Category: Harvest - Page 16

Heat!

26 Apr 20232 Dec 2007 by Mike (tfb)

Finally finished a bit of hot pepper harvest, now there’s a convenient pile of dried heat! A few weeks ago, wondering whether to cover for frost, I decided to also pull up some hot pepper plants, roots and all, instead. An experiment! We loaded about 20 of the Cayenne Long Slim on the cart and dumped them in the Milkhouse, heaped on the grow racks that we’d been using, with the lights removed, as summer storage shelves. And there they sat, blending into the decor, drying, the peppers that were still green maturing to red. Until today… (This is the kind of thing you can do in a Milkhouse, not so acceptably in a real house…) They’re satisfyingly high on the heat scale, delivering a little pain if you don’t sample carefully. Great!

Broccoli vs cauliflower

9 Nov 20076 Nov 2007 by Mike (tfb)

One broccoli (Early Dividend), one cauliflower (Early Dawn), but what’s that Violet Queen in the middle? The EDs are standbys, the VQ is new. It looks like broccoli, cooks like broccoli, tastes like broccoli, but it’s in the seed catalog as a purple cauliflower?! The VQ were transplanted really late, and I didn’t actually expect to see a harvest from them. But they showed up recently, and a couple of days ago, Bert, who buys lots of veggies here, saw them and decided to try a couple. “They’re broccoli,” he said. “Um, I believe they’re…cauliflower,” I said, while for the first time looking closely at ’em. “Don’t argue with him, Bert, Mike knows what he’s talking about,” said Helen, his wife. Last night, we steamed some for dinner. BROCCOLI. Today, I harvested samples for a formal close look, but really, there’s broccoli and there’s cauliflower, it’s not hard. Broccoli. Next, a call to the seed house, where extremely knowledgeable head man Bill assures me that it is…CAULIFLOWER. It beads up more than some varieties, he says. So, I’m confused. It may not sound like a big deal, and it’s not at this time of year, but it does point up yet another aspect of market gardening: knowing what you grow. LOTS of talking about veggies goes on every market day, and I NEVER say things just for the sake of it. I name varieties, explain when I’m very familiar with a particular veggie, or when it’s new to me…honest conversation, although it’s “sales talk” as well. And people trust you to…know stuff. Anyhow, I just looked up Violet Queen online, and it’s indeed, apparently, cauliflower. I’d swear it’s broccoli, and I’m pretty positive that you would, too! Maybe I’ll grow more next year, for when I feel like sounding like a lunatic! :)

Making mulch, part 4

10 Nov 20231 Nov 2007 by Mike (tfb)

Fat bags of kinda fluffy grass-and-alfalfa mulch are the satisfying end of this little experiment (well, the real end comes next spring when we see how it does at sheltering the garlic for the winter). For this second batch, the bags are actually step 2, not part 4: I eliminated the greenhouse drying stage by letting the cut dry in the field and bagging it on the spot (which was always the plan—cut, wait, bag—the first time was just a bad weather thing). A small but to me really satisfying part is reusing those big clear leaf bags. We go through at least three or four new ones almost every week of the market season, for fresh cut spinach, mesclun, and other greens. They’re used once, and then I’ve been saving them for the last three years for JUST THIS PURPOSE! It’s great to see your plans materialize, right before your eyes!! Little things, big pleasure…

Putting food by

15 Dec 200728 Oct 2007 by Mike (tfb)

With the farmers’ market over, time to turn to fall-and-winter things. This year, I’m for the first time organizing a proper veggie selection for storage (it’s about time I started…training for that future CSA root cellar!). Instead of the usual bushel baskets of this and that, casually left around the barn to take their chances with temperature and location, now, there’s a bit of plan. For a root cellar, the basement of the farmhouse, the side with a dirt floor that used to be filled with potatoes when this was a fully working, big family farm. For the veggies, today’s haul has a mix of potatoes, assorted winter squash and pumpkins, various carrots, onions, garlic, plus apples picked up at the market. It’s a first step, there’s still lots more in the field: beets, spinach, collards and kale, herbs, and more carrots to go… Harvesting isn’t history just yet!

Choose your fork wisely

12 May 202226 Oct 2007 by Mike (tfb)

Today’s harvest was the last scheduled one of the season—tomorrow is the final farmers’ market day. Heading out alone felt a little strange, after all the help this summer, but certainly familiar. It’s a completely different…mindset when it’s all entirely up to you! Carrots were featured. There’s lots still in the ground, and some customers at the market will want to double up on the last day. I pulled about 200 lbs (91 kg), not exactly a bulk, root cellaring quantity, but that’s 100 x 2 lb bunches, quite a lot for one market day. That took a little over an hour of digging and pulling, and it’s amazing what a difference the right tool can make. Here, it was a choice between two seemingly similar digging forks. Most of the season, I like the Blue One, with flatter, wider tines that make lifting the soil easy when the ground is fairly dry and loose. BUT, when the ground is cold and wet and dense as it was today—our clay-loam is good at getting that way—the slick stainless steel option, with narrower, pointier tines, simply slides in, where it takes twice the effort to drive down the blue one. No comparison! If the difference sounds slight as described, a few minutes of actual digging and you’d be convinced. It’s the not-so-little things!! It’s in the details… So, lots of carrots, lots of beets, a good haul of cauliflower, bok choi, spinach, kale, plus garlic and onions from storage. A nice cool season selection. Not bad!

Pumpkins on the stand

25 Oct 200721 Oct 2007 by Mike (tfb)

This year’s pumpkins eventually made it to the newly roofed farm stand. It makes a nice autumn scene, especially on a fine, balmy fall day like today. I suppose this coming together of pumpkin and stand is a fitting progression and a good sign, since both are works in progress. For the last couple of seasons, I’ve PLANNED to open the stand full-time for at least a day or two a week, but various things got in the way. And pumpkins have been too bulky to take in quantity to the market so far (we absolutely pack a pick-up truck; a roomy, custom-fitted trailer is on the big-purchases-when- I’m-able list). At least, the pumpkins are now on the stand! Several CSA shareholders have picked some up, and I’ve given away a few, so it’s working, kinda. The greenish-gray ones are Jamboree, the white ones are Lumina…

Last big harvest of the year!

16 Dec 200819 Oct 2007 by Mike (tfb)

And then there were two! For the last big Friday harvest of the season—it’s the 18th and final CSA share and second to last Saturday at the farmers’ market—the crew was down to Conall and me. It was a rainy one, with the ground soaked from a couple of days of showers, but it was all smooth. With the cooler, cloudy conditions favoring a little extra storage time, Conall did the Brussels sprouts and eggplant yesterday. And with the shortening days, the mesclun growth has slowed to a near halt, and there’s not enough for CSA shares, so that fairly time-consuming task was out. In fact, things went so well, we managed to take a couple of hours off and head into town to pick up some things, and were still done by 7 pm. In the pic: bok choi and beets up for rinsing, with carrots and Brussels sprouts already in the bins. In today’s harvest: the spicy greens mix (arugula, tatsoi, mizuna, mustard), about 20 lbs (9 kg) of mesclun, collards, parsley, beets, carrots, bok choi, kale, a few broccoli and cauliflower, plus potatoes, onions, garlic, pumpkins and winter squash from storage. Conall’s done for the season tomorrow, so next week for the last farmers’ market harvest, it’s down to one. Time flies…!