Archive for the 'SARA'S MUSINGS' Category

When the Door Closes, Look to the Open Window

Posted August 18, 2009 * Comments(1)

While we may be losing tomato plants faster than we can pull them, things aren’t all bad on the farm this year. The cool, rainy weather that has plagued us (or blessed us, depending on your personal opinion) most of the summer has created some prize winners as well.

Overall, the Allium family wins the award for most improved. Our garlic, onions, leeks and shallots are the biggest and best we’ve ever grown! Just yesterday, Kevin harvested all the shallots and showed me one that looked rather small in comparison to the rest. “This one,” he claimed, “is the size of the largest one I had ever grown until this year.” All lined up neatly stacked on tables, they resemble large red onions more than the little shallot bulbs of years past. The garlic heads are bulky, flavorful, and easy to peel, the individual cloves nearly bursting at the seams like clothes they’ve outgrown. The onions are big, beautiful, and sweet. Slicing them isn’t even making me cry a river the way it usually does.

Another bumper crop this year were our fava beans. Favas crave the cool and wet, and most years we’re lucky to get one decent round of them in June before the heat overwhelms them. This year they were not only bigger and healthier, harvest lasted halfway into July, a miracle on our region.

As our CSA members are very aware, this was also the year the turnips kept coming, and coming, and coming! I began to feel sorry our members, deciding week after week what one does with turnips. (For the record, my favorite way I tried them was a cold potato salad-like recipe whipped up by my friend Maya. The recipe comes from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian, which is one of the greatest cookbooks I have ever seen.)  The turnips’ close relatives, the rutabagas, got so big they could be classified as morbidly obese.

While these are the winners that really come to mind, there are dozens more vegetables doing just fine on the farm including zucchinis and green beans, the latter being harvested in amounts that can only be accurately described as (pardon my language) a shit-tonne. Come on out to the farm store or to the Jim Thorpe Farmers’ Market to check them out!

What Goes On in March?

Posted March 19, 2009 * Comments(0)

Most people are aware that spring is a busy time for farmers. But what kinds of things are we doing that keep us so busy, anyway? Here is a partial list of some of the things we’ve accomplished this pre-spring (I say partial, because to follow the guys around all day with a notepad, jotting down every single thing, would be a harrowing task!)

Starting Seeds

We got our seed order done and mailed by the end of January, and the greenhouse is filling up with flats at a rapid pace! Some of the things that are starting to make the incredible jump from dormant seeds to baby plants are:

Tomatoes (round one, already up to 4″ pots- many more to come, I’m sure):

Homer Fyke’s Yellow Oxheart*
Ruth’s Perfect*
Kupey’s Giant Pink Oxheart* (so famous it made the paper!)
Kupey’s Crinkle Bottom*
Spring Shine
BH 826 (creative name, eh?)
New Girl
Sweet Chelsea
Sun Gold
Juliet

Other Vegetables:

Shallots
Onions
Leeks
Orach (if the voles quit hopping on the table and nibbling the orach sprouts!)
Chard

Herbs:

Hyssop*
Stevia
Greek Mullein
Arnica Montana*
Mugwort
Zaatar
Rue
Soapwort
Coffee Chicory
Pyrethrum
Winter Savory
Summer Savory
Wormwood
German Thyme
Creeping Thyme

Flowers:
Hollyhock*
Allegro Poppies
Himalayan Blue Poppies
King Arthur Blue Delphiniums*
Black Night Delphiniums

*These varieties were started from seeds we saved last year from our own plants. We’re really looking forward to seeing how they compare!

Planted in the Greenhouse Beds:

Claytonia
Spring Mix
Collards
Mizuna
Arugula
Boc Choy
Scallions
Baby Onions
Spinach
Radishes
Carrots
Turnips
Beets
Rutabaga

Wintering Over in the Greenhouse Beds:

Rosemary
Lavender
Red Sorrel
Chard
Thyme
Oregano

There are also numerous potted perrenials beginning to show signs of life, but until they begin to reveal themselves further, I’m afraid I can’t quite remember what they all are.

Outdoor Work:

We removed old, dead raspberry bush canes and are in the process of thinning the herd, potting up some to sell and some we moved to a new, less crowded location. This should translate to lots more raspberries this year. Yum!

We are moving around and digging up some hops plants for sale and a new location.

We pulled out old, dead stems and stalks in order to get some rows ready for planting. On St. Patrick’s day, we got peas, fava beans, greens and cover crops planted, new irrigation tubes laid out, and row covers over the freshly planted seeds to offer protection from frost, bugs, and weeds.

With assistance from certified arborist Seth McGehee, the health of the trees on the property was examined. Some trees and branches had to go, and lots of fallen debris was cleaned up.

We ordered all our organic fertilizers for the season, and in the process, became official Fertrell dealers. So now you can get all your organic fertilizers right from us!

We did some tool maintinence, from waking the rototiller from its winter slumber to my pet project, sanding and re-painting my great-grandfather’s wheelbarrow. Hopefully it will now hold up to another 4 generations worth of hauling.

