New arrivals, new market, new smells!

We have just received 100 bobwhite quail in the mail to grow out for meat!  This was a super-fun box to receive, they have such a neat chirping sound!  They are so tiny, and really made us think that we had just received a box of bumblebees!  They are round and fuzzy and move about in a mass.  So cute!!!  This is going to be quite an adventure - we know so little about them (experiment #2009 for HPF this year!), it will be really neat to learn as we go.  So far we have noticed that they love heat - their brooder is being kept at 95 degrees.  A little research reminded me that these are desert prairie creatures - of course they like it hot!  As they mature, we'll be able to tell males from females because of their chest coloring - females have white chest feathers, and males' chest feathers are darker.  They will be growing fairly slowly, but here they are and we'll be keeping you updated on their growth.  Fun!

In other news, we had our first New North End Farmers' Market on Wednesday!  It was a great first market, well attended by both vendors and customers!  We really have everything available at this market - veggies, fruit, sweet baked goods, breads, root beer, pork and freshly barbecued pork skewers provided by Mike Betit, our neighborhood pork farmer!  Our new location at the North Avenue Alliance Church was perfect and really had great exposure - it will only get better each week!  Stop by and say hi if you're able - we'd love to see you!

In tandem with the NNE market's grand opening, we had our first Food Club pick-up!  What a wonderful thing to meet all of our new members, as well as our devoted 2nd year members!  Thank you so much for supporting our farm, and we hope you enjoy your weekly bag of goodies!  We have a terrific line-up of recipes and produce for you this season!  Welcome to the club!  FYI: we do still have a few shares left - if you are interested in joining our Food Club, click here.  

In other news, I have been riding my bike to and from the farm every nice day recently.  It has been a wonderful way to start each day and a perfect way to wrap up each day!  I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the Spring transform into Summer with each day and each new smell as rains come and go, and as the different trees and meadow flowers bloom!  Today was particularly wonderful because the locust trees are all in

 flower!  Their scent is better than any perfume and almost as amazing as the night-blooming jasmine that surrounded our leaf and stick house in the Solomon Islands during our Peace Corps days.  While I'm still enjoying the scent of the locusts on the last leg of my ride into the farm, I turn into the Haygrove and am greeted with the similarly intoxicating scent of the blooming fava beans!  I tell you - it is almost worth it just to grow these beans for the flowers!  Late Spring is such an incredible time of year - especially this year.  This year it has been much drier that recent years, which means the trees flower more heavily, the plants grow more vibrantly, and everything seems more intense, like a distilled essence.  On my twice-weekly trip to deliver to The Kitchen Table Bistro, I love dropping into that valley and seeing all of the mountains splayed out before me - they have just gotten so green over the past couple of weeks, you can almost feel the vibration of the Earth as it supplies all the trees with the proper ratio of nutrients to push out all of 

those leaves!  Where does all that energy come from?  It reminds me of the time our friend Cletus visited us from Nigeria.  It was December.  We drove him all over New England, and he kept wondering why all the trees were dead.  We had to keep explaining to him that in this part of the world, the Earth sleeps, loses energy, and rests until the Springtime, when the switch is turned back on, the energy starts flowing, and then everything gets beautiful and green again.  He simply couldn't imagine that it was possible for all these dead trees to come back to life.  Likewise, when the Earth is vibrating with it's greenness - it's photosynthesizing amazingness, smelling so good and so alive... I can't even remember what winter was like!  Thank goodness!  I am so happy to be here, now.  At the cusp of summer!  A series of photos for you and a recipe to enjoy the wonderfulness of escarole - my favorite all-time salad green!  Enjoy!

First baby carrots - look at this overachiever!

Okay - another baby quail shot - too cute!

So fuzzy!

Onions and potatoes looking soooooo good!  We grow these guys in the biodegradable mulch - what a life-saver!  We weeded the onions today, and knocked the potato beetles into a bucket that Spencer dumped onto the ground and then torched with the flame-weeder.  Now you know how we feel about them!

