Growing & preserving strawberries

Late May is strawberry season, and ours are producing wonderfully. We're picking these every day to get them at peak ripeness, with a top yield so far of ~10 lb on Sunday afternoon. We preserve a significant percentage of these for our year-round larder, and finished the last of the 2010 berries just as the first ones of 2011 ripened. Here's a quick look at how we grow, handle, and preserve strawberries on the farm.

Before we started growing our own, we would spend a day or two each spring down at Pick & Pick, a U-pick farm east of Columbia, harvesting a year's worth of strawberries, then do marathon sessions of preserving. These were far from organic, but were the best quality & freshness available in the area and our preserves are far preferable to us than buying tasteless, shipped-in commercial berries out of season. We buy and preserve virtually all our fruit from fresh local sources year-round, using a significant amount of our total food budget, so establishing our own plantings has been a significant achievement.

We have two 20' beds, established in the lower part of our orchard area, which we've spent the last few years clearing from a thick stand of cedars (we have blueberries, brambles, asparagus, and fruit trees started here as well). We built up raised beds, leaving the cut-off stumps in place, and established the first berry plants in spring 2009. We chose a variety called Sparkle, described a non-commercial home variety with exceptional flavor but short shelf life. That's exactly right; they are amazingly sweet fresh off the plant, but are tender and don't hold well. Not something you'd stick in a bin for market 3 days later. They're very vibrant plants, runnering so persistently that we all but gave up trying to control them. In the photo above, there are supposed to be two clear beds with a nice aisle; can you tell? They transplant wonderfully as well; we've given out several rounds of dug-up plants to our workers, which have flowered and fruited this year despite being dug up only a few weeks beforehand. We expect to do some serious thinning and management later in the year to keep these vibrant, but are impressed with how resilient and healthy the plants are even in their crowded conditions.

These berries are included in our organic certification, despite us having no intention of selling them, because our management methods easily fit within organic standards and it's easier to have everything under one system. We have been distributing some to our workers, with rave reviews; these are something 2012 CSA customers could expect to receive in small quantities. In good soil, with raised beds to help with drainage, they've done very well. We definitely get some insect/slug/pest damage on the berries, but for home use who cares about a few nibbles, and they aren't being stored for market so there's never time for any damage to get worse. The yield is lovely; we pick them every day and generally process or eat them the same day. Here are our favorite methods:

TRAY FREEZING

 The easiest method. We simply gently wash the berries, dump them on a cloth towel to dry slightly, cut off the greens & a small bit of the shoulder (which the chickens love), and arrange the whole berries cut side down on a baking sheet. This goes into the freezer, and 12 to 24 hours later we scrape the berries up into freezer bags. Simple, and very easy in the winter to grab a bag and quickly thaw whenever we want berries. Sparkles are so sweet that even after 11 months in the freezer they taste excellent right out of the bag. These are great in winter for topping simple desserts and just straight snacks.

SUGAR PACK

A bit more space-efficient, this method takes just a bit more work. Start as above, but cut the berries into smaller chunks and put into a bowl. Sprinkle a little sugar onto the berries as you go, and mix until you get a light coating on all pieces. Some recipes call for up to 3/4 cup sugar per quart berries, but we generally use less, maybe 1/4 cup per quart. Leave these to sit in the fridge for maybe an hour, to give the sugar time to draw some juice from the berries; you should end up with a dense berry/juice slurry. This can be packed into freezer containers (we use quarts) and freezes as a solid block. These are great in winter for making sauces, fruit yogurt, and desserts.

JAMS/PRESERVES

This is pretty obvious, and takes a lot of berries & work but doesn't take up freezer space. During the peak of harvest we'll hope to make and can at least one batch of jam.

STRAWBERRY ICE

A favorite recipe passed down through Joanna's family, this sweet sauce is an especially nice & useful treat in winter. It's incredibly easy to mix with yogurt or use as a fruit sauce in all sorts of ways. It's also very space-efficient in the freezer; we preserve this in small, used Goatsbeard cheese containers.

Ingredients:

2 quarts (8 cups) strawberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 medium lemon, juiced

Directions:
- Boil sugar and water together for 5 minutes. Cool.
- Wash & hull berries, then puree in a blender.
- Combine berries with sugar water & lemon juice.
- Freeze.
- Before serving, allow strawberry ice to thaw overnight in the refrigerator or at least a few hours at room temperature; it should be partially frozen.
DRYING
Dried strawberries are very good and another way to preserve berries without taking up freezer space. We wash berries, slice in cross sections to a thickness of about 1/4 inch, place on dehydrator trays, and dry for 12 to 18 hours. We used a temperature of 125ºF last year. These are delicious with intense strawberry flavor, though the volume reduction during drying is always a little depressing.

