catch up

not only can i not keep up with my blog posts, i can't keep up with how quickly things grow on the farm. we start seeds in the front room of the farm house every week still. days later, like 3-4 days, plants are sprouting and they need to be moved under lights. a week or two later, the plants need to move to the greenhouse. in 2-3 weeks, the plants need to be planted outside. once the plants are planted in the field, they are on their own, but man, can things happen quickly. where did those weeds come from? what is eating the leaves - deer? flea beetles? groundhogs? it is ready to harvest already?! we just planted it! it is amazing how, in general, plants just want to grow. you can throw a lot of obstacles at them, but for the most part, they do well.

we have been having some trouble with a few crops this year. broccoli is minimal. the plants look good, but they are not producing heads very well. salad mix, arugula, cress and spinach are really not doing well. it could be the heat. it could be too much rain, then not enough. it could be the salad beds are missing something in their 'diet.' however, leaf lettuce is doing well. spring root crops (carrots, beets, turnips and radishes) are small and few, if any. no beets or carrots yet, small radishes and turnips. there is no purple broccoli because the plants were lost early on in the field, i believe due to ants doing something to their roots. germination rate of summer squash, cucumbers and melons was low in the field.

on the plus side - head lettuces are doing really well - all varieties - oakleaf, greenleaf, redleaf, romaine, red romaine and buttercrunch. cooking greens are also doing really well - swiss chard, kale (lacinato, russian and vates), mustard greens and collards. the herbs are also doing well and we are selling more than last year. herbs are very time consuming to prepare for market, so when they don't sell, it's a bummer. but this year, it has been well worth the time. the basils (genovese, purple and lemon) are doing especially well. the tomato plants look good and the new staking technique seems to be working well. there are LOTS of green tomatoes and we are hoping they will start turning this week. winter squash plants look great. leeks look good. the potato plants were covered with the colorado potato beetle a few weeks ago...the plants were practically striped down to the stems, but dale vacuumed them off. seemed to give the plants a chance to bounce back and we've been digging up lots of nice looking potatoes. asparagus, rhubarb and strawberries are done, but here come the black raspberries and sour cherries. garlic plants are going well, and so are the yellow and red onions. tomatillos and husk cherry plants are looking really good and will be ready in a few weeks. we harvested a few jalapeno peppers today...the rest will follow soon.

i haven't mentioned every crop we grow, but you get the idea. there are a lot of ups and downs. for now though, the ups are outweighing the downs.

in season

current produce we are harvesting on the farm -

rhubarb (winding down)

asparagus (winding down)

strawberries (winding down)

radishes (in 5 different colors)

tunips (in 4 different colors)

spring onions

mesclun mix (baby swiss chard added)

loose leaf lettuce

baby spinach

cress

arugula

endive

tatsoi

pac choi

mustard greens (2 varieties)

kale (3 varieties)

swiss chard

collards

head lettuce (redleaf, greenleaf, romaine, red romaine, butterhead, oakleaf)

broccoli

garlic scapes

potatoes (red skin)

peas (snap, snow and hull)

fresh herbs (peppermint, spearmint, apple mint, lemon balm, dill, genovese basil, purple basil, lemon basil, parsley, sage, chives, oregano, lavender, lemon thyme, thyme, savory, fennel)

to market, to market

i was afraid this would happen...once the season really got going, i wouldn't have the time or energy to keep up-to-date with my blog. posts will definitely be less frequent, but i will try to keep posting.

all four of the markets we attend have started for the season - quarryville growers market, eastern market, oakmont farmers market and millersville community market. each market is once a week...two on wednesday and two on saturday. that's a lot of markets, but if we don't go to markets, we don't sell products...and if we don't sell products, we don't make money and we wouldn't survive as a business.

going to market is easy, right? pick a bunch of stuff, throw it in the truck and off you go. yeah...not so much. it takes us (currently four people) ALL day tuesday to prepare for wednesday markets and ALL day friday to prepare for saturday markets. all day. we lose two days a week to getting ready for market where we could be planting and weeding and maintaining the plants in the field. then we lose two days a week going to market. that leaves me with thursday to get done everything that needs to get done. one day to maintain six acres of produce. yes, i have help. dale takes care of irrigation and cultivating. jeremy takes care of working up ground and planting peas, corn, beans. allyson takes care of e-mails and facebook and phone calls. but still, for me personally to only have one day a week to actually work in the field...that's not a lot of time.

so why does it take us all day to get ready for market? well, for one we have a lot of greens and quality is important to us. we harvest, double rinse, dry and bag all our greens. if we didn't bag our greens, they would wilt in the summer heat and wouldn't last once the customer bought them. since we are so diverse in the crops we grow, we can't just walk down the row and cut cut cut. we cut things here and there and over there. it takes time to figure out what is ready to harvest and how much to harvest. how much kale did we sell last week? how much do we pick this week? we can probably sell 6lbs, but if we don't pick more, the leaves will just get bigger. (we like to sell reasonable sized leaves, not trees, so it is still tender and manageable and has better flavor.) so think about washing and bagging 50 heads of lettuce. then add 25lbs of cooking greens. then add 12lbs of loose leaf lettuce and mesclun mix. everything gets harvested, picked over (yellow, brown, rotten leaves pulled), double rinsed in our sinks, dried, weighed and bagged. and that's just greens. we currently also have asparagus, rhubarb, radishes, strawberries, broccoli, garlic scapes, spring onions and fresh cut herbs. all of which are harvested, rinsed, dried, bunched and bagged. (strawberries are picked directly into quart containers and herbs are bunched and put into jars of water.) everything gets counted. we keep a record of what items and how much we take to market and then what comes back from market. we then know what sold, what to take the following week and how to better plan for next year. if we rarely sold endive this year, we wouldn't plant it next year.

so that's the produce. what else do we need for market? we need tables and table cloths. we need a pop-up (portable tent). we need weights for the pop-up in case of wind. we need wooden boxes and baskets to display our produce. we need price tags. we need plastic bags and quart/pint containers. we need coolers and ice packs to transport our produce and meat in. we need a scale to weigh the meat. we need a money box with lots of change. we need a truck to transport everything. and last, but not least, we need two people per market to work the stand.

going to market is not easy. it takes time and energy and work, but without market, our business wouldn't be very successful.