Heavily overcast, downright chilly, with rain threatening at any moment…still, a great first day at the market! In all the excitement, I forgot to take a picture of the stand as it was when we started, it looked good for a tiny spread of three trays… We sold out of mesclun and spinach in a couple of hours, while the Jerusalem artichoke, a veg that like as not had NEVER before been seen at this market, lasted all day but turned out to be a bit of a hit, with maybe 10lbs (4.5kg) sold! A bit of sage, thyme, oregano and chives rounded things out. This early in the season, the vendors were almost all crafts and prepared stuff—baked goods, cheese curd, maple syrup,…—and crafts, plus bedding plants and some fresh produce: storage potatoes, rhubarb, one stand with wild leek… And the traffic wasn’t huge, no surprise, especially with the weather. BUT, chatting with other vendors and regular customers for the first time after the winter was excellent! Really, connecting with people through fresh food at the farmers’ market makes tiny farming all make sense to me…
marketing
First harvest 2008!
Tomorrow’s farmers’ market, the third of the season, will be the my first. This is the usual timing, although I made it on the second market day last year (our market starts on the first Saturday of May). The earliest harvest for field crops will probably be all-lettuce mesclun in a couple of weeks. But I do have the mesclun in the unheated greenhouse, a small quantity grown specifically for getting to the market as early as possible. So, today’s harvest-for-show: around 20 lbs (9kg) of lettuces-and-arugula mesclun. Not much. But, we also gathered about 10lbs (4.5kg) of “found” spinach (tasty new growth from spinach that made it to baby-leaf stage last year, overwintered, and started again this spring; green onion was last year’s early market found crop). Spinach and salad mixes are sold by the bag, and weight varies slightly depending on what and when: for this round, it was all 400g bags (just under a pound), around 35 units total. Also, collected an assortment from the herb garden: sage, thyme, oregano and chives. Plus, around 20 lbs (9kg) of Jerusalem artichoke. Enough to for a tiny spread! I love the market, for me, it’s as much part of veggie gardening as anything that happens in the field, certainly not a tacked on “business” end… Although cold, rainy weather is in the forecast, people always come out, and tomorrow should be fun!
Onions and potatoes go in
A satisfying planting day: all of the onion sets (around 2,500) and 300 lbs (136kg) of potatoes are in.
For the onions, Raechelle (first day in the field), Lynn, Jamie (a new CSA member), Shannon (here for a month), and I made quick work of the onions: Stuttgarter yellow cooking and yellow Spanish.
It’s amazing how much fun people working together in a garden can be, there’s a positive, happy, energy that I think comes from sharing time in the dirt (maybe that’s just the tiny farming romantic in me, but I think not… :). Plus, potentially tedious tasks are done in no time!
For an encore, Shannon and I polished off the potatoes, finishing just as the sun set and another chilly evening set in. This year, I used the furrower attachment on the Horse walking rototiller to plow what turned out to be excellent trenches, in ground that had been tilled up about a week ago. Varieties are Yukon Gold, Chieftan (red), and Kennebec. In this batch, all varieties were about chicken egg-sized, so, no need to cut ’em into pieces. In-row spacing is 12″ (30cm), between row is 24″ (60cm), with a bit wider path every two rows. We covered them by hand-raking. In all, 40 x 50′ (15m) rows, which is about 2000 plants.
Every year, I’ve tried a different potato approach. Last year, I made much shallower trenches with a hoe. As far as set-up, this time around was the best yet.
The onions are in a bit later than usual, I’ve had them done as early as mid-April, but no worries, and potatoes are around the usual timing. I grow a relatively small quantity of both of these crops, they always sell out, and they feel like a good fit for CSA and farmers’ market from the middle of summer on, so having them at the absolutely earliest date isn’t that important at this stage. And what would tiny farming be without lots of room to improve?! :)
Earth Day observed
This year for Earth Day (a Day I don’t usually…observe), I gave a talk on small-scale organic farming for an audience of three in the airy designer meeting room in the Upstairs at Loblaws zone. Here’s the view from…upstairs (this is the same super-sized supermarket mentioned from another recent trip to town).
It was fun! To be more accurate, though, this wasn’t actually an Earth Day event, it just happened to fall on it, as part of an on-going series of talks and cooking classes and stuff that happen all the time, an effort of the giant Loblaws chain to be more community-oriented, engaging, one-stop. A veggie customer at the farmers’ market had suggested me for one of the slots way back last September or so, they called me up, I said OK, and a few months later…
Yesterday, the coordinator called to say there were only six sign-ups (it’s free registration), so I could cancel if I wanted. Apparently, attendance here can be low, with as little as one or two sign-ups for some, and 15 is a crowd. Since I had no expectations in the first place, I still made my I-don’t-drive transportation arrangements and there I was.
It was actually really interesting, talking to people who weren’t as predisposed to organic food and…greenness as most everyone who tends to shop at the stand at the farmers’ market or sign up for CSA. I’d decided no presentation, just questions. It only took a minute to get things rolling: I asked everyone (all three), why they’d come and what they were expecting (“to learn more about organic food…”) and took it from there.