FRESH EATING

Of course, a significant fraction simply get eaten fresh. Sliced onto pancakes, incorporated into farm-made yogurt with honey, topping fresh custards, simply eaten hot off the plant, there are infinite ways to enjoy fresh strawberries.

Market plans, May 28

After skipping the last market, we expect to return with a nice diverse stand this Saturday. We've been relatively fortunate in our weather lately, despite receiving around 3" of rain in the past few days along some lightly damaging hail. Much of Missouri has had it far worse, with damaging winds, tornadoes, and hail all over the state. We dodged the really nasty weather on Wednesday afternoon, with tornado & severe storm warnings blanketing Boone County, but no more than some light rain and impressive thunder on the farm. Despite continued forecasts of rain and storms including Friday night and Saturday morning, we plan to be at market this week, as many new products are ready.

NEW THIS WEEK

Lettuce heads: Tender & flavorful; some minor hail damage (mainly on the outer leaves), but excellent for home use.

Snap peas: The first ripeners, just a few, but oh so good.

Mustard greens: Medium-size greens, excellent for sauteing with green garlic.

Green onions and/or scallions: Good spring onion flavor.

Garlic scapes (maybe): The first scapes are beginning to form; we're not yet sure if there will be enough to bring to market this week.

ALSO AVAILABLE
Spinach: Small-medium leaves. Some hail damage, but excellent for short-term home use, especially cooking.

Baby radishes: Bundles of sweets and flavor mixes. Excellent for salads and stir fries.
Baby greens saute mix: Nice blend of young greens, including kale, tat soi, spinach, beet greens, pea shoots, & more. Excellent for light sautes, or blending with lettuce for a rich salad.
Herbs:
     - Plenty of:
         - Mint
         - Lemon balm
     - Very limited quantities of:
          - Tarragon
          - Cilantro
          - Dill
          - Oregano

Why too much precipitation is bad

This post from late last summer got lost in my queue and was never finished.  A moderate dry spell through April and May of 2011 has gone back to sogginess lately, so the contents of this post are still relevant and present good general knowledge about farming conditions regardless of what the rest of the year brings. And it helps explain why 2010 was so bad for so many people, after building on the wetness of 2008 and 2009. I've tried to update all the grammar to past-tense to account for this, but apologize if a few oddities sneak through.

(originally written late summer 2010)
I was chatting with someone a week or so ago, when they remarked that "boy, all this rain must be great for you farmers!" I paused, then treated the poor, well-meaning fellow to a thorough lecture on why too much rain is very much NOT great for most farmers.

WET GROUND

Too much rain during spring and summer means crops can't easily be planted, because equipment can't get into the fields through the mud. Used on wet ground, machinery compresses the soil, leaves ruts, and otherwise does damage to the soil health. Even on a low-equipment farm like ours, where this isn't a big issue, there's still a limit to how well you can work soil when it's completely saturated and thus there are problems getting things planted or transplanted in the first place. I talked to many growers at market in 2010 who  had to retill and replant things over and over, just trying to get them to germinate and grow properly.

The 2010-2011 winter of regular snow and rain has kept the ground at near saturation, meaning we couldn't do any real work in the spring without damaging the long-term health of our soil. Even when we go a week or more without precip, it takes so long for soil moisture to leave Boone County's high-clay soils that what feels dry to a town-person isn't dry from a farm perspective. The few times the weather was dry in 2010, it lasted just long enough to start recovering from the last system before a new one set us back to square one. This is especially bad with snow, which takes much longer to go away than rain.

WET PLANTS
Heavy or constant rains create a lot of issues for growing plants. Young seedlings or transplants may be drowned in puddles, or have difficulty germinating. Constant moisture creates an ideal environment for many diseases, which can stunt the plants early or affect their later growth & yields. This is especially true for things like beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, and other crops which rely on a single plant for large yields of fruit.

WET ROOTS

Saturated soils also cause many problems. Root crops like potatoes rot more easily; we lost most of our potatoes in 2010 and so did many other folks I talked to at market. The soil just stayed near saturation for weeks to months, and whatever potatoes did form rotted before we could harvest them (which is harder to do in mud than drier ground), even those at the top of raised beds. Also, most plants' roots need some air in the soil to function properly. Plants growing in perpetually saturated soil end up effectively choking; they can't function properly and so end up stunted or deformed.

The photos below (from 2010) show two ends of a single, equally planted row of pole beans. The first one is the south end, on marginally drier ground. The second one is the north end, in an extra-wet part of the field. Look how spindly and pathetic the bean plants are in the second one, despite being the same variety planted at the same time in the same soil of the same row (also note the weed-load, addressed below). This certainly cut into our yields for market and restaurants in 2010.