Tomatoes growing like crazy!  There are tons of little green tomatoes starting - I'd say we're 2 weeks away from the first cherry tomatoes! 

We spent some time on Monday doing the first round of tomato clipping and pruning - always a very satisfying activity!  Everything is neat and tidy now!

Neat rows of rapidly growing tomatoes!

Update on our house garden - everything is growing so well!  Things feel like they've just gotten established and will be really taking off now.  I like the wood chip design...

Our first successful globe alliums!   They are soooo pretty!

Escarole Salad (I feel like it needs a better name - it's just so incredibly delicious!)

• 1 head of escarole
• 1/2 red onion, cut into rings
• 2 Tbs. balsamic vinegar
• 4 Tbs. olive oil
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. black pepper, freshly ground
• 2 tsp. fresh thyme leaves
• 2 oz. crumbled blue cheese (we love Boucher Blue or Gore Dawn Zola)
• 1/2 cup toasted walnut pieces (optional)

1. Make the dressing.  Combine the balsamic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme leaves.  Blend until smooth.  Chop or crumble cheese, and add to dressing - stir to combine, and let sit while you prepare the escarole.
2. Chop whole head of escarole, wash and spin.  Place escarole in large bowl.  Pour dressing over leaves, toss with tongs to coat.  
3. Add onions, and walnuts, if using.  
4. Plate up and eat.  Enjoy!!!!
5. This should serve 4, but the two of us always finish it off - it's sooooooo good!

Rhythm of the Season, Weather, Feasting!

Well, here we are!  We are at that point in the season where we have planted all major crops.  The only things left to plant are the successional beds every two weeks.  We have been busy planting, which means I have NOT been busy blogging.  Apologies!  At any rate, it feels amazing to be at that point in our season!  We have learned a lot over the last 7 years of scratching at the dirt and plunking seeds in the ground, which is essentially how this all happens.  There is a lot of management in between the scratching at the dirt, and that is what makes every farm different.  How you have chosen to lay out your beds, do your weed management, trellis your crops, irrigate - all of these major decisions separate one farm's style from another.  This year we are much more aware of other farms and their rhythms than ever before.  Mostly this has to do with us spending time on a field we've never farmed before - when we built the Haygrove, we had to locate it on a 1/2 acre

 parcel adjacent to our land.  It is not far from our other main field.  However, it is in a different area which is closer to Arethusa Collective Farm's new field, Adam's Berry Farm and the road that Fat Mitchell's Pumpkin Patch, Open Heart Farm, Straycat Farm, and Intervale Community Farm use.  We find ourselves taking note of who is driving by on what tractor and with what implement everyday - this always tells us what the other farms are up to for that day, and it is a reminder of how little we actually use the big tractors here at the Intervale.  It really is an issue of temperament/willingness to fiddle with machinery/planning style of crop rotations, etc.

Weather.  It's been windy!  Totally freaky weather for new owners of a Haygrove hoophouse!  However, my tactic with the last windstorm was to simply ignore - since I could do nothing but vent my house appropriately and hope.  It worked!  I slept well, and awoke to no catastrophic damage, though I will admit to having a dream a la Oz that involved a tornado ripping up one bay of our Haygrove and plunking it down in a neighboring farm's property - who happened to be in the hobby business of breeding really miniature goats.  Don't ask - they were sure cute, though - and the size of large toads.  Strange.  But then, it WAS a dream, and I awoke to find that none of it was true - tornado OR mini goats.  Phew!  I have come to grips that there is really no weather forecasting website/newschannel that I am satisfied with, I am convinced that they are all based on someone's comfortability with serial conjecture.  It could drive a person mad trying to hold too much stock in weather forecasting, so I have officially decided that I am done trying.  Sure, I'll take a glance at Weather.com, but I'm still packing a change of clothes, shoes, additional layers, sunscreen, hat, water bottle, reflective blanket (just checking to see if you're paying attention), and emergency chocolate.  Tom Messner from Channel 5 - you and I are on the outs.  Officially.

