us if we ever let them down.

Market plans, Wednesday August 19

We'll be coming to Wednesday market again this week (4-6pm). Should have a nice diversity of items, including garlic, green beans, yellow cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, small red onions, mixed herbs, possibly a pint or two of okra, and....oh yes, edamame. A bit more edamame, as we work through the last rows doing the cleanup of late-maturing pods. Saturday will definitely be the last day for this.

If the customer who asked about yellow cucumbers on Saturday is reading this, I will indeed be holding back half a dozen for you. Hope to see you there, and hope the weather cooperates and defies the forecast.

Should I be farming in Afghanistan? Part II

Back in March, I wrote a post about our government's work to support small farmers in Afghanistan, noting that many of the efforts and initiatives the Missouri National Guard was rightly developing over there are the exact sorts of things that are discouraged, unfunded, or outright illegal back home. Whether or not you read that post then, please read it now before continuing, because I now have even more reasons to raise this important question.

Saturday's Columbia Tribune carried a followup article on the Guard's excellent work with Afghan farmers, noting that:

Guard units have helped build irrigation systems, distributed wheat seed to farmers, set up canning plants for fruits and vegetables, and planted thousands of fruit and nut trees, among other projects.

This is good stuff, as these programs are excellent ways to help these farmers transition away from poppy/opium production and earn livings on more sustainable and ethical products. The glaring question left unanswered, however, is why such things are so looked-down-on in the US?

Replace "Missouri small farmers" with "Afghan small farmers" in either of these articles, and you'd be laughed out of the room. Small-scale canning plants? Good luck getting loans or regulatory approval to do that here. Frankly, I'd be okay with fending for ourselves if everyone else had to as well. But when every kind of farm and food production EXCEPT small, local, direct-market farms is already subsidized, and when even Afghan farmers get better aid and support than we do, there's something deeply wrong.

It's not just a question of government priorities. It's a question of logic. If these small canning plants (and the mobile slaughterhouses mentioned in the previous article) are apparently safe and effective enough for the Afghan population, why aren't they for Americans? We have serious regulatory and financial barriers to any kind of regionalized food system in this country, yet apparently these things are simple, cheap, and easy enough to develop that poor Afghan farmers are expected to be able to use them economically and safely. So why can't American farmers be allowed to show and use the same ingenuity and entrepreneurship we're trying to instill in Afghanistan?

It seems that Kit Bond has been instrumental in helping the Missouri National Guard to the forefront of these activities, but I wonder what his vote would be a similar attempt was made to allow these useful developments for Missouri small farmers like us? Any chance we could get the National Guard to help build the Columbia Farmers Market Pavilion? Or do I have to start planting poppies first?

Market plans, 8/15

This is tomatillo week in Columbia, as the Tribune's food section featured several recipes on using them. We tried our own version of Marcia's tomatillo gazpacho and loved it:

We simplified this to fit the ingredients we had on hand, simply tossing 1lb of tomatillos in a blender along with 3 cloves of mild garlic, 1/2 cucumber, a few cups of our thawed chicken broth, and some salt and sugar. The taste was fantastic just like that, though I can see how the avacado, olives, shrimp, and other extras in the original recipe would add complexity. This soup was actually a great example of why diverse garlic matters, as we used a variety intended for raw use, and didn't end up with any burning or long-lasting garlic flavor the way stronger varieties can. We topped the soup with chopped cherry tomatoes and cucumbers and ate the whole batch in one sitting. This is a definite winner. Pick up some tomatillos tomorrow and try it for yourself.

NEW THIS WEEK
Tomatillos. We'll see how many we have; I brought 6 pints to market on Wednesday and hope to have at least that many Saturday (a pint is about 3/4 lb). Salad Garden should have them as well, if/when we run out. Our plants are loaded with small fruit, but they mature slowly and every time I check I expect to find more ready than I actually do. One of these weeks we're going to be flooded with them.

There's also a chance we'll make a small early harvest of mustard greens, so look for some nice baby mustard if you come early.

ALSO AVAILABLE
Garlic, green bean mix, edamame, possibly some cucumbers, full mix of herbs, and more.

DONE FOR NOW
Nothing yet, but green beans and edamame are close. Maybe one more week on these. Look for our edamame at Sycamore and Main Squeeze, to whom I made deliveries on Tuesday. This will be the best remaining week for edamame, so consider buying some extras and freezing them, which multiple folks did at the Wednesday market. Just boil them for 2.5 minutes, then either freeze as-is, or shell before freezing. Then you can pop them out anytime over the winter, give them a quick final cook, and enjoy the taste.