WEEDS

Too much rain also encourages weeds to go crazy. The soil always contains a seedbank of potential weeds; under excessive moisture these just keep germinating and quickly grow out of control. Hoeing is one of our most effective weed-control techniques, but it requires somewhat dry conditions (so the soil doesn't just stick to the hoe) and it works best if (1) the weeds are small and (2) a bit of dry weather follows the hoeing so the weeds will dessicate & die rather than re-root after hoeing. If weeds get too big to easily hoe--which tends to happen more when it is wet, then the weed problem becomes a hand-weeding issue, and that's much more time consuming than hoeing.

We spent a terrible amount of time in 2010 just trying to keep up with weeds, preventing us from doing other work. This is not just an organic/no-till problem, either. Growers of all kinds have to deal with weeds in their own way, and excessive pressure hurts everyone. On any drive through farm country north and east of here, we could see many conventional corn & soy fields with abundant weeds sticking up, even when those varieties are GMOs bred to resist herbicides (the rise of herbicide-resistant weeds is another factor). Everyone I talked to in 2010 bemoaned the labor/cost spent in dealing with excessive weeds.

For example, the photo below shows a portion of several potato rows. I dug the one on the left just before the photo was taken. There are two more beds in the center and right that I dug around a week beforehand, which looked like the left-hand one, and now look like an overgrown lawn. That's how much weed pressure is put on every growing area with this much rain to keep new seeds germinating constantly, and new weeds growing quickly.

WET FRUIT

Even if a plant makes it to maturity and starts setting fruit (beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc.) too much rain encourages damage and disease. Our bush beans were terrible in 2010, partly because strong storms repeatedly flattened the plants and forced the developing beans down into the mud. They were so wet that the plants became diseased and most of the beans were deformed and damaged, and thus unsellable. What customers don't see at market is all the product we don't bring because it doesn't meet our standards. Cucumbers and peppers also suffered from moisture-related damage and disease.

Also, too much rain can affect the taste and quality of fruit, particularly tomatoes. Many of these have had no flavor in the last few years, because too much moisture being taken up by the plants during ripening dilutes the flavor in the fruit; tomatoes taste best when harvested under near-drought conditions. A temporary dry spell at the end of summer 2010 finally produced some halfway-decent tomatoes for the first time in years.

PESTS
I can't entirely prove this connection, but 2010 was the worst pest year we've seen, causing lots of damage and helping spread disease among plants. In any case, many of these factors work together; plants already weakened or diseased from direct moisture effects are going to be more susceptible to pest pressure or damage. Organic management in particular relies on keeping plants healthy in the first place, the better to resist pests and disease, the same way that a fit, healthy adult can generally handle an illness better than a frailer person. So when we get really nasty weather conditions that weaken all the plants in the first place, it becomes a cascading effect of increased pest pressure, damage, and problems in the crops.

SOIL SUPPORT
Wet soil doesn't support roots very well, as anyone who's lost a whole tree to a storm knows very well. The combination in 2010 of always-soggy soil with a series of strong, windy storms caused significant problems for crops which need to stand up, such as tomatoes, corn, beans, and peppers. As noted above, most of our bush bean plants were flattened by storms as the roots just couldn't hold up, and much of our corn was blown down at one point or another. The tomatoes, even trellised, in many places collapsed into each other, forcing us to pick through a tangled jungle of foliage & stalks. Increased contact between leaves and ground leads to higher rates of disease and fruit problems, and the plants are more likely to break later on.

GET THE IDEA YET?

If you've gotten this far, you've concluded that we'd be better off farming in a desert. Well, there's a reason why most of the US's industrial agriculture is centered in places like southern California and Arizona, where weather is mostly not a problem. Of course, it takes massive Federal irrigation subsidies and severe environmental degredation to keep that industry competitive, but that's another story. Most years in Missouri aren't this wet, at least statistically. Since 1890, central Missouri has recorded only ten years in which annual precipitation went over 50". Three of those were 2008, 2009, and 2010. We got off to the same start in 2011, before moderating somewhat in April and May. And many parts of Missouri have been wetter than we have on this farm.

Hail, but could be worse

The news from Joplin puts our own recent storms in perspective, but we did sustain some damage from the severe storms that passed through Boone County on Sunday. No trees down here, but about 10 minutes of pea-sized hail with a few stones up to nickel-sized did a number on our spinach:

We intended to harvest this Monday for restaurant sale, but both the intended sources had to regretfully reject this kind of damage, which renders the spinach unfit for salad (their expected use), and also significantly reduces its shelf life once picked. We're going to leave it in the field for the rest of the week, and bring it to market clearly marked as Hail Spinach. It's good enough for short-term home use or for cooking. But an annoying loss nonetheless. We're just grateful the hail stopped when it did, before real damage was done to our tomatoes, zucchini, beans, garlic, and all the other growing crops.

When I finish deliveries on Tuesday, I'll be heading for the Columbia Red Cross station to give blood. I do this regularly through the winter, but generally not in summer as we can't afford even the one-day recovery period afterward. But I'm making an exception this time for Joplin, and hope many others will find some way to help.

