Our first pick up went very well. It is always great to catch up with our members who we haven't seen since May and greet our new members. Jenn made zucchini muffins as a sweet add-on for everyone.
It is always a little hard for me to shift back into harvest mode from production mode, as the work is under a time crunch. I thank our volunteer friend Issy and the rest of the Steed family who made things much easier this time.
One thing that always happens at our first pick up is the question "What is that and what do I do with it?" It is always fun to talk about the fresh produce we bring to the pick up tables and our favorite recipes that we use to eat them. I never considered us to be "foodies" but since we have all this unique produce it sort of happens over time and I am now warming up to that definition.
Daikon radish is one of those vegetables we had at our first pickup.
For all the folks who have no idea what to do with a diakon radish I have included some links with recipes...
Here are a bunch of yummy recipes from Saveur Mag https://www.saveur.com/article/collection/daikon-recipes
daikon fries - http://cookingontheweekends.com/2014/01/spicy-roasted-daikon-french-fry-recipe/
and these from New Hampshire NPR - http://nhpr.org/post/what-do-daikon-radishes#stream/0
We like to eat them roasted, fried, and in salads.
I hope this helps!
Saturday, December 9, 2017
Friday, December 1, 2017
Week 1, 2017-18 Season
Harvest is set for this Saturday. Looks like we will have loads of zucchini and yellow squash. The green beans surprised with a good harvest of beautiful pods for this weekend. Broccoli raab looks like it might have been a week early. We will see if we can harvest enough for everyone. Strawberries are starting to flower. This is about a month earlier than last year. To round out the baskets are diakon, turnips (which look excellent), roselle, patty pan squash, oregano, and garlic chives. Things are looking good and doing well as the season starts.
We will be planting cabbage, broccoli, scallions, more bok choi, lettuce, and cauliflower grown from our own transplants for future harvests.
We will be planting cabbage, broccoli, scallions, more bok choi, lettuce, and cauliflower grown from our own transplants for future harvests.
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Season Start 2017-2018
I've taken a bit of a blogging hiatus since our last post way back in April. I have been somewhat overwhelmed with work, fixing up a mobile home, caring for six kids, and making sure that the household and vehicles are up to par as well as preparing for the next season. Usually the summer is a slack time from our busy pace; not this year! We lost a well pressure tank, an AC unit went out, someone ran over our farm mailboxes, hurricane preparations and clean up, and a work-cation. I am running just to keep up with things lately and the idea of sitting at a computer late at night hasn't seemed that attractive. Blogger has however, been calling to me and finally I have a free moment and will catch up from the last post.
Our 2016-17 season was one of the best seasons we have had in terms of vegetable/fruit production so far. The weather was mild and cooperative and plantings performed well. We added edible pod peas, spaghetti and acorn squash to our veggie line-up. Strawberries exceeded our expectations. All-in-all we had a "A-" season. The biggest downer was not having kale for an entire season. I just couldn't get it to germinate and stay alive to transplanting size.
This new season has started off with much difficulty. Our farm received over eight inches of rain at field preparation time. This greatly hampered our transplant starts and the formation of beds in the field as I wasn't able to get a tractor in to form our planting beds. So we started off two weeks behind schedule. Next we had some very cold weather during our warm-season cycle and that further delayed some plants another two weeks. Usually we are harvesting mid-Nov, this season will probably start mid-December. Other farmers I have talked with are in a similar situation. Fortunately, we grow many crops over the season, we have been spared major damage from storms, and will recover. So many growers in Florida have had a much worse time and have lost much of their crops for the year.
Our sweet potatoes are looking good, squash, zucchini, diakon, broccoli raab look fine. Our strawberries were direct planted to the field. This uses a bunch of water. For the better part of ten days, overhead water needs to run on bare-root transplants to keep them alive so they can grow new roots. I used low-volume sprinklers to keep the plants alive until the roots formed. This has saved me planting twice though. Usually I plant them into trays, mist them in the greenhouse, and form little starter plants, then transplant the rooted plants into the field. So I wind up planting twice to save water. Since time has been my limiting factor lately, I tried the standard method that strawberry farmers use to grow plants. I did notice some negative factors such as earthworms that recovered in the field (by using cover crops for a few years) were drowning in puddles trying to evade the saturated field and swamping other nearby crops. Maybe I will look for rooted strawberry plugs for next year.
That is a good start at catching up on things and I will continue in fill in details in future posts. Looking forward to a few hours of sleep and a great 2018 season!
Our 2016-17 season was one of the best seasons we have had in terms of vegetable/fruit production so far. The weather was mild and cooperative and plantings performed well. We added edible pod peas, spaghetti and acorn squash to our veggie line-up. Strawberries exceeded our expectations. All-in-all we had a "A-" season. The biggest downer was not having kale for an entire season. I just couldn't get it to germinate and stay alive to transplanting size.
This new season has started off with much difficulty. Our farm received over eight inches of rain at field preparation time. This greatly hampered our transplant starts and the formation of beds in the field as I wasn't able to get a tractor in to form our planting beds. So we started off two weeks behind schedule. Next we had some very cold weather during our warm-season cycle and that further delayed some plants another two weeks. Usually we are harvesting mid-Nov, this season will probably start mid-December. Other farmers I have talked with are in a similar situation. Fortunately, we grow many crops over the season, we have been spared major damage from storms, and will recover. So many growers in Florida have had a much worse time and have lost much of their crops for the year.
Our sweet potatoes are looking good, squash, zucchini, diakon, broccoli raab look fine. Our strawberries were direct planted to the field. This uses a bunch of water. For the better part of ten days, overhead water needs to run on bare-root transplants to keep them alive so they can grow new roots. I used low-volume sprinklers to keep the plants alive until the roots formed. This has saved me planting twice though. Usually I plant them into trays, mist them in the greenhouse, and form little starter plants, then transplant the rooted plants into the field. So I wind up planting twice to save water. Since time has been my limiting factor lately, I tried the standard method that strawberry farmers use to grow plants. I did notice some negative factors such as earthworms that recovered in the field (by using cover crops for a few years) were drowning in puddles trying to evade the saturated field and swamping other nearby crops. Maybe I will look for rooted strawberry plugs for next year.
That is a good start at catching up on things and I will continue in fill in details in future posts. Looking forward to a few hours of sleep and a great 2018 season!
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