Parker Family Farm

Nice Days

2012-01-31T18:21:00.001-08:00

I've been spending a lot of time in the milk house these past few weeks, keeping the wood stove going and working on some of our indoor projects that get put off until winter. This includes a lot of woodworking projects and as seen below, brushing up (literally) some of our signs. A fresh coat of paint makes a world of difference!
Here are some of our large display boxes for markets and our farm stand. We've decided to try to get into some of the farmers' markets this year and see how we do. These boxes are all made from cedar that was cut from the woods of the farm and milled out by a sawyer who brings his mill to the farm and does everything right in the field.

Here are some of our harvest crates that double as market display as well. Also cedar from the farm, these materials have seen many other projects and had a good and very useful life for us. I just dismantled some things, Jim removed a lot of nails this winter, and I planed everything down to a new finish. Voici!

I've also been spending the nice days outside, usually in the woods. There are few things in life that give as much fulfillment and enjoyment as a good days work in the woods. Here is a pile of 4 ft firewood which I'll pick up next fall with the pulp trailer. A trick I learned from John. Another reminder to appreciate the wisdom and experience of those who have come before us!

Even though I love my work, it's still nice to take a moment every once in a while to stop and be outside without a task to accomplish. So Em, Lizzie, Martin and Brinkley and I went for a nice afternoon walk at sunset the other day. Everything was looking pretty amazing with the fresh ice!

Some of the fences get coiled up for winter to make it easier to get around. Here is the spring fed pond 'down back'.

And here is the work of one of our laying hens. I am trying to get them to stop laying their eggs on the ground in the greenhouse. I've never had trouble with that before but this batch of hens seems to prefer to lay their eggs on the ground. Fairly annoying! But I think I figured out why they were doing it. My nesting boxes are high to help them stay agile and in shape. But I may have them too high. So I added a second roosting spot halfway from the ground. Only three eggs on the ground yesterday so that's a good sign!

Here are some of the girls now along with a couple roosters. Fred, our big Black Austrolorp Rooster was outside at this point on patrol.

Here is Sentinel Wiggly Wind. We get leaves from the town of Newport in the spring. While I like the fertility and mulch, it never ceases to amaze me that people will rake up the leaves on their lawn, put them in plastic bags, truck them across town and dump them in the landfill and then fertilize their lawn. This costs an amazing amount of money over the course of a lifetime. Rakes, gas, time, fertilizer, plastic bags and taxes to ensure the town can take care of all that fertility, not to mention the fact that the trees that produced those leaves actually count on that fertility being returned to the soil where their roots are. On top of all that, many, many people seem to think that many, many things constitute 'leaves'. Sentinel Wiggly is a great example. I found him in a bag of leaves. Now he watches over the chicken house for me and probably take up various posts around the garden this summer.

But summer seems a way off these days. Here is pretty much all that is left of our herb garden. They don't call it German Hardy Winter Thyme for nothing!

Here is the garden in winter. Though summer can seem eons away, it actually won't be long before this is full of the Earth's bounty! We'll be planting onions at the end of the month and then it's all a roller coaster ride until October!

Another winter project is upkeep and maintenance on tools. These are the best pruners on the market! I love my Felco pruners and just finished greasing and sharpening them.
And not a moment too soon. The grapes are the first thing I begin to prune. Pruning of most fruit trees and vines is best done right now, when the sap is not running and the tree is dormant. Pruning is essential for proper health care of vines and trees if you want them to produce edible fruit that is large enough to be worth picking and processing. Also, domesticated fruit trees aren't as hardy as the 'volunteer' apple trees and wild grapes you find around Maine. Without help, they wouldn't survive the same number of years that their wild cousins do.

Many of our CSA Members were happy to receive table grapes for the first time from us. We were happy to have them! Here is what the grape vines are reduced to in the winter. When they break bud in the spring, all the energy the plant stored to feed tons of biomass will now be able to be concentrated into fewer growth points, thus helping to increase fruit and healthy vine production.

Here is Brinkley ready for a ride to the pond!

And here is Indy wishing he got to go.

Scarlet doesn't care what the boys do!

And here we are at the end of our nice, what Lizzie calls a 'walkabout'. Happy winter.

"What do you do in the winter?"