After the storms passed, we were treated to the most spectacular set of mammatus clouds I've personally seem (even as a weather nut). Lit from beneath by the setting sun, the entire sky was spread with these beautiful formations, which were very hard to photograph properly in the harsh and quickly fading light:

We're not through yet, by a long shot. The NWS is expecting two more days of potential heavy rain and severe weather through central Missouri:

A COLD FRONT ACROSS MISSOURI AND ILLINOIS WILL STALL OVER THE REGION THROUGH MIDWEEK. SEVERAL UPPER LEVEL STORM SYSTEMS WILL MOVE ACROSS THIS EAST TO WEST STATIONARY FRONT BRINGING SEVERAL ROUNDS OF SHOWERS AND THUNDERSTORMS. AN ADDITIONAL 1 TO 3 INCHES OF RAIN IS EXPECTED THROUGH FRIDAY. LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS WILL BE POSSIBLE WHERE THUNDERSTORMS REPEATEDLY MOVE OVER THE SAME AREAS.

Given this forecast, I'll soon be posting a long piece I wrote in 2010 (but never published) on why too much rain is bad for farms. On re-reading, it's still quite relevant with a few updates.

Union Pacific steam along the Missouri River

Next week, we'll all have the rare chance to see real history in action. The Union Pacific Railroad maintains a few historic steam locomotives in operating condition, and sends them around the country on occasional goodwill (and good P.R.) tours to introduce/remind us all of the role railroads have played in American history. At the end of May, locomotive #844, a huge beast of a freight locomotive built in 1944, will arrive in Kansas City and then proceed along the UP's Missouri River line through Boonville & Jeff City en route to St. Louis and then Arkansas. Here's #844 passing through Utah under its own power (turn up the volume):



For true railfans and history buffs like us, the chance to see & hear a large, live steam locomotive travelling along the Missouri river, its sounds & whistle echoing off the bluffs, is potentially a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This is a chance to see a really important but very rare piece of American history, a fascinating and captivating experience. This is not your average small tourist train steam engine; this is a workhorse steamer that is incredibly expensive and complex to operate, and well worth the experience. The locomotive will be on display at Union Station, KC, on Monday May 30, will pass through western & central Missouri on Tuesday May 31 (including stops in Blackwater & Boonville), be on display in downtown Jeff City on June 1, and head for St. Louis on June 2. Full schedule, with expected ETAs, available here.

We'll be taking Tuesday off to chase the train from western Missouri down to Jeff City, taking photos and videos from some extremely scenic locations. Hopefully some of you will find a way to steal a few hours and see this incredible piece of history for yourselves.

Market plans, May 21

We will not be attending market this weekend, for two reasons.

1) We were contacted by a couple arranging a large party, intending to cater it largely from local farms. Their desired purchase was a significant portion of our total expected market yield for this week, and we're thrilled to have this guaranteed sale and to support their dedication to local foods. Even at the wholesale prices we're charging them, we come out ahead when time efficiency and certainty of sale is considered. In addition, restaurant demand has increased this year, so we're managing our harvests to fulfill their needs, which means smaller quantities for market so far.

2) The weather for Friday night through Saturday looks terrible. We pay a great deal of attention to the forecast models run by the National Weather Service (a future blog topic), and all discussion and data suggest a significant amount of rain and potentially even strong storms over the market period. Here is the most recent Probabalistic Quantitative Precipitation Forecast model for the 6-hour period leading up to market Saturday morning:

This shows the modelled probability of at least .25" precipitation during that period; the bright blues are 60-80% chance. This system will be moving east over central Missouri right during market hours. For another version, here's the 12-hour probability of precipitation for the period ending Saturday morning (both images from the National Weather Service):



Moreover, the current model discussion from the Kansas City NWS forecast office includes this gem:

HIGH AMPLITUDE MID-UPPER LEVEL TROUGH WILL REMAIN ANCHORED WEST OF THE REGION THROUGH THE SHORT TERM PERIOD...PROVIDING AN ENVIRONMENT MORE SUITABLE FOR AQUATIC SPECIES THAN THOSE TRYING TO ENJOY A NICE SPRING WEEKEND.

We (and they) could be wrong, but you play the percentages in this game, and odds are that it'll be a nasty opening to the weekend. Combine that with a guaranteed sale of many potential harvest items, plus significant restaurant demand, and it just makes no economic or time-management sense to bring the remainder to an overcrowded market in bad weather. At worst, the weather moderates and we still made most of the sales we'd like to while gaining a lot of time back at the farm.

The following weekend we expect to be back with a strong stand, including the first peas and garlic scapes, along with greens, radishes, herbs, and more. Our sincere apologies to those who will miss us. See you in two weeks.

Mid May on the farm

Mid-May is when the farm truly becomes busy, as all three primary vegetable activities come into play: planting, management, and harvest. We're still seeding or transplanting new crops regularly, while weeding and otherwise maintaining existing crops, and now handling harvest and marketing as well.