We got the farm truck running again, thanks to Alan’s patience and persistence. Yeeeee-ha! You can watch a silly video of us and our crazy trucks on youtube.

We installed a fancy new dishwasher and an extra oven in our bakery, which means more bread and less work!

Coming in the Next Few Weeks

More seeds, more seeds, and more seeds! We’re also planning on recycling some pallets to build covered bins for holding pots and soil for easier storage and transplanting.

I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch, but you get the idea. Happy Spring, we’ll see you on the farm soon!

Blow Up Your TV…

Posted March 19, 2008 * Comments(5)
In a state of psychosis brought on by celiac disease, she murdered her newborn son. This episode of House was the final straw, the catalyst needed to push me into action and finally cancel my cable subscription. When did our culture decide that we need so many channels, so many shows, all dedicated to death, near-death, murder, unspeakable crimes? Even the news focuses in on the most gruesome heart-wrenchers it can muster up: “Fire ripped through these townhouses last night, killing 5 people, 3 of them children. Why was this young mother murdered by a member of her own family? Also, an instant fix to make you look 1o pounds lighter! Details at11:00.″ Tragedy and vanity, the two things that get the viewers attention, all neatly wrapped up in 3 sentences.

Perhaps the most important question is this: Why is this what gets the viewers attention? Why do we feel compelled to listen to such awfulness, to share it with others? “Did you hear about that shooting in Illinois?” “A man killed his own children”. This kind of thing gets circulated around so quickly. Even the local paper has a ”national” section, which seems to be devoted entirely to the most terrible things it can possibly find going on the world.

We had no cable for years. 5 years, to be exact. We had an old TV on a cart with wheels we kept in the back room. When we wanted to watch a movie, we had to make the effort to bring the TV in the room and hook it up. This effectively made it a conscious act, something special. We kept this going even when we decided to pay the extra $10 a month to have basic cable along with our internet connection. But somewhere over the past few years, that old TV has managed to creep itself in, losing the wheels and becoming a permanent fixture in our living room. More and more it started to get turned on. Once it’s on, one show seems to flow into the other, until before we know it, we’ve just seen 3 murders, 2 betrayals, 5 high speed chases and countless sexy bodies, topped off with a miserable dose of the 11:00 news.

I’ve been going to bed a nervous wreck, my heart heavy with tragic accidents, horrific murders, and deadly fires. In those last few moments before sleep, I’m worried sick that my infant daughter’s bedroom, just down the hall, is too far away should the unspeakable happen. What if her crib falls through the floor? What if there is a fire below her room, and the smoke alarm doesn’t go off? What if someone breaks in and murders us all in our sleep? What happens if we have a head-on collision while driving because a drunk driver swerves in our lane, or a block of ice flies off a truck and through our windshield? What if someone kidnaps our children? These things happen all the time, right? It’s only a matter of time before one happens to us!

In the distorted world view of television, such things are all we seem to hear about. The truth of the matter is, for every horrible thing to happen to a family, there are millions of other families tucking their little ones in, happily going on vacations, making dinner, visiting friends, and many other everyday pleasantries. Let’s examine some facts:

In 2004, the US Fire Administration states that 12 people per million of the national population were killed in a fire; for each fatality, 999,988 people are still around.

The Death Penalty Information Center says that in 2006, out of 299,398,484 Americans, there were only 17,034 people who had their lives ended by another. That’s 299,381,450 people still kicking.

But according to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America,

“Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States age 18 and older (18.1% of U.S. population)…Anxiety disorders cost the U.S. more than $42 billion a year, almost one-third of the country’s $148 billion total mental health bill, according to “The Economic Burden of Anxiety Disorders,” a study commissioned by ADAA and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.”

Sounds like I should be worried about the stress that accompanies worrying more than the reasons behind it!

In defense of TV, it’s not all crap. There are some perfectly good shows out there. Unfortunately, it seemed to me that every one we really wanted to see was on HBO, which we don’t get anyway. This is why, instead of a total turn-off, I decided Netflix was the way to go. Now to tell the family.

My husband was the easiest. I was much like the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes. I simply had to point out the obvious. The TV crime shows has their usual background place the next night. I basically said “It’s crap- let’s cancel it.” After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Great! Just get me more books at the library.” And with that, he stood up and turned it off. Huzzah!

And now to tell my elementary-age daughters. I explained we were canceling, so we would have to say goodbye to Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, their beloved hour of nightly TV. But now we could do Netflix. That meant finally getting the entire Avatar DVD set, since we can never seem to figure out when it’s on anyway. “You mean we just pick stuff on the computer and it comes in the mail? Awesome!” And with that, I called the cable company, canceled and loaded up our Netflix queue.

It took 3 days for the cable to go off. The girls checked every day until they excitedly exclaimed “It’s Gone! Bye cable!” Last night, I finally got to watch the first disc of “Extras, season 1.” I went to bed without a single bad thought in my head and slept like a rock. Hallelujah!

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