2012-01-16T07:14:00.001-08:00

Whenever I tell someone I am a small-scale, diversified, farmer, I inevitably hear one of two questions. This is one of them. To which I respond, "I farm". This question is one of the most obvious indicators that our culture is completely separated from its food. Some people seem to think that farming is just showing up at market with great tasting veggies. But obviously, there are months of work that go into that day at market. From the seed order in the fall to planting, to cultivating and weeding and more. But there is also a lot of work that doesn't necessarily portray itself as 'farm work' because it doesn't directly affect the crop. These are the things that are accomplished in the dark, cold months of winter. Because once spring seedling planting time comes along there is no time for this type of project, despite the fact that it all needs to be done. This weekend was a great time to get a few 'odd jobs' done. Snowy and freezing rain on Thursday/Friday and then colder than you know what on Saturday and Sunday. A great time to be in the workshop crossing things off the 'off-season list'.

Here is one project I've been meaning to do for a while. I've created a filing system for my seedling tray labels. I determined that I waste a lot of time each spring and fall searching for labels that I know I have (I use discarded vinyl siding to make indestructible, reusable labels). Usually, I cannot find the one I want and end up erasing another one and writing the variety, date, etc. Then, I always find the one I wanted soon after that. This is a massive waste of time when you add it all up. So I've created this.

As you can see, I used chicken wire stapled to plywood backing and stick the labels down into the chicken wire. They are organized by variety and will eventually be fully alphabetized. Everything about this project is thrifty. The plywood and frame wood are salvaged from the kindling pile here at the farm. The chicken wire is something I've kept from an invention that was a colossal failure. (That happens you know.) I've kept it all these years and finally had this inspiration. Now, all I have to do is find the variety I want and change the date!
And another time saver for the same reasons. When I plant out transplants into the garden I need bigger signs to note all the relevant information. I was having the same trouble with these except it was worse because of the awkward shape. At least with the seedling tags they all fit into a small bag or box. Not so much with these which are also completely salvaged. The vinyl is from construction debris and the stakes are stickers (this is something you have cut when you get lumber milled by a sawyer. They help to dry the lumber when it is stacked.). Jim has been working the past couple of weeks to increase our supply of signs, which I never seem to have enough of at planting time.

I hope to have these all organized and alphabetized by spring too. Everything on this project is salvaged from the burn pile too with the exception of a box of screws with I did have to buy since I was running out of salvage screws backed out of the wood of old projects. Also, the two vertical pieces of cedar come from the pile of lumber I had milled out last winter from the farm.

Another project I am nearly finished on after this weekend is an insulated, custom-built seed safe. Seed viability decreases quickly in less than ideal storage conditions. Ideal storage conditions include cold temperatures and very low humidity. So, I've built this shelving unit which I intend to enclose in insulated foam board and then sheathing. I will then copy a technique from my friend Mark Allen of Living Land Farm in Winterport, ME. He buys plain white rice in bulk and dumps the entire container into the bottom of his seed bins. This absorbs moisture and keeps it from the seeds.

Once again, everything here is salvaged with the exception of the screws. As you can see, this lumber is from old projects that I dismantled, or asked someone else to dismantle (thank you Becky!). There is a light colored streak just to the left of the nails. That is a spot where the wood broke as I was backing out a screw. The particle board and strapping all came from the burn pile. As such, some of the shelves are piecemeal and took longer to construct because I had to fit pieces together like a puzzle (which can mean several trips back and forth from the table saw).

Another project that I've been working on over the last few weeks is repairing old and constructing new seed ling trays. I'll be using the individual sized milk cartons that I get for the pigs from a local grocery store. They make great 2" pots but with a deeper root capacity than plastic cell trays.

Once again, everything is salvaged here. As you can see, not all of the plywood was exactly the right length. But for some projects, close enough is good enough. The small corner missing from this piece is indicative of the types of creativity you need when working with salvaged materials.