The weather has been generally pleasant with some significant curveballs. We've dodged the multiple rounds of severe weather passing through Missouri with no damage. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday of this week all present significant frost hazards in our valley in the wake of the latest powerful cold front. Sunday night we were up several times during the night checking on sensitive crops and spraying water to keep frost off, while we spent a chunk of Monday afternoon laying out row fabric sheets on things like potatoes, basil, edamame, and beans. Monday night scares us, and Tuesday will need this treatment as well. We have a large quantity of peppers, tomatoes, and more still indoors and desperate to be transplanted, but these have to wait until the last frost is past. Thursday will be a busy transplant day. Meanwhile, the non-frost-sensitive crops are doing wonderfully:



Growing peas and healthy garlic

 Our second market of the year, last weekend, was a struggle. Nasty weather; cold, windy, and drizzly, just the thing to keep customers away. Add in graduation weekend at MU, and it was downright quiet at many points. There are more vendors than ever at market this early, with more product than ever, and I saw a lot of it left over at the end. This was the kind of day that really worries us about market, when there's too much product and not enough customer spending, and it's not just a one-time issue with graduation. Another experienced vendor I talked to shared that concern about the vendor-product-consumer ratio, and noted that he'd been at market since the opening and had seen more product than ever left unsold, but we have little control over it. We had a nice variety of greens, and other things, which sold very slowly but eventually mostly sold out. I was surprised at how popular spinach was, given that many other stands offered it, and how slowly the fancy baby greens mix sold, given how popular it's been at our stand for the past few years.

Diverse greens at market: baby greens mix, spinach, lettuce mix

Restaurant sales have been going very well, with our products consistently on the menu at Sycamore and Red & Moe, and deliveries to Main Squeeze starting this week. We'll likely be able to start with Uprise Bakery soon as well. Numerous people have commented on their enjoyment of "our" pizza at Red & Moe, which features our garlic scallions.

Saturday marked the 7th anniversary of our first date, and the 5th anniversary of our engagement. We celebrated by firing up our barrel smoker after market, and smoking a rack of ribs and a whole cured ham from last year's pig, the former brushed with my favorite home-made Filipino barbeque sauce. A nice salad of unsold mixed baby greens, lettuce, spinach, and farm-made feta rounded out the meal. (All on-farm ingredients in italics).



Farm-raised pork ribs, smoke-roasted with Filipino barbeque sauce; mixed-greens/radish/feta salad



We've been eating as well as ever from the farm, as we start incorporating fresh spring items with the tail end of preserved ingredients from last year. I invented a nice dish by crushing our roasted peanuts, cornmeal, and dried peppers in a pestle to make a coating for cubes of goat meat, which I fried with frozen okra and dried peppers to make a very tasty topping for rice and our own cowpeas. We made a fantastic pizza with the last of our farm-raised/cured pancetta, fresh asparagus, dried peppers & cherry tomatoes, and farm goat feta, on fresh crust. Joanna made fresh ravioli from scratch pasta using our eggs, fresh goat herbed ricotta and herbed sweet potato, green garlic, and a butter/sage sauce.

Peanut/cornmeal-crusted goat cubes; pizza with farm-raised/cured pancetta, fresh asparagus, farm feta, dried tomatoes & peppers; scratch-made ravioli with farm ricotta, green garlic, herbs



We're getting lots of help now from regular crews of helpers on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. We changed our worker model a bit this year, from last year's pay-in-product model in which we technically had employees with W-2s, to this year's work-for-product model in which we treat workers like customers who are paying for their purchases with labor rather than cash (like a CSA with a work-share component taken to its logical extreme). Thus we remit sales tax on the product given out, and the government still gets its cut, but it's far less paperwork and hassle on our end since we remit sales tax quarterly anyway. 2011 will be the largest set of people we've had working out here, and so far it seems to be going well, with no complaints from the current folks and more interest from others than we can accommodate. 

Our weeks are really scheduled now. Sundays we have a work shift, Tuesdays are restaurant harvest/delivery day, Wednesdays we have a work shift, Fridays are market harvest (this will creep into the rest of the week as the season progresses), Saturdays are market day, and so on. That leaves only Mondays and Thursdays as days we have open to do anything that needs to be done, and the rest of the week farm and home work gets fit in and around the scheduled needs. And, of course, the weather is always a factor, though we try hard to plan our weeks around forecasts and conditions as much as possible to be more efficient in our work.

So this is a reasonably good time on the farm. Overall the weather has been cooperative, we're getting help, our sales season has started, and things are progressing roughly on schedule and as we planned for so far. We can't sell pork or cheese, but we can produce plenty for ourselves. Animals are healthy and productive, and the food is as good as always. Our biggest concerns are with unpredictable weather/pest conditions, and our ability to sell what we produce (particularly at market), but day-to-day we feel we're in decent shape right now.