More importantly, the eatin's gettin' good around here lately!  More and more food from the farm

is available, which sets our creative cooking fires a'blazin'!  A sample from some recent weekly menus (yes, we create menus for our household of 2 every Sunday to ensure that we're eating well every day of every week.  You know - there are so few eating opportunities in a lifetime, each should be as good as you can make it!); larb gai, quinoa tabbouleh, broccoli rabe with homemade pappardelle pasta and pine nuts, ricotta gnocchi sauteed in rendered duck fat, Boucher Farm Hot Italian Sausage sandwiches BBQ'd with a HUGE arugula salad with fresh from the garden lemon balm dressing.... etc.  You see, we are farmers because we LOVE to eat really good food!  We make it a priority in our life to harness most eating opportunities with vigor and passion, and something new included.  You new Food Club members are in for a treat!  Our little mini CSA/farm share program is really all about sharing our love of food and cooking with like-minded individuals.  We hope you enjoy the ride, which begins next Wednesday, June 10th!

OK.  Enough yabber-jabbering.  If you can't tell, I'm slightly sleep-deprived, slightly drunk on the early season abundance, and hopeful of what's to come.  I'm finding it hard to harness my thoughts and be coherent, though most major recent projects on the farm have been accomplished successfully and according to plan - and so, we're off and away!  Enjoy the stream of consciousness photostream and look forward to more focused posts.  I promise!

The Haygrove long-term section planted out with the tomatoes and cool tomato trellis system.

How that trellis gets built - we pound 6' two by fours into the ground in a very safe way...

Like this!  I hold, Spencer climbs a ladder and pounds them in with a sledgehammer.  I should be wearing a hard hat.  It only took us 30 minutes to get them all in, though!

The tools that make it all happen: the ratcheting spool, the duckbill anchor and the 20-penny nail to pound it all in.

Put it all into place, and pound it in until the ratchet is where you want it.

Something like this.  Attach the high tensile wires to the ratchet.

Tighten down a bit.

It should look like you have just strung a telegraph wire.

Next, tie the clove hitch with your tomato twine to the wire...

And plant your tomatoes - burying the twine with the tomato plants!  This is the only way we plant the tomatoes now - it's strong enough to hold everything up and allows for plenty of ventilation.  

Spencer and Chloe getting the peppers and eggplants in...

The coolest looking tree frog we've ever found at the farm!  He was hanging out in the arugula 

So clingy!

The other tomatoes in the Ledgewood house - growing like champions!

Our heritage breed chickens make the move outside!  Awkward stage.

First baby carrots are ready!  YAY!!!

First baby beets are ready, YAY!

The broccoli rabe is out, the biodegradable mulch and the melons are going in!

Spencer's been working diligently on the front yard garden at our house - here's where the Dill's Atlantic Giant Pumpkins are starting their journey to hugeness!

We'll have a few cherries this year!

There it is!  Nicely mulched paths, and the plants are in, but hard to see at this stage.   They will be filling out shortly!

Two Successful Markets, Conestoga, Wind & Tomatoes

We are still reeling from two great farmers' markets - our best first two markets ever, despite the deluge of biblical proportions last week and the windy & rainy end of market this week!  Thanks to all of our customers who come out every week (rain or shine) to support us - thank you!  What a productive week we've had - if not a little unnerving with all of the wind!  Every hoop-house owners' nightmare - 50+ mph gusts of wind.  We did our best all week to try and ignore the needling sounds of flapping plastic from the hoop-houses, and all in all, I'd say we succeeded.  The Haygrove also fared fine, though the FEMA-approved flappable side skirts did indeed flap in the wind (loudly), and in the process tore and became tangled.  It will actually not be too hard to repair it, but it is just one more thing for us to deal with in the busiest time of the year.  At any rate, the wind has come and gone, and hopefully we now have been blown into more consistently warmer weather - I write this as we expect another night in the 30s, but the 10-day forecast looks more promising, thankfully.  The plants will simply take off and grow like crazy when the weather regulates.  Looking forward to that!  Other fun developments this week include building the at-farm goose and duck house!  Spencer's vision panned out well - building a conestoga wagon for them.  We've heard horror stories from other farmers with ducks and geese that predators will stop at nothing to get to them - so we decided to build a fortress of sorts, with a nice looking facade.  The hoops are made from electrical conduit, and the shell is made from two layers of chicken wire.  We actually scavenged all materials and purchased nothing to make this

 cool house for the birds!  Plus, we gave them shade with white plastic we already had - and for extra panache, we lashed the plastic to the frame, which makes it look a lot like the Haygrove.  Consistency in all things!  We thought the ramp/door (made from a pallet) might be too steep for them to walk up, but they can make it up just fine.  After only 4 days of teaching them to go up the ramp before nightfall (and much goose and duck chasing!), they seem to have learned when it's time to go into the house, and just about 60 seconds of herding is required to get the gaggling 

mass of fowl up the ramp and bolted into their wagon for the night.  The area that we have them living in is fenced in with a woven electrical poultry fence with a battery powered terminal - training the dogs to that was not fun, but necessary, and they now give the penned in area a WIDE berth every time they pass it!  The geese and ducks LOVE to have access to tons of grass, and seem to be very happy out at the farm.  They're feathering out nicely and this week we'll move them to the garlic patch to start their actual job, which is weeding!  I'm sure we have a lot to learn on that front, but we're giving it a shot,

 anyway.  Speaking of workers on the farm, we have a woman named Chloe that will be working some with us this summer - she volunteered several times at our farm last year, and we're very happy to have her back!  She helped us with transplanting and weeding this week - a HUGE help!  We planted out all the kale, sprouting broccoli, parsley, swiss chard, cardoons and artichokes as well as all the heirloom tomatoes.  It's definitely a milestone in the season to get the tomatoes in - feels good!  Nice to know that the tomatoes are on their way - especially since I only have 5 quarts left from last 

year!  Come on tomatoes!  We decided to devote the Ledgewood hoop-house to the heirlooms this year and all the others (romas and cherries) will go into the Haygrove this week along with the peppers, squashes and eggplants.  We also did not graft the tomatoes this year after all.  We were all ready to do it - grew out the rootstock and everything.  We just revisited our experience last year and decided it wasn't worth it for us to do this year.  The grafted plants last year were indeed robust and huge - but mostly in the realm of foliage, not fruit.  I can sell fruit, not foliage.  Decision made.  Also - the grafting

 process always sets us back at least 10 days, and we decided that the time lost wasn't worth it.  So, we're happy with our decision - our tomatoes are in the ground way earlier than ever before - they're super healthy and getting established.  It will be interesting to see how much sooner we'll get fruit than years prior.  We also received the next round of chickens - this time it was 50 assorted heavy breeds, a favorite delivery to receive because they are so beautiful and varied in their coloring, and always super fun to receive a box of peepers in the mail!  They like their brooder and have been so much heartier than the 

cornish cross guys - out of 25 cornish cross birds we received, we're down to 19 at week 5 - they simply die over the tiniest things.  The heavy breeds are still going strong here at the end of their first week - no losses!  It's always such a stark contrast to those cornish birds, who got moved outside to feather out a bit more and then they'll move out to work at the farm in their chicken tractor for a few more weeks before harvesting them.  The next round of birds will be

 the quail, quickly followed by the next round of building housing for farm creatures; apparently our new pastime!  Luckily, once the buildings are complete - they can be re-used over and over again, and we'll be all set for animal structures for a while.  Such a busy week!  We accomplished most things on our list this week, and look forward to next week's projects, which will see us getting all of the rest of the long-term plants in the ground, the first weeding projects tackled, and getting 

potted plants ready for the biggest plant selling weekend coming up - Memorial day weekend!  Can you believe it?  The Spring continues to breeze by as we try to notice all of the lovely Spring smells in the air, the orioles flitting about the trees, the first mow of the farm fringe, the non-bugginess of early Spring, and the lengthening days giving us light until 7 pm.  Will close today with a picture of the dogs discussing the new electric fence at the farm keeping those geese and ducks just too far away!