This used to be common practice amongst farmers and homesteaders from the dawn of the last century backward through time. There is a wonderful book by Eric Sloane called "Diary of An Early American Boy". I recommend this book to anyone! It's an amazing work with wonderful drawings and amazing research. One example of the thriftiness that was commonplace in earlier times; they used to burn down old houses that were no longer fit to live in and then go through the ashes to find the nails. Nails were handmade on the farm and very expensive. Only recently have farmers adopted a strategy including the words, "I can just buy more." I don't know when that transition started to take place but my belief is that we must move back toward the mentality that my great grandmother seemed to have after having survived the depression as a child. "Can I used this again? Can I use this again? Can I use this again? And now that I can't use it again, what else can I use it for if I change it slightly". In our modern world we are coming to realize that infinite resources are a myth. We must return to a mentality that allows for ultimate recycling philosophy.

And when it's -3 degrees F outside and you've worked in the workshop all weekend and just got back in from checking on the pigs (who are fine by the way) and chickens (also fine and warm), it's nice to take advantage of a nicely stoked up fire in the milk house workshop.

First of the seed orders arrives!

2012-01-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

As the first of our seed orders begin to arrive at the farm, we're reminded about how soon the growing season will be here. Have you signed up for your CSA share yet? Click on the Vegetable CSA page on the right to learn more about our Member's Choice and Farmer's Choice Share options.

Member's Choice Shares purchased before the 15th get an additional $10 added to their account as a thank you for early investment in our local food web!

Highlights from 2011

2012-01-01T19:06:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year! Here are some photos to highlight the great growing season in 2011. Also, be sure to check out our newest blog feature. I finally figured out how to put the 'Like' button at the end of the blog posts. Be sure to like us on facebook and follow all of our activities at the farm. And don't forget, now is the time to sign-up for the upcoming CSA season. We've just unveiled our newest CSA option - the 'Member's Choice Share' - giving you more flexibility and choice in what produce comes to you and your family each week. Plus, this will allow for year round participation in our local food web! Check out the Vegetable CSA link to the right to learn more and find the Membership Agreement Form. Be well and thank you for your support!

From Pullets to Hens

2011-12-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

Greetings all:
Well, I just got home after an evening at Balfour Farm in Pittsfield. I was there for a buying club meeting and got some great conversation with a great farming couple and to top it off I got some great, fresh, local milk from their grass-fed cows.
When I returned to the farm I was making my rounds in the pouring rain with my flashlight, feeding pigs, covering crops, closing in the chickens, when I just happened to look in the nesting boxes in the pullet house (pullets are first year laying hens before they start to lay eggs) when I found our first egg of the season from this flock!!! Wahoo, soon we'll be in eggs up to our knees again. After a month long dry spell, seeing that first egg was a wonderful sight. I woke Emily up to show her and I can't wait for Lizzie to wake up in the morning so she can see the first egg. She'll be so excited because she'll want to help collect them again and now she can check for eggs!
Be well, stay dry and enjoy our local food web.

BDN prints Editorial!

2011-11-30T19:11:00.000-08:00

Greetings all:
Just wanted to let you know that the Bangor Daily News has printed an editorial that I authored. You can visit the following link to read the piece. http://bangordailynews.com/2011/11/29/opinion/contributors/maine-agriculture-department-wields-a-heavy-hand/
As is stated at the end of the piece, you can also visit 'We Are All Farmer Brown' on Facebook to learn more about Mr. Brown's case. Also, you may be interested in visiting localfoodlocalrules.org to learn about the ordinance itself. Be well and thank you for supporting our local food web.

Autumn at the farm

2011-11-04T04:09:00.000-07:00

Fall's Greetings everyone:

We've been so busy at the farm these last weeks since our final CSA delivery that I haven't had much opportunity to post a blog. We're not yet finished our garlic planting since we were interrupted about halfway through by the early snowfall. Luckily, it has all melted and tomorrow I'll be planting the soft neck varieties for next year's harvest. But in the meantime, since it's dark so early today I figured I'd take a moment to update you all on happenings at the farm.

The other day Emily and Lizzie came out for a photo shoot. Here's Lizzie on her walk-about.

I'm a very big fan of lettuces that are cold hardy. This one is actually the least cold hardy of any that I plant for winter. It will survive the winter and be ready in spring but it's not much good relative to others for harvests in the deep winter. However, at this time of year, the cold weather brings out the darkest of the reds. Beautiful.

Red Salad Bowl

Each fall I plant spinach to last us and our members through the winter. It seems I'm never planting enough. This year I went, what I thought, was overboard. Turns out I have a lot of interest in spinach from the growing numbers of folks turning to their local farms to provide a safe, healthy alternative to the globalized, industrial food-like system. This is one bed that's ready now. The others will hopefully come online shortly!