Dangerous vegetable-fed swine on the radio

The pig-feeding saga continues...(background here and here on the Missouri Department of Agriculture's bizarre determination that fresh vegetables and whey, even those produced on-farm and fed to pigs on-farm, are garbage and thus cannot legally be fed to pigs intended for sale).

Harvest Public Media's Jessica Naudziunas included our story in a new piece on weird ag laws; you can listen to the radio story here (we come in about halfway through the interesting 8-minute piece). MDA wouldn't speak to her, but did release a written statement implicitly confirming the ruling we were given verbally (just in case anyone thought we were making this up). Even better, she has a somewhat bemused MU scientist confirming that fresh vegetables pose no health risk to swine whatsoever, that the primary disease in question is obsolete, and that "garbage" in this context should clearly refer to things like raw meat.

So if I can't sell vegetable/whey-feed pigs, maybe I should just sell these T-shirts instead:

It'd probably be easier & more profitable to sell cheap, likely foreign-made T-shirts than locally-raised healthy pastured pork...

This design & wording are Copyright Chert Hollow Farm, LLC, 2011

Market plans, May 14 (again)

So we posted our market plans on Thursday afternoon, but somehow Blogger seems to have eaten the entire post. It went up live, I saw it, but noticed this afternoon that it had vanished. Google still has a search record of its existence, but the post itself is completely gone. So for the record, and for anyone who didn't see it yet, here's a briefer version:

AVAILABLE THIS WEEK (May 14)

Lettuce mix
Baby greens saute mix (arugula, pea shoots, mustard, tat soi, beet greens, kale, etc.)
Green onions
Green garlic
Mixed radishes
Sweet radishes
Herbs
    - Mint, two varieties
    - Herb mixed bundles (chives, oregano, thyme, sage)
    - Lemon balm
    - Catnip

Market plans, May 14

Our second market of the year, and product diversity is definitely increasing. I really appreciated all the regular customers who remembered us from last year and were excited to find us back. Thanks for your interest and support, we'll look forward to seeing you regularly throughout the year.

HAPPENING AT MARKET THIS WEEK

The Rock Bridge Culinary Arts students will be holding their annual omelet-making fundraiser. This is a neat live event in which the students prepare custom-order omelets using market-sourced ingredients; come hungry and ready to support this really high-quality program that has produced many excellent chefs.

AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

Lettuce mix (young greens, multiple varieties)
Spinach (first cutting, tender tasty leaves)
Baby greens saute/salad mix (mustard, arugula, mizuna, beet greens, tat soi, pea shoots, etc.)
Radish mixes (sweet to spicy, currently featured on the menu at Red & Moe)
Sweet radishes (currently featured on the menu at Sycamore)
Green garlic (also on the menu at Red & Moe)
Green onions
Herbs
    - Mint, 3 varieties (in use at both of the above)
    - Chives
    - Garlic chives (available on the Culinary Arts omelets this week)
    - Herb sampler bundles (oregano, thyme, sage, chives)
    - Lemon balm

COMING SOON
Garlic scapes
Beets
Carrots
Peas

OTHER FARM NOTES
It's May weather, all right, going from two hard freezes last week to a series of hot, dry days this week, and potential for a few more nights of frost early next week. We've been running a lot of irrigation to keep the cool-weather and young crops happy, as we haven't had meaningful rain now in two weeks, and if we don't get something tonight it'll be a lot longer. Otherwise we're still feeling reasonably on track for the season, now getting regular help from a set of farm workers who are a great benefit to us.

In memory of Phil Stewart

For those who hadn't heard yet, Phil Stewart passed away on Saturday. Phil was a stalwart member of the Columbia Farmers Market, for many people the face of the market. He was a hard-working farmer who formed the backbone of the weekday markets for many years, and was often the first to greet customers as they arrived at the Saturday market, from his bright blue "Phil's Garden" tent crammed with produce.

Phil took a great interest in us when we first started up, was always eager to ask how we were doing, and expressed pride in seeing younger farmers get started and grow. He'd often stop by our stand and comment approvingly on the strides we were making. I really respected and looked up to him, and will miss his stable presence and smiling face at the market. He was always worth talking to, and listening to, and I'll miss him.

His funeral will be held this Thursday; more information is available on the Columbia Farmers Market website.

UPDATE:

Here are several nice pieces from Tuesday's Columbia Tribune on Phil:

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/may/10/farmer-is-remembered-for-helping-others/

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2011/may/10/phillip-stewart-1944-2011/

Recipe: pepper-spiced wraps & soup using sweet potatoes and mushrooms

Recently I heavily adapted a few recipes from Rick Bayless' Mexican Kitchen, using the on-farm ingredients we had on hand, to make a really nice multi-course pseudo-Mexican meal that was tied together by a few basic and seasonal (for us, anyway) ingredients. I doubt anyone will make this just as I describe it, but I want to share what I did to demonstrate a few useful techniques for combining similar ingredients in multiple ways. You could adapt this for all sorts of available inputs. I basically started with a simple pepper sauce made from our dried peppers, them used that in several related dishes. Using sweet potatoes instead of normal potatoes gives everything a really nice, rich color, and a sweeter flavor that balances spiciness nicely. As usual, our on-farm ingredients listed in italics.