The non-stop conversation lasted 90 minutes, without a pause or signs that any of us had had enough, until I took a natural exit point and casually wrapped it up. It was kind of a live, concentrated version of this blog: explaining what I do every day, giving what larger contextual background on agriculture I have—all directed by the flow of questions.
The cool part was seeing another first-hand example of how people don’t seem so much PROGRAMMED to be all-out industrial consumers, as not given any CONVENIENT alternatives…like having someone with first-hand experience cheerfully answer their questions in a pleasant room with a parking lot. At one point, talking about how tiny farming and local food seem quite workable, and also ENJOYABLE for everyone involved, all people have to do is try, I said it’s like the audience in a movie theater: everybody stares at the the screen, and even when the movie’s truly terrible, most people keep watching because it’s easier than leaving…
Anyhow, it seemed like I put on a good show, and I’d bet that it generated at least a little carry-on conversation and a couple of experimental purchases. Does that mean that tiny farming done well is at least one part entertainment?! I guess so… ;)
This year’s early lettuce…
The end-of-March scene in the greenhouse is a lot different than last year, when the growing area was neatly filled with early lettuce. This time around, the early effort has turned into a much more spotty affair. The lettuce started WAY early at the end of January, and held back because of extreme cold earlier in the month, grew and REALLY stretched in the trays, and I only put about half in the ground, just to see what’ll happen. Filling in, there are a couple of beds of direct-seeded, all-lettuce mesclun. The idea of making it to the first market day (this year, it’s Saturday, May 3) is fine if everything else is humming along, but given the slow-leaving winter this year, chances are I’d rather be in the field or doing some other outdoor stuff on the farm at that point than spending a good part of a May day at market with a small quantity of greens, just for show. With this year’s early lettuce and the weather, I’m no longer in such a rush!
Trip to town
Took a trip to town today. During the winter, I get in once every 3-4 weeks, so it’s a bit of a novelty. This time in, we checked out an agricultural show, 28th year, filling the new fairground’s 45,000 sq ft of indoor exhibition space. It was quite busy, geared to the bigger conventional farmer, with aisles and aisles of heavy equipment, commercial seed, bank financing,… Outside, some even bigger machinery, like the combine harvester in the pic—it’s set up for soy—that could run over my entire garden in about 10 minutes (although the wraparound view from that air conditioned cab looks mighty inviting for a hot summer’s day in the field!). Inside, it’s mostly men in and around their 60s, with some wives scattered in. These guys were here with their fathers three decades ago, discussing new gear as family farms passed from fathers to sons. Now, the sons are the old farmers, and the next generation is nowhere in sight. Quite odd… Oh well, on to the super-sized supermarket, a Loblaws’ Wal-Mart killer, a huge deal with a produce court half the size of my market garden (not literally, but it’s pretty big), bakery, meat and fish counters, endless aisles, automated mini-bank, wine shop, tobacconist, full pharmacy, a whole section of clothing and housewares, and acres of convenient parking outside. It’s the old General Store, scaled up! I seldom do the grocery shopping for the farm, so when I do hit a supermarket, I head straight for the veggies first (I still kinda laugh at myself doing a “professional” veggie appraisal, this is the LAST situation I would’ve imagined myself in not too long ago). I bought some groceries: a bit of “fresh meat”, “fresh-baked bread”, a tub of mixed baby salad greens (and mine so soon to come!)… Only $200! Then, a quick fast food stop at A&W, not a guilty pleasure, or even a pleasure, just an old habit, a town routine… And there it was, a trip through the OTHER local food chain, 12 miles (19km) and a whole world away from the tiny farm. It’s a little surreal. Back to the seedlings… ;)
Parsley update
Around two weeks after showing up, the first set of curly parsley is putting out its first true leaves. This is Krausa Market, a “triple curled” leaf variety. Aka moss-curled. There’s also double-curled leaves, like the Forest Green and Green Pearl, also in the trays. Single-curled? Don’t think so… I still have a little time to leisurely examine seedlings and wonder about such things. I started thinking about the farmers’ market and all the SPEAKING that involves (on a busy Saturday, it can be practically 6 hours of non-stop veggie talk), and the gazillion kinda BASIC details there are to know about every single crop. What are the main types of leaf lettuce? Are muskmelons the same as cantaloupes? What’s the difference between slicing and pickling cukes, or American, European and Middle Eastern cukes? How do you pronounce Chioggia beets? Stupice tomatoes? How do you cook ____? The possibilities are endless! Of course, I don’t need to know any of these things. I don’t even have to know the names of the varieties. Veggies grow regardless. When questions come up, I could shrug and say, “Dunno” or “Good question!” Still, I’d rather have some answers, pass on whatever I’ve picked up along the way. Right now, I’m still wondering about triple- and double-curled parsley, but that’ll pass… :)