Our First Farmers' Market

Read more!
Well, we did it. And I think we did it pretty well. Over the weekend we sold our harvests at Piedmont Park's Green Market. Our stand and our produce looked beautiful, and we were impressed with the number of people who came out to buy fresh veggies and support local farmers.

We had a nice variety of produce for our first market. The Okra, Sugar Snap Peas, Eggplant, Squash Blossoms, and Broccoli sold out quickly - of course, the smaller quantities of these particular items helped in that regard. The Patty Pan Squash, Yellow Zucchini, and Lemon Cucumbers were also a big hit. Rainbow Chard & Red Russian Kale sold better than I'd expected; oddly I think we might have been the only farmers at the market offering bunched greens. Green Zucchini, Cucumbers, Tomatoes, & Delicata were steady, if slower, sellers throughout the day. The only items that didn't seem to garner much interest were the Yellow Crooknecks and Purple Basil. And, although we nearly sold out of them, I was surprised to leave the market with one bunch of green onions unsold. I thought those would be easy crowd pleasers, but Joaquin and I were happy to take that last bunch home for ourselves! My mom and I also made some delicious & refreshing iced Tulsi Sun-Tea that people really enjoyed. Next time we'll bring an agave sweetened version as well; this is the south after all!

All in all we had a very good experience and we're excited for the markets to come. Next Saturday is the 4th of July so we won't be at Market again until July 11th, but by then we expect to have cherry tomatoes, more onion varieties, and probably carrots as well. It's even possible we'll have a few melons and peppers by then. I have to say it's the most purely enjoyable feeling to walk out to the field on any given morning and see new plants fruiting.


My personal market favorite this week were easily the Sugar Snap Peas - they really were the embodiment of perfection! I'm glad people enjoyed them as much as I did, because they were our first and last harvest of snap peas off those particular plants, which were planted too late and quickly done in by the summer heat. We'll definitely be planting more this fall.

Our most enthusiastic customers.

Remi, eyeing the lemon cukes. I think he knows a good thing when he sees it! (Next week we're putting out a water bowl for you.)

Green & Yellow Zucchini, Patty Pans, Yellow Crookneck Squash, Green & Lemon Cukes

Green Onions, Delicata, & Sugar Snap Peas



****************

Back in the field things are growing like crazy. I couldn't tell you what's winning, the crops or the weeds. We have a few rows of tomatoes where the grass must be a foot high in parts. And there's little hope left for weeding the squash & melons, which were planted too close together and have themselves completely taken over the beets & turnips. We're trying to keep on top of things, one thing at a time, each of us holding down "paying" jobs too. It's a continuous learning experience in balance.



On the topic of balance, I'm happy to report the bugs seem to be keeping themselves in check so we must be doing something right! Our once horribly riddled eggplants that I feared would not make it have proved their determination to grow into strong plants and are now producing beautiful fruits. The squash bugs (that still concern me every now and then) don't seem to be taking over our plants. No aphids anywhere thus far; just ladybugs everywhere we turn! We're learning as we observe, rather than reaching for the chemicals, and I feel blessed that it's paying off. I'm sure at some point we'll lose crops to bugs, if not this season then in the seasons to come - but I hope we'll welcome it as a challenge to restore our ecosystem. And, I'm more than happy to share a little :)

The Pepper Plants are Fruiting


Okra Blossoms

Sea of Green - the Squash, Melons, & Cucumbers


Sugar Baby Watermelon

Honeydew

Casaba Melon, our one and only plant

Butternut Squash

Patty Pans

Yellow (Sebring) Zuchinni

Pie Pumpkin

Carrots

Broccoli

Tomato Jungle

Artichoke

Onions & Leeks

Sugar Snap Peas

***********************

On the Pastured Poultry Front:

We've lost a few turkeys and guineas over the past couple weeks. First to a predator (we're not exactly sure what though, perhaps a weasel?), and then two more to the heat. We keep them as shaded and as hydrated as possible, and now there's a box fan blowing on them as well. But hot southern summers are notoriously hard on poultry. Still, our remaining turkeys are plumping up, and the guineas are really finding their voices. Plus the baby chicks arrived in the mail today, so keep your eyes out for cute pictures of peeps in my next post!

**********************

As for our backyard goat babies, they're doing very well and have already doubled in size. They are so playful and fun to watch. Last week we took them to be disbudded, which I'm sure was a very painful experience for them as well as extremely disheartening for me. Joaquin and I debated back and forth - neither of us wanted to put them through the experience - but our main concern that ended up winning out was the potential for the goats to accidentally injure someone, especially a child, with their horns. Goats love to playfully "head butt," so it's a risk we just couldn't take right now. I guess I took it harder than the babies though, who seemed mostly unphased by it. They were back to bouncing around the backyard (looking less like themselves than little 4-eyed alien goats) only hours later.

Joaquin is trying out his novice carpentry skills as we speak, building a milking stand for MaryBell. Soon we'll start separating the babies from her for half days in order that we can all enjoy fresh milk. The goat babies have quickly become adventurous little eaters - trying out everything they see their mama eating as well as gnawing on the occasional stack of bricks and other inedibles. But, our dream of fresh raw milk from our own backyard is finally coming to fruition after 3 years of keeping "pet" goats. And it also means we're one (small) step closer to our goat milk dairy on the farm in Canton.

**************

Finally, I intend to incorporate recipes into the blog and/or main website soon, so that you can use it as a resource on how to prepare vegetables that perhaps aren't all too familiar to you. There are some great ways to eat those Patty Pan Squash, twice baked and stuffed with cheese! Not to mention southern favorites like Okra and Green Tomatoes. Kale and Chard can be pretty tasty too, if you give them a chance (and Joaquin wants to remind you not to forget the potatoes!). *UPDATE: Here's the new recipe blog.



We sure hope you'll stop by and see us at the market this summer.

Happy Eating!
Jessica

A Week's Worth of Updates, Plus: Special Deliveries in Our Own Backyard

Read more! *Update on our harvests: Sunday brought our first harvests of head lettuce, summer squash, cucumbers, and kale, in addition to the chard and basil we've already been harvesting. Our scallions and kohlrabi are ready as well, and it won't be too much longer before the tomatoes and melons ripen. I wasn't ready for how quickly the plants began to fruit here in Georgia. It must be the heat and the generous amounts of rain we've had lately, because I don't remember our transplants taking off as rapidly last season in Colorado. I'm beginning to think we'll have Butternut Squash in July...Oops!

Sweet Green, Tulsi, and Purple Basil

Kale and Chard, soaking to remove field heat

Alex, Byron, and Alex's mom, Charmaine came out this past weekend and assisted with the harvest as well as some much needed and very tedious hand weeding. We made it through the peppers, a couple of tomato rows, and most of the carrots, turnips, & beets. As they were leaving a couple who my parents managed to recruit after just having met the night before showed up and helped me finish the basil and eggplant. The field looks better for now, but I know it won't last long!

Peppers, before the weeding crew arrived

Cabbage Plant - what a beauty!

Kohlrabi - ready for harvest

Tomatillos!

Our first Sugar Baby Watermelon - golf ball sized

Lots of Green Tomatoes in the field

Melon - now softball size

Cucumbers - ready for harvest

Our first Pie Pumpkins - golf ball sized

Butternut Squash - growing quickly

Zucchini - ready for harvest

Basil - getting bushy

Onions

Farm View (6/14/09)

*Updates on the Poultry: While we were harvesting and weeding, Allan and Alex were busy building two chicken brooders to house our laying hens which will be arriving at the end of the month. The turkeys and guineas will soon outgrow the home they currently share, and we'll have to build new turkey housing. Another month or so and hopefully they'll be large enough to turn out to pasture during the daytime hours without too much worry over hawks.

*Updates on Where to Find Our Produce: Saturday, June 27th will be our first ever appearance at a Farmers' Market! We'll be selling whatever we can pull from the field (cherry tomatoes, maybe, maybe?) at Piedmont Park's Green Market from 9am - 1pm. The Farmers' Market scene in Atlanta feels lacking compared to Boulder's well organized and hugely popular market. It may be because there are a few different market locations on Saturdays (all relatively close to one another), rather than one "central" market. In addition to the Green Market, there's Morningside, which is open exclusively to organically certified vendors; there's the Peachtree Road Farmers' Market, which we'll be checking out for the first time this Saturday; and of course there are also several small town markets dispersed throughout the state. I don't know yet that the Green Market is the best choice for us. I'm hoping we're able to sell a good amount of what we bring. I'm confident there's plenty of foot traffic through the park, but I just wonder how interested the park goers are in cooking kale. We'll find out soon enough.

*Farm Stand Update: It's still in the works, and becoming more of a necessity every day. One factor is that any structure on the property, no matter how simple, must first go through a permitting process. But the produce we're pulling out of the field right now is in need of good homes! Luckily this week we were able to send most of it home with our volunteers, but with more & more in the fields...well, we need to be able to put our fresh produce out daily.

*Update on the Organic Initiative funding: Two NRCS agents came out to the farm on Thursday to meet with us and see what we might qualify for. Not much at all, it turns out. I think in total we would be eligible to receive around $300 (before taxes!) because so far we have only about an acre under production. As the program is currently written, money is only alloted for the acreage that is currently planted. Never mind the fact that they are supposed to be encouraging sustainable measures such as cover-cropping, which we want to do in *preparation* for our future beds. Or that a main goal of ours for the near future is pastured livestock and they specifically list Prescribed Grazing as one of their "Core Conservation Practices" - they'll only pay for cattle and we're interested in goats & pigs. They'll help fund mulching as well - but, only for strawberries. Need help with pest management? The program allots financial aid to the tune of $25/acre. Pyrethrin alone costs around $75/gallon. The bottom line being, this "Organic Initiative" offers little support for *growing* a small farm.

So, when all was said and done, it didn't make sense to move forward with the application process. As it turns out, only 5 transitioning/organic farmers from Georgia even applied for funding, meaning the $2 million Georgia received from the USDA probably will not even come close to being fully distributed. And these aren't funds that "roll over." There's a good possibility the lack of distribution of monies will suggest to the USDA a lack of need, rather than the absence of a viable program. The agents were friendly and seemed to understand our frustrations, and took down our suggestions in hope that next year's initiative would be more....farm-friendly? We'll see. For now, the best thing that could have come out of it is the freedom to remain uncertified.

*Update on Bugs: The field is full of them! I wish I had more experience identifying them so that I could separate the "good" from the "bad." (I know the issue isn't black and white - that there's a healthy balance for all insects, and to wipe out the "enemies" also means wiping out those we consider beneficial.) At Cure, we didn't have too many problems with pests other than flea beetles, which were easily remedied by covering the susceptible crops with row cover. We'd find a hornworm here and there, but never in the tomatoes (the crop they threaten). I remember seeing cucumber beetles in the fields too - just not enough to cause noticeable damage. I think Colorado's shorter growing season and multitude of hard frosts during the winter must do wonders for keeping bug populations naturally in check. During the entire season I only remember using (organically approved) pesticides two times on specific crops.

We're lucky that our field is full of ladybugs, and that our soil is full of grubs and earthworms. But lately we've been noticing squash bugs & cucumber beetles, and LOTS of squash bug eggs tacked on to the undersides of the squash plants' leaves. We haven't found a lot of damage yet - but the question is, are we sitting on a ticking time bomb? Or are we lucky enough that our beneficial bugs might be keeping everything in balance? Of course we remove the eggs and kill the adult bugs as we come across them, just for good measure, but we can't dedicate the amount of time to hand-killing that it would require to ward off an infestation. And from all that I read about squash bugs, if an infestation occurs, those of us who are farming "organically" have very few options - the best of which seems to be sacrificing this year's crops destroying all but a few plants to be left as "traps," in hopes of burning as many bugs as possible at the end of the season so that next year the populations will dwindle. We're crossing our fingers that it doesn't come to this.

We are also starting to find potato beetles, mostly on our eggplant. Although we aren't currently growing any potatoes, the potato beetle attacks all members of the solanacea family, including eggplant, peppers, and tomatoes. Again, we've been removing them by hand, in hopes that we can stop them before they spread to other crops. Our lack of understanding of which bugs do what has led us to appoint Joaquin as our resident entomologist-in-training. Joaquin, our plants are counting on you! Please don't let them down :)

*****************

Now let's break from the farm for a minute and switch to a little segment I'm going to call:

"News from the Backyard that Started it All"

Joaquin and I are excited to announce two new additions to our family: Goat Baby #1 and Goat Baby #2. MaryBell, our backyard doe, gave birth on Wednesday, June 10th to 2 of the most adorable little creatures I've ever met. Both baby goats are male, so unfortunately we didn't get the additions to our milking herd that we would have liked, but their playful cuteness makes it hard for us to hold any grudges. (We are still faced with the challenge of what to do with 2 new male goats when they reach adulthood, but that's another conversation for a different day.) Lucky for you, the goats are extremely photogenic and also make for great video footage. Enjoy!

MaryBell cleaning Goat Baby #1, minutes after birth

Goat Baby #1's first meal

MaryBell licking Goat Baby #2 clean

MaryBell with her newborns

Cuddles with mom & baby

Zoey meets Goat Baby #2


Goat Baby #2

Goat Baby #1

Hello, my friend - Tucker meets Goat Baby #2

More milk for Goat Baby #1

Family Portrait (6/11/09)

The goat babies make me so happy!

******************

Finally, it has come to my attention that my posts are a little long-winded. I'm new to this blogging world, so bear with me. I'm finding each post takes a lot out of me, and more time than I would actually like/have to dedicate to sitting in front of a computer - but the perfectionist in me doesn't want to leave out the details! So, a big thank you to everyone who reads my posts the whole way through - your ability to focus is truly rare in this day and age.

Happy Eating!
Jessica