COMING SOON
Okra and cherry tomatoes will someday be ready.

Tomatillos

New this week (and this year) at our stand are fresh tomatillos. A member of the nightshade family (including tomatoes), tomatillos have a tart flavor and are used often in Mexican cooking.

Their most common use seems to be in salsas and other sauces, especially roasted. We made a roasted tomatillo/garlic salsa based on this recipe from a local vegan cooking blog, and it was fantastic. Basically, all we did was place the tomatillos and a head of garlic on a baking sheet, drizzle oil over them, and place under the broiler for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I sauteed some hot pepper, onion, and cumin seed until aromatic and tender. Then we blended everything with just enough water to make a sauce, and used it over beans. This would be even better with herbs like cilantro or epazote, which we don't have.

Others have told me they use tomatillos for enchilada sauce or soups. Indeed, look for a neat tomatillo gazpacho recipe in this afternoon's Tribune, which Marcia sent to me ahead of time but I haven't had time to make. We'll probably make it on Thursday and post a review.

In any case, we'll some of have these at market Wednesday and Saturday this week, and for as long as the plants produce. We've given some samples to trusted friends, with good reviews so far (another will likely be added as a comment to this post), so we're confident in offering them for sale. Hope you like them.

Wednesday market, 8/12

We'll be selling at the Wednesday Columbia Farmers Market this week. Same site as Saturday, open 4pm-6pm. We expect to have garlic, green beans, edamame, herbs, tomatillos, and possibly more. Look for more on tomatillos in Wednesday morning's post, as well as in Wednesday afternoon's Tribune. Regardless, hope to see some familiar faces there.

Farm update, early August

We've had three really good market days in a row now, anchored by the very popular trio of diverse garlic, heirloom green beans, and edamame. We've been getting so much good feedback on these products and are thrilled with how well they're selling and how much people like them. We haven't had a whole lot of diversity lately, though, as our cherry tomatoes, okra, tomatillos, and other summer items are taking their time to come on.


The market garden has been somewhat neglected lately (I don't even have current photos), as we're spending so much time harvesting beans and edamame in the main field, and clearing & replanting beds for fall items. In the above photo, you see edamame in the foreground, newly planted fall greens & radishes behind them, sorghum off to the left, dent corn to the right, drying soup beans in front of the corn, then in the back middle we have edamame, amaranth, tomatillos, and okra. Not pictured are sunflowers, more beans, potatoes, and sweet corn (this latter just for us). The white blooms in the far back are a buckwheat cover crop which is loaded with bees right now.

Joanna, especially, has been getting fall items seeded in the market garden (collards, kale, mustard, bok choi, turnips, & more) . Our cherry tomatoes are finally ripening, and cucumbers & squash are finally producing (we only have small quantities of these last two).

Weather, as always, is a factor. Last week a strong storm swept over Goatsbeard Farm while I was working, pelting the dairy with pea-sized hail for about 15 minutes. Luckily this missed our farm, though the next morning a related front swept through with high winds, which funneled down our main field's valley and flattened a lot of our very tall sorghum. Some of this has since made an amazing recovery, but there are still lots of broken stalks:

Otherwise we're reasonably grateful to finally get some hot, 90's weather. Makes life less comfortable, but we need it to really spur the tomatoes, peppers, okra, and more. And we're still in very seasonal conditions that we really can't complain about, given what they could be, especially with enough rain still to avoid too much need for irrigation.

We're trying to stick to our summer schedule, working outdoors mornings and evenings and doing easier/indoor tasks during the afternoon. It works reasonably well, and I enjoy the chance for after-lunch naps.

On the blog this week, look for more on tomatillos, a post full of pretty wildlife pictures, and photos of good farm food.

Market plans, August 8

Good grief, have edamame been popular! We sold a lot last week, including 3lb to Uprise Bakery, and will be bringing similar amounts this week. I've been getting a lot of very good feedback about them, making the long daily harvests worthwhile. Overall we're in a bit of a product rut, with about the same mix of items for the last few weeks and probably at least a few more weeks. But luckily they're all very good and very popular products. Still, it's a learning process on really getting our plantings correct to always have a diverse and worthwhile stand throughout the season.

NEW THIS WEEK

Nothing, really. The forecast heat & humidity will feel new.

ALSO AVAILABLE

8 varieties of garlic, all our standard herbs (basil, parsley, tarragon, lemon balm, 3 mints, chives), heirloom green bean mix, and several varieties of edamame.

