Happy New Year 2020!

We have been rapidly moving through the season at Steed Farm. We are in our sixth week of the 2019-20 season.  We had a very rocky start with the weather at the start of the season. So much rain fell that we experienced flooding when we planted our sweet potatoes and squashes.  The weather has  now calmed and the crops are responding well.  We now have greens galore and more squashes than most members like to eat in a week!

We have had good growing response from a few new crops this year.  Choctaw squash, peas shoots, and Ethiopian kale have produced well.  The choctaws grew tremendous vines producing about
30 lbs of squash per vine.  The pea shoots are crisp and sweet like fresh peas;perfect as salad toppings.  The kale  tastes a bit like mustard, broccoli, and/or kale depending upon when I've tasted it.  Its is growing well in our warm winter.  We have a few new varieties yet to ripen and I will report on them in a later post. 


Over the last summer we added four pastured cattle to our farm and hope to have beef to sell in the fall.  Nate and I spent the summer "down-time" mending the broken south fences.  I've also spent a good bit of time getting our pasture in better shape for the calves; mowing, killing weeds, seeding, and fertilizing.  The cattle are doing well with the changes and are gaining weight (a good thing for cows).  Which reminds me to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  We hope that this is your best year yet and that you and yours are happy and healthy.  We will continue to strive to produce fresh organic produce to enrich your lives and add to your healthy choices.

 

Week 24, Season 2018-19

This is the last harvest weekend for our 2018-19 season. I am happy it is wrapping up and looking forward to having a few Saturdays back in the week.  I will however,  miss seeing everyone at pickup time. 

Our season was really good this year.  We had bumper tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, bok choi, greens, swiss chard, and starfruit.  I was disappointed with the corn crop.  We had raccoons and poor pollination.  Last year we had tons of corn.  This year I didn't even eat one ear. I wanted a little more broccoli, squash, cucumbers and peppers.  Something to shoot for next season. 

A big winner this year was using bug screen for the greenhouse.  That paid off greatly in reducing the amount of pest pressure from stinkbugs and allowed the tomatoes to benefit.

We are planning next year's season already and I will start plowing in this season's weeds.  Cover crop will be planted in a few weeks and then we will take it easy for a few weeks.

Next blog will have a bunch of pictures from this season's hard work.

Week 21, 2108-19 Season

We are quickly approaching the end of this farming season and I can already see myself not at the farm on a Saturday morning.  However, I did realized this week two things.  My mind is already turning towards thoughts about next year's crops and methodologies; and I thought about how we probably won't eat as much produce as we do when we harvest our crops.  I miss bok choi already.  We ate some from Katie and James' garden at our house and I thought we usually don't buy that from the store.  So I will probably wait until next fall before I see it again.

Corn is slowly maturing and will be ready very soon.  The new red potatoes did very well this year and we will harvest until the end of the season.  Not sure if the leeks will finish on time this year as I planted them late.  Hopefully they will size up. 

We are picking beets this week.  I always struggle to grow good beets but this year it looks like we will get some from the field. 

The squashes are slowly gaining ground and producing more along with the eggplants.

We lost our last cucumber crops to some rodent (squirrel, rat, or mouse) that ate all our seedlings emerging from the trays.  By the time it wrecked the crop I couldn't replant a crop for the end of the season.  We will try again next year.

We planted a ton of onions this year so I hope everyone loves onions.  We are picking lots of red and white sweet onion and will do so until the last week of harvest.

Looking forward to a couple more harvest weekends!