BASIC PEPPER SAUCE (this ties everything else together)

1-2 dried chipotles

handful dried sweet peppers

handful dried tomatoes

2T roasted or chopped garlic

handful fresh cilantro

4-6oz scallions, chopped, tops reserved for soup

1 cup meat or vegetable broth

salt & pepper to taste

Puree or hand-grind the dried ingredients into a flaky powder (careful: pepper dust can be strong); I use a food processor. Reserve a bit for fried potatoes (below). Add the other ingredients and puree again until you have a thick sauce.

CREAMY PEPPER SOUP

Pepper sauce (above)

1/2-1 cup chopped shiitake mushrooms

1 cup chopped sweet potatoes

Scallion tops (chopped, from sauce, above)

3-5 cups meat or vegetable broth

1 cup whole milk (or cream)

Cook the sauce over medium heat for a few minutes. Add broth and bring to simmer. Reserve 1 cup for cooking meat (below). Add potatoes & mushrooms and cook 1/2 hour or until tender. A few minutes before serving, add milk/cream and stir to combine. Serve topped with scallion greens.

TORTILLAS & FILLING

Tortillas (we make ours fresh)

1lb sweet potato, diced

Ground pepper spice from sauce (above)

Olive oil, salt, & pepper

1lb chicken breasts or other tender meat

1 cup reserved soup broth (above)

1 cup soft cheese (we use our fresh ricotta)

Place chicken or other meat in shallow baking dish. Pour soup broth over the meat and bake in a 350F oven for 45 minutes, until tender.

With 20 minutes to go on the meat, heat some oil in a heavy pan. Toss diced potatoes with pepper spice, oil, salt, & pepper. Fry, stirring frequently, until cooked.

SERVING

Fill tortillas with meat, fried potatoes, chopped scallion greens, and cheese. Serve soup on side, topped with scallion greens. This goes especially well with a sweet, refreshing drink like mojitos.



April recap/May update

APRIL RECAP

April was a good month for us. The weather was mostly moderate, with enough dry spells for work to get done but enough rain to keep crops happy. Three significant storm systems just missed us, including the one that later took out the St. Louis airport, leaving us drier and happier than many folks to our south and east. We stayed about on schedule with getting work done and getting crops in the ground, and felt pretty good about our status at the end of the month.

As a result, we were actually were able to take a fair amount of time off during the month, mostly as part-day trips down to Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area along the Missouri River to enjoy the spring migration of waterfowl, warblers, and more. We also snuck away for a day to view the flooding Mississippi River south of Hannibal, MO, and do some more birding along that important flyway. I might write more about that trip soon.

Other than losing a hen to a hawk, the animals are doing well. Chickens are laying happily, while the goats have been moved permanently onto pasture with the resulting increase in milk yield. Cheese-making is a regular part of our work now, with the usual tasty results. We acquired our one pig for the year, rather than the two we had intended to raise until the Missouri Department of Agriculture decided our vegetables were garbage. This one happily consumes our whey, legally as long as we keep him to ourselves.

We're finally starting to see results and benefits from some of the long-term farm projects we've been working on for years. Getting permanent electric fencing on our two main pastures makes goat management far more time-efficient and secure, as does the finished and functional goat/dairy barn. Thinning/clearing trees in these pastures has clearly increased the available browse, also benefiting the goats. Our reliance on permanent no-till raised beds is paying off with easier access and work in all conditions, and the soil quality continues to improve (our recent soil tests showed no need for improvement or inputs). For the first time in a late spring, I'm not working on a major infrastructure project (last year it was the walk-in cooler and barn improvements, in 2009 it was our smaller packing shed), allowing more time for both work and pleasure.

Here's a photo collection from late April and early May:



Peas growing;  icy lettuce in a hard frost May 3



Large, healthy garlic; goat/dairy barn and freshly plowed crop field north of the vegetables




Newly transplanted zucchini under row cover; beautiful clouds over the pond




Panorama of the market garden




The unsellable pig; dairy goats of the future

 MAY UPDATE

With our market season starting, the workload naturally increases. Market harvest and prep can take anywhere from half a day to almost two days, in addition to most of Saturday. That naturally cuts into other farm work, but it's nice to earn a return on the investment of work. Our first few spring market stands are always small, but we're looking forward to the full-size stands as more items come online. We'll be doing a lot more transplanting and seeding of summer items as time progresses, and overall farm maintenance naturally becomes more time-intensive as weeding and other tasks kick in. Restaurant sales are going well so far, and it will be nice to keep increasing those as well. We're getting regular help from a few part-time workers again, and this really helps keep the workload under control without busting our budget. After three very wet years in a row, we invested in a full set of irrigation lines this year on the assumption that a fourth is highly unlikely. Even a few weeks of hot dry weather will make this pay off easily.