DONE FOR NOW

Potatoes are done for a few weeks until our purple fingerlings are ready (if the voles haven't eaten them all). Fin de Bagnol green beans are done for now, though we have a fall planting just coming up now.

COMING SOON

We got our first small harvests of tomatillos, okra, and cherry tomatoes this week. All of these will hopefully be producing market quantities within another week or two. Look for an article on tomatillos in next week's Tribune food section.

Life with farm help

For the past month or so, we've had regular weekend help on the farm. An alumni of Joanna's college (and another Geology major) has been working a summer job in Columbia, and has quickly integrated herself with the farm. Laura has been spending many partial/whole weekends out here, enjoying the farm and helping with whatever work we're doing. It's been a great arrangement, allowing her to get out of the city (she grew up on a farm) and giving us good company and excellent help.

It's also allowed for some fun culinary cooperation. While Laura is vegan and we're (on-farm) omnivores, we all respect the convictions that lead to our personal choices and enjoy crafting truly farm-fresh meals together. Laura is my kind of vegan, preferring to base her meals on real whole fruits, vegetables, and grains rather than processed meat substitutes (no tofurkey or soy dogs for any of us). We agree that it's better to enjoy foods as they were meant to be, or avoid them altogether and accept that sacrifice to personal beliefs. Especially this time of year, it's so easy to put together excellent meals based in our fresh produce that we don't really think about the meals as "vegan", in the sense of making a conscious choice to exclude something. It's just a natural way for all of us to eat together on a diverse, productive vegetable farm.

Laura and her sister run a blog on food politics and other related issues, and she has written several recaps of time spent at our place. I found it fascinating to read her perspectives and descriptions on what goes on here, and thought other readers and customers might find these valuable as well. So enjoy:

A Weekend of Harvest at Chert Hollow Farm

Another Chert Hollow Adventure

Working with Laura has also been a good learning experience for us on working with regular helpers. By next year we're going to need to arrange some form of help, whether interns or paid workers, as we keep expanding our offerings. So this has been a good trial run, and we're grateful. We'll miss her when she leaves.

Fresh duck meals

Earlier this year, somewhat on a whim, I brought home four young ducks from a nearby farm. Ducks are prolific egg layers and tasty, and I figured they would fit in well with our geese without adding too much management needs. That last part was wrong, as they were very independent-minded and continually failed to respect fencing. They regularly got into the chicken shed despite every attempt to rig things so chickens could get in and ducks couldn't; once in they would eat all the grain and foul the water. Several times we caught them merrily exploring around the house, despite all the other birds' willingness to respect their large fenced paddocks to range in. Finally, we'd had enough, and it was time for tasty, tasty duck.

We butchered all four one recent afternoon, saving two for fresh consumption and freezing two for later. We got four different nice meals out of the first two, briefly summarized below.

Roasted duck
We kept this one whole, stuffed the cavity with our fennel, onions, and garlic, and roasted it in a pan with chopped potatoes. I had rubbed the breast with orange zest, and the meat came out with a nice citrus flavor, while the roasted vegetables carried a good duck flavor.

Duck with peach marinade
This was loosely inspired by a recipe in the Tribune, which accompanied a nice column on the values of local foods and businesses. For our version, I marinated the breasts and legs from a single duck in a sauce of water, chopped market peaches, salt, sugar, and cider vinegar. Then I simmered everything together for hours, resulting in nice, tender meat that fell off the bone, topped with the reduced peach sauce. Served with sides of our fresh oven-roasted potato fries and sauteed fresh beans with garlic, this was a great meal (see below)

Duck broth vegetable soup
With any poultry we use, we always keep and boil the carcasses for broth, yielding lots of tasty liquid plus the last scraps of meat that are easier to strip once cooked. We generated several gallons of broth this time, freezing some and saving some for a basic soup. In this case, I just combined lots of our onions, garlic, potatoes, green beans, and zucchini in a long-simmering duck broth, with appropriate salt, pepper, herbs, and some frozen basil cubes left over from last year. Toward the end, I added a few cups of lentils for heartiness. Easy, filling, and tasty.

Duck stir fry
Finally, with the scrap meat left over from the four-carcass broth, I made a simple stir fry with the meat, our garlic, onions, green beans, and zucchini, flavoring it with soy sauce and rice vinegar. 15 minutes from start to finish.

All that from two young birds, plus two more in the freezer along with broth. Not a bad exchange, and our lives are just a little simpler again without four stubbornly independent birds crapping on our front step.

And, of course, no article on eating duck can end without a mention of the Fawlty Towers Gourmet Night: