Week 8, 2016-2017

It is hard to believe that a third of the season is already gone past us.  Things have gone very well so far and I would rate our performance a solid A!.  If we would have had the peppers and kale that we had planned, I would have graded an A+.  I have started more peppers to try again in the warmer months and a new crop of kale is already about to be planted.  In fact, I will be planting broccoli, romaine lettuce, parsley, and leeks this week.  I planted lettuce and peas a couple of weeks ago.  I read an article in Hort Tech journal about snap peas and it emboldened me to try growing some.  I have tried in the past and had poor results but I was feeling overly confident in my growing skills so I thought I could risk a humbling failure again; so peas went into the ground.
Strawberries are right around the corner and it looks like we will be serving lettuce, bok choi, and mustard greens this week for the members.
We have had a great run at squash and zucchini this year but the patty pan and yellow squash have run their course and have been pulled up.  I will leave the zucchini until they start to wane, probably in a few weeks.

Week 4, 2016-2017 Season

I have been doing a lot of planting in the last two weeks.  I have planted in the field, strawberries, onions, mustard greens, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, broccoli, and beets.  I still have scallions, cabbage, and cauliflower to go.  I have also sown seeds for more lettuce, kale, and Swiss chard in trays.
I have also finally got my fertilizer injector working after ordering a few parts.  Now I can inject liquid organic fertilizer directly through the drip tape to help out on the fertility of the crops.  I am hoping that it will give us a little more ability to adjust the nitrogen level of the plants.  There is some fine tuning of the rate and concentration of the the mix before we are off and running.  The fertilizer is very viscous so it needs to be diluted but I also don't want to let the water run for too long and leach all the pre-plant fertilizer that is there; so I am still working out the details.
Everything else is humming along fine with bountiful squashes and greens sizing up nicely.  This, so far, is the best crop growth we have had since we started growing organic veggies.  Soon the tomatoes will find their fertilizer and should be off to the races along with the cucumbers.  I'm still waiting for that salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce ready at the same time.

Patty Pan Squash Recipes

I usually get a few questions about our produce each season in the form of "What can I do with it?"  So, since our plants have produced a super-abundance of patty pan squash  (aka scalloped squash) I thought I would give out some ideas.  Here are few ideas to try this fun oddity of the produce world to get the creative cooking flowing.

Stuffed with cheese and bacon:  http://allrecipes.com/recipe/39304/stuffed-pattypan-squash/
Stuffed with veggies and pecans:   http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/
Stuffed with rice and spinach:  http://southernfood.about.com/od/summersquash/r/r90708a.htm
OK you get the idea with stuffed.
How about grilled with salsa verde:  http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12632-grilled-or-roasted-pattypan
Grilled with Indian spice:  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/indian-spiced-grilled-baby-squash
You can also saute'
Sauted with basil and feta:  http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/sauted-baby-squash-with-basil-feta
or fried:  http://www.newlyweds-blog.com/2010/06/15/fried-patty-pan-squash/
and lastly you can always bake them or turn them into soup.

First Harvest Nears for 2016-2017 Season

Our first harvest is almost upon us.  For two years I have tried to start the farm harvest of fresh veggies to our members before Thanksgiving so that our produce could be included on the menu of the festivities.  Unfortunately, we have had problems with seed starting soil and have lost our seedlings two years in a row form different causes.  We almost had that happen again this year but I was able to catch it in time so things weren't pushed back too far.  It appears that saving the bale of leftover soil over the summer causes pH changes that are not conducive to plant growth.  I made a quick change and bought fresh soil and things grew the way they were supposed to.

Two hurricanes didn't help things out either.  Besides rotting a few seedling trays down and killing most of our pepper plants when the plastic mulch blew off, we escaped major damage.  The eggplants were injured but appeared to have recovered.

I have adjusted our nutritional program this year and the plants have responded remarkably.  I have never grown such a beautiful crop of vegetables as I see in the field right now.  Everything looks amazing! TBTG! Our squash plants (zucchini, yellow squash, and patty pan) are ten days earlier than expected and we have been picking bushels of cucurbits already.  Turnips, diakon, broccoli raab, and green bean plants are also looking tremendous and should be close for the picking this Saturday (Nov. 12) a full two weeks ahead of schedule!  Goal #1 accomplished!

I have a few other harvest goals I would like to meet this year.  Goal #2 - Have lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and scallions ready at the same time for a delicious salad.  We usually have all of this ready throughout the season but we never have it all at once.  Goal #3 - Have carrots, cabbage, and potatoes ready for St. Patrick's Day.  A good Irish Catholic tradition for our family has been to have a pot of corned beef and cabbage for St. Paddy's Day.  Whether or not this is truly "traditional" is up for debate, but it is traditional in our family, and now has passed into the second generation.  I would like to supply our pot with Steed Farm's, fresh produce, for the feast day. St Patrick pray for us!

So the harvest forecast for this Saturday (Nov. 12) is lots of squash, turnip greens, diakon radish, broccoli raab, sweet potatoes, mint, and Thai basil.  Green beans are really close but may show up on next week's menu.  We will also have as a bonus avocados from the tree at the house and starfruit from the tree at the office. This should make for a nice basket of produce to plan some meals for next week.

Just to round out the news from the farm, the tomato transplants are planted in the house along with the cucumber seeds.  The carrots have been sown this last week along with a fresh crop of broccoli raab and cilantro.   We should be transplanting to the field, bok choi, kale, collards, cabbage, lettuce, mustard greens, broccoli, and kohlrabi.  The strawberry plants are almost rooted and will be transplanted shortly as well.  Lots of work ahead.

Season Beginnings 2016-17

Our short summer is over at the farm and we are gearing up for this season.  In some of the fields the cover crops are growing nicely.  In a couple of fields we are trying to control the worst weeds (nutsedge and cogongrass) with herbicides which will not be planted back for three years.  We are cleaning up the greenhouse for tomatoes and cucumbers.  We are expanding our carrot raised bed and are adding a bed for beets.  This worked out well last year and hopefully it will do well this season.

We have already planted the sweet potatoes in white plastic mulch.  This is the first annual crop to begin when the season starts.  I have nice time posts that remind when to plant different crops.  Tomato, pepper, eggplant, onions and sweet potatoes need to be started by Anna's birthday, mid-August.  The cool season crops (cabbage, collards, broccoli) should be done by my birthday in early September.  With all these moving parts, birthdays help me to keep things in order.

All our seeds were ordered on the same night.  We used four different sources: Johnny's Seeds, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Seedway, and New England Seeds.  I like to see who can deliver to the house first.  This year it was Johnny's Seeds that showed up first.  Next by a day it was SESE.  A couple of days later we got the Seedway Seeds in.  Then, just about when I was about to make a call, NE Seeds showed up.  Congratulations Johnny's you did it again!  You've won the coveted Steed Farm-Seed Ship Showdown!

We have ordered our strawberries for October.  We went with 'Camino Real' again for this year as they produced well for the varmints last year.  Hopefully WE can eat some this year.  I cleared the surrounding fields to help reduce the cover that the animals can hide in.  Last season's end when I was turning the cover crop next to the field where we were producing, there were about 30 large rats that were in the field running for cover from the mower heading their way.  I figured it made a nice place to hide for other critters too.  This year they have a lot less places to hide.

I have found a potato seed producer in New York and am hoping that we can get potato seeds shipped to us for the early winter.  We have struggled with finding a source for a few years due to our small quantity we need.  Two years ago we got them too late, and last year our seed never sprouted after we planted them in the late fall.  We planted again in the spring and got a little production but I feel it was a little too hot to get a good crop.  I believe this will be a good year for potatoes as well.  Always got to have hope and faith!

Sun hemp cover crop.

A row of newly planted SWEET potatoes.

End of Season 2015-2016

This is the end of the season and surprisingly, I am looking forward to next season's planting already.  I remember last year I couldn't wait for the end of the season as I was really burnt out from the work.  This year I am excited to try different things to grow different crops.
Overall, I think this season was a "B" Season.  I wish we had more strawberries, tomatoes, beans, cabbage and squash.  We never got corn, Chinese cabbage, watermelons, or southern peas to the table.  We did have a good crop of carrots, eggplant, cucumbers, and the numbers of strawberries were high but the varmints got to enjoy them instead of us.  The carrots especially were a winner.  The raised bed worked great.  I just need to tweak the angle of the sides as I thought carrots would follow the angle of the sides down.  It seems they just stop growing when they encountered the resistance of the side.  Next year I will do straight sides. We also got cantaloupes for the first time this year.  Another reason I am looking forward to next year, so I can tweak how we grew them.

We did have a great early season "A+" but then we ran out of steam as far as production goes towards the end of the season.  I believe that our fertilizer ran out of gas much more quickly on vegetables towards the end of the season this year, even though I put a season's amount in the crop row.  Always room for improvements!
We also had a raccoon eat through the top of our chicken coop and kill three chickens.  It seems that the end of the season is a very dangerous time for them. I reinforced the coop with hard fence wire to protect the other remaining chickens.  It always seems that when predators are determined to eat chicken for dinner, they find a way into the coop.

Now it is time to remove the drip lines, the plastic mulch, the electric fence, dump all the pots in the greenhouse, recycle the potting soil, till up the ground, plant the cover crop, pull the weeds in the herbs, dump left over trays, pick up all the pots used to pick the produce, and mow the farm.  Maybe I will find a minute to relax as well before we begin planting in July. :)

Some more pics from the farm of our tomatoes...

Ayurvedic Medicine?

On my way to the farm I caught a very interesting radio program on the People's Pharmacy.  It was about how what you eat is what you are or letting your food be your medicine.  The guest who is a practitioner of ayurvedic medicine and a neurologist, was mentioning that what you eat changes your gut bacteria.  That is simple enough, however she then went on to state that your gut bacteria then send signals to your brain to create desires in what you eat.  So depending upon what you have been eating and what is living in your gut you might be creating a feed back loop that could either be beneficial or downward spiraling.  I still don't know much about ayurvedic medicine but it makes a bunch of sense that our eating habits can have big consequences or payoffs.  Here is a link to the program if you would like to give it a listen.  http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2016/04/21/show-1033-how-to-stay-healthy-with-principles-of-ayurvedic-medicine/

The Pope Prays for Steed Farm

Well, he is praying for Steed Farm as well as every small farm and farming family trying to cultivate the land.  I was a bit surprised and very grateful that for the month of April, Pope Francis asked the world to pray for small farmers.  The USDA categorizes small farms as those that make below $250,000.  We definitely fit well below that category and we always welcome prayers for our farm.  I'll let the Apostleship of Prayer summarize the global intention of the pope...

 Seventy-two percent of the world’s farms are less than 2.5 acres in size.  In the U.S., 90 percent of the 2.1 million farms are considered small, family farms, and many of them are struggling.

Though prices have gone up in supermarkets, the income of farmers has not. As a result, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the largest job loss of any occupation is farmers. When the small farms go out of business, often large agri-businesses acquire the land and create greater potential for ecological damage and health risks. For example, a single fast food hamburger may contain meat from more than a hundred different cattle.

For Pope Francis small farmers are essential to caring for the earth and safeguarding it for future generations. He said that “in the work of farmers there is the acceptance of the precious gift of the land which comes to us from God, but there is also its appreciation in the equally precious work of men and women, called to respond to the mandate of tilling and safeguarding the land (Genesis 2: 15).” 

Agricultural workers should receive a just wage. As the pope said, “The labor of those who cultivate the earth, generously dedicating time and energy to it, appears as a genuine vocation. It deserves to be recognized and appropriately appreciated, also in concrete economic policies.”

With the coming of spring, we pray for those on small farms who are busy planting. May they not only have an abundant harvest this year but also “receive a just reward for their precious labor.” 

Thank you Pope Francis for your recognition of our work and thank you everyone who prays for us!

Week 20, Season 2015 - 16

Things are heating up in the field and the weeds are taking over the row middles again.  This is when growing produce organically starts to get even harder than it already is in west central Florida. Our transition time should be better than last year and we will have a few lean weeks of produce.  Squash and zucchini are looking good and should start to harvest next week.  Cherry tomatoes are also looking good except for a few plants out in the field.  There are a few small green tomatoes already on the vines.  Green beans are almost ready to flower and cucumbers in the greenhouse are starting to produce the first stages of fruit.  Potatoes harvested last week for the first time this season and taste great.  Two varieties of corn had to get replanted for poor germination.  The southern peas also had poor germination and will not produce a crop as I had no more seeds and it will be too late in the season to order and plant them. We might get a crop of eggplants from the same plants that we had from the fall.  I pruned them back and see some flowers since it has warmed up.

Our strawberries are being eaten again over the last few weeks. I hate to keep loosing them each week as these are super popular in the share baskets.  I put another strand of hot wire next to the ground last week thinking that the animal that was eating them was going under the electric fence.  Things looked good all the way up to Wednesday and I thought we were on track to harvest for Saturday with nothing being eaten.   Until I checked them today (Friday) and again everything that was ripe was eaten again.  Now I think that it might be coyotes going over the fence.  I found what look like dog tracks on the watermelon rows and around the area right next door to the strawberries.  I honestly  have no clue what is eating them.  We caught two possums and the problems stopped for a while and I thought we solved the issue.  I am thinking about changing the layout of the fence to protect the fruiting plants instead of the growing area.  Maybe if I run strands directly over the plants this might deter the animals.  I have spent a bunch of time and effort on this issue with minimal payback and I hate to waste more time taking down the fence and rearranging it again but I am almost at that point.

Here are some pictures from the farm and beyond.

Guatemalan orchid no bigger than my finger tip. Amazingly these flowers get pollinated.

A broken pipe flood irrigates the field.

Planes practice over the farm for airshow

A pre-vermin picture of our strawberries!

Week 18, Season 2015-16

We have a new addition to Steed Farms! Welcome Paul Joseph, Friday 3/11/16, 10:30 pm, 7 lb 5 oz. 19 inches long.  Congratulations also to Jennifer who the doctor said should teach classes in proper birthing techniques.  We are excited at his arrival and a little tired as well.  It was interesting juggling a trip to the hospital, a farm harvest, and deliveries, both human and produce.  But we made it through.  Thanks also to my Dad who volunteered to help out with the harvest.

In the last month I have planted bell peppers, leeks, green beans, corn, southern peas, the last of the lettuces, beets, more carrots, more cabbage, watermelons, cantaloupes, cherry tomatoes, and cucumbers.  Hopefully we will start to see some of this produce arriving to the tables for pick up in the next months, and I continually hope that one season we might harvest melons.  I nearly gave up on organic strawberries and finally figured things out, so I still hope in the melons that things will come together correctly to get a harvest.  In fact, just the other week I was driving the tractor through the field from last year and there were two harvestable size watermelons sitting in the field.  I brought them home and they were past ripeness, so I guess there is possibility still.

We are entering our typical spring slow down but it looks like we are in a little better shape this year.  We will have onions and potatoes to fill in the gaps of some of the things like lettuce that we won't see until next year.  It is nice to be finished with planting for this year as I should be done this weekend with everything in the field or greenhouse until we start planting again in the late summer for our next season.  Yeah!

Week 14, 2015-16 Season

Finally back home from Guatemala and thank the good Lord, everybody is safe and sound and the farm is doing fine.  Kudos to Jenn for managing everything, expertly, while I was gone.  I had a very productive time in Guatemala working with La Floresta based in Coban, Guatemala as a volunteer in the Farmer to Farmer Program from USAID.  We also had a few classes with other producers and La Floresta's employees.  They propagate ivy, aloe, pony tail palms, liriopes, pothos, and philodendrons at three very different farms for export to the US and Europe.  I assisted them in making recommendations in changes to fertilizers, weed control, and worker protection safety along with some other harvesting ideas.  The main goal was to increase yields and reduce costs.  The bonus will be a reduction in the company's environmental impact and helping their employees minimize their exposure to pesticides.  I also learned a few things from them as well to implement with my growers and farm.  It was also somewhat sad to see the clear cutting of forests.  I was at one farm and could hear the chainsaws working on the nearby mountain side making room for other crops. This was especially poignant as this area abounds in orchids that grow on the forest trees.  In fact, I saw an orchid no bigger than the tip of my finger at an orchid reserve that was dedicated to protecting the plant and preserving their habitat.  When we lose a specie whether it be animal or plant we also lose a bit of ourselves in relation to that species.  All in all, it was a good trip and I learned a great deal more about and have a connection to, the people of Guatemala.  It certainly was a very beautiful country once you get out of the cities.  The country is very mountainous and reminded me of either Arizona in southern Guat. (very dry and desert-like) or North Carolina in north-central Guat (pine trees, tall mountains, cool and damp).  It was very interesting to see a smoking volcano when I touched down in the airport. (Pictures to follow soon.)  I was slightly nervous at times for fear of the unknown and the safety of doing different things but I had a good host and a colleague to assist with things.  I am also very glad to be back with my family and farm.

The farm is doing well and we will be harvesting beautiful lettuce this week along with other items.  The potatoes are doing great and our next crop of tomatoes are gearing up for outside planting.  Next in the line up to plant are beets, cabbage, more lettuce, broccoli, and more Swiss chard.  Within a few weeks we will be planting sweet corn, beans, squash, cantaloupe, and watermelon (yes, I will once again plant melons with the hope/fantasy of actually harvesting them.)

We captured two possums in traps near the strawberries and the electric fence.  My apologies to raccoons, as I figured they were the culprits.  I may have been quick to jump to erroneous conclusions, however I still don't trust those masked fiends.

Week 10, 2015-16 Season

It is interesting how I always think about the weather whenever I am starting to post a blog.  These past few weeks have been nice and cool with one day of about 36 degrees which frosted our eggplants and roselle.  I didn't worry too much about the cold at the time, but we did get some shoot damage from the weather.  We planted lettuce, parsley dill, and bok choi, to the field.  I sowed lettuce, tomato, mizuna, and cabbage in trays to get them started. The potatoes are just starting to break the surface of the ground.

I put in a electric fence to deter the raccoons that were eating all our strawberries.  I now know that it isn't working yet as all the red strawberries have vanished from the field with nothing but stems left over.  I'm not sure if he is going under or over the two wires that I put up but I made a few changes and will see if that keeps it out.  I would love to be able to harvest some strawberries for everyone at some point in the near future.  I am also hoping that maybe this will deter them from getting into our melon crop later on.

As an aside, Jenn and I visited my brother, his wife, and his two daughters in NYC last week for three days.  And speaking of the weather it was a very windy 25-35 degrees while we were there.  It was nice seeing my nieces for the first time.  One interesting thing that I kept thinking about while visiting was that there were so many people in the city.  About 8 million people are working in NYC in a given day and all those people are eating and producing waste and somehow all that food moves in and gets distributed and all the waste gets taken out somewhere.  And still amazingly somehow it all works.  I find these logistics staggering to comprehend.  

New electric fence

Raccoon tracks and damage to plastic

Week 7, 2015-16 Season

We have had some good rain and upper 40's for lows this past week.  In fact we even put on the fireplace for most of Sunday afternoon and evening for our enjoyment.  Here is the cooler, wetter weather I've been expecting since they announced that this would be an El Nino year.  Especially since this is predicted to be a greater than normal El Nino event.  In fact, the climatologists say this might grow to an even bigger event than the 1997-98 El Nino.  I remember the weather for this year as I was growing cabbage in Gainesville for a Master's thesis and I got something like 14 inches of rain during my project in a week.  The cabbages loved every bit of it and grew to the size of basketballs.  I will be planting lots of cabbage this winter as a hedge to see if we can replicate things.  If you'd like to see more about El Nino and what that mans for our locale, in a very nice web format, you can check out my work blog at http://hortagent.blogspot.com/2016/01/el-nino-summarized.html   We planted more collards, kale, lettuce and red potatoes this week to the field.  The cool season plants seem to be perking up with this cooler weather swing.  The greenhouse tomatoes seem to have been dropping flowers instead of putting on fruit for this week.  However we still have much fruit on the vine already in the green stage.

This last week I got a bit of a startle when harvesting sweet potatoes.  It was cool and raining as I was harvesting early in the morning.  I had already dug about a quarter of what I needed for the day.  I generally remove the plastic mulch and reach around in the soil to feel the potatoes then dig them out.  When I get to the edge of the plastic I generally peel back the layer a bit and then poke around underneath for any potatoes until I get to the point where I need to peel back more  plastic to reveal fresh ground to search.  I then gradually make my way down the row like this until I have all I need.  This last Saturday I was poking around underneath the mulch to my left and my hands were underneath the plastic mulch where I could not see them.  Not feeling any potatoes I lifted back the plastic and there staring at me in a tight coil was a corn snake just a few inches from where I was poking around for potatoes. Needless to say, my harvesting protocol quickly changed in light of the new data and now I pull all plastic back and harvest in front of the plastic line.  No more blind reaches looking for potatoes.  After I regained my composure, I quietly shooed him to the row middle and out of the way of my harvesting process so we both could get back to work; me with the harvesting and him with keeping the rodent population down on the farm. You think that a cup of coffee wakes you up in the morning?  You should try being surprised by a snake.

      Waking up the neighbors while harvesting.  I've got the stick next to his head as he pokes out from underneath the plastic to see what the racket is all about.