So, overall, we're happy with our position going into May and look forward to seeing how this year goes. There are lots of uncertainties ahead, such as weather and market sales, but we've done what we can to set ourselves up well and have solid hopes for the season.

Market plans, May 7

This coming Saturday will open our 2011 season at the Columbia Farmers Market, and we expect to sell every Saturday through fall. It's Kentucky Derby weekend, and we'll have a large supply of fresh mint for making mint juleps. Look for us along the north side of the market, toward the west end (away from the parking lots). We're really looking forward to seeing loyal customers again, and meeting/making new ones. See you there.

AVAILABLE THIS WEEK

Baby radish mixes (read how we handle these)
Green garlic scallions
Green onions
Herbs
     - Mint (multiple varieties)
     - Thyme
     - Oregano

     - Garlic chives

COMING SOON

Salad mix

COMING EVENTUALLY

Garlic scapes
Carrots
Beets
Peas

Bird list & other natural events, April 2011

Below is a complete list of birds observed and/or heard within our farm's ecosystem for April 2011. Birds in italics were observed or heard only in flight over the farm, but not otherwise interacting with it. 37 new species arrived or passed by the farm in April, as many as the entire species count in March. Spring is here, all right.

NEW THIS MONTH (37 species, many of which arrived in the last few days of April)

Osprey (soaring high in migration)
Egret (migration; species unknown)

American Kestrel

Bald Eagle (seen before, but not in March)
Broad-winged Hawk
American Goldfinch
Whip-poor-will
White-eyed Vireo

Yellow-throated Vireo

Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Blue-grey Gnatcatcher
Wood Thrush

Hermit Thrush (seen before, but not in March)

Brown Thrasher

Northern Parula

Blue-winged Warbler
Nashville Warbler

Tennessee Warbler

Kentucky Warbler

Black-and-white Warbler
Louisiana Waterthrush

Ovenbird

Yellow-throated Warbler

Common Yellowthroat
Summer Tanager

Scarlet Tanager

Indigo Bunting
Chipping Sparrow

White-throated Sparrow

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (seen before, but not in March)

Purple Finch

House Wren

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Cooper's Hawk (possibly Sharp-shinned Hawk; observed killing a chicken)

Wild Turkey (nesting & gobbling)

Great-crested Flycatcher

Gray Catbird

ALSO PRESENT (32 species)

Canada Goose
Killdeer
Great Blue Heron
Wood Duck
Turkey Vulture (observed perching in woods as well as soaring)
Red-tailed Hawk

Red-shouldered Hawk

Mourning Dove

Barred Owl

Belted Kingfisher

Red-bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Pileated Woodpecker

Eastern Phoebe (nesting)

Blue Jay

American Crow

Tufted Titmouse

Black-capped Chickadee

Carolina Wren (Heard & observed only a few times during the month; last year they were the bird that we woke up to every day throughout the spring; our local population seemed to drop off after the Feb. blizzard.)

White-breasted Nuthatch

Golden-crowned Kinglet

Eastern Bluebird

Yellow-rumped Warbler

American Robin

Northern Cardinal

Eastern Towhee

Field Sparrow
Song Sparrow

Dark-eyed Junco

Red-winged Blackbird

Northern Flicker

Brown-headed Cowbird

MISSING FROM LAST MONTH
White Pelican (migration)
American Woodcock
Snow Geese (migration)
Fox Sparrow


OTHER NATURAL EVENTS

Dragonflies are out, along with many other insects. Joanna found this one just emerging and unfolding its wings. Bats are also active, as are snakes, frogs, lizards, skinks, and more. The rodent population in the field seems to have dropped a bit, as usually happens once the snakes hit their stride. We observed a huge black rat snake near the house, one of our best allies in rodent control.

Late April through early May is morel season. In our first four years on this farm, we'd only found three puny morels, and had begun to think we were incompetent and/or the farm had none. This year, we've finally started to find decent ones like that pictured above. We're still not finding the big hauls others seem to, but it's been enough for a few meals (pasta with morel-shiitake-cream sauce and scrambled eggs with sauteed morels). They lived up to their reputation in flavor.

It's been a month of new predators. Along with the broad-winged hawk, American kestrel, and Cooper's hawk that were all newly identified for the farm, I've clearly seen a coyote twice. We hear them regularly along our area waterways, especially with pups in the spring, but we rarely see one. It was a thrill to actually observe such a reclusive part of our ecosystem, and with this year's fencing projects largely complete I can enjoy its presence more.