Space

Here is an experiment I tried this fall. Tennis Ball Lettuce is a miniature head lettuce, very light green. I will try again next year as this lettuce, while fine and tasty, didn't get into the ground early enough to head up fully. The heads are a bit looser than they are in the summer. Like I said, still delicious!

Tennis Ball Lettuce

Here is a beautiful, wonderful example of, 'they don't make them like they used to'. This amazingly beautiful variety of lettuce is a rare French Heirloom from a couple centuries ago during the height of what is known as French Market Gardening. This Parisian system of gardening was an amazingly self-sufficient system of what I call 'closed loop' farming. I'm trying to emulate the intensive nature of the Parisian system at our farm. This lettuce is extremely cold hardy and was actually growing (not just dormant) in late January last year in our solar heated hoop house!

Merveille des Quatre Saisons Lettuce

(Marvel of Four Seasons)

And here is how we make the magic happen...partially. This system is touted by people like Eliot Coleman. Some people call them quick tunnels, some call them low tunnels, etc. I don't think they are particularly quick but that's probably because of the extra effort I make to ensure the hoops are secure in the ground. Either way, it's still a great system for keeping things through the winter. Here I've got red lettuce, head lettuce, beet greens and two varieties of fall broccoli.

And here is one of our mobile greenhouses. It looks a lot different than it did in the summer, stock full of tomato plants climbing to the roof and back. Even though I love tomatoes I think I prefer this way, the orderliness of it is appealing to my sensibilities. It's much harder to keep tomatoes in check.

And here is where it all starts. Actually, this is about two weeks after it starts. These beds look bare but if you look very closely, you can see the lines from our 6-row precision seeder. You probably wouldn't be able to make out the tiny spinach plants just making their way into the world. These rows are now covered with more low tunnels and will remain so until spring. I hope to pull them off to reveal a series of beds filled to the brim with spinach.

Here are some more with baby carrots, kale and parsnips.

Here are the remnants of our tomato column. Luckily, I inter plant with lots of other things, in this case leeks and chard so this part of the garden is still productive.

And here is one of our concoctions including many items from the summer and fall gardens. Roasted Vegetables of Fall. This is one of the items available to our Winter Club Members. If you haven't signed up for the Winter Club you can click the link at the right to learn more.

Here are some more items. Specifics below.

Soup n' Snack Carrots

Prepared Butternut Squash

Prepared Pie Pumpkin

I hope to finish planting garlic this weekend, keep your fingers crossed, and then I'll have a bit more time at night (that's when I do all the separation and grading before planting in the daylight hours) to do things like blog postings and begin assessing date from this season to plan for next. Talk to you soon!

Final Share of the 2011 CSA Season!!!

2011-10-07T10:03:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone:

Well, it's been quite an amazing season this year. We had such a wonderful summer with so many great things coming out of the garden and we hope everyone enjoyed the bounty as much as we enjoyed growing it.
This week's share is decidedly 'fall' in nature. I harvested the last of a bunch of things this week, including tomatoes and cucumbers. But they were in small enough quantity that we couldn't put them into the shares. However, we still have lots and lots of stuff for you this week. Including, Long Pie Pumpkins. No, these are not orange zucchini though that is what most people think when they first see them. If you ever come across an orange zucchini be sure to get some of the seeds and give them to me! I'd love to grow a zucchini that looked this cool. Long Pie Pumpkins used to be grown a lot more in Maine according to an article I read by one of Maine's leading vegetable experts. The reason being that it's the only pumpkin that will reliably ripen after it's been picked. This has obvious benefits for our short season.

I tried to pick the most ripe for your share this week but some people got pumpkins like this one. Never fear! You could actually cut this open and cook it and it's ripe 'enough'. However, you could give it some more time by just putting it on your kitchen counter and letting it turn fully, deep orange. That's when it's fully ripe and makes an amazing pie (or cookies in our house).

Luckily, you can let your Long Pie Pumpkin ripen because I also put another type in your share this week. New England Pie Pumpkin is advantageous because it vine ripens in our short season.

Anyone who orders from our winter club this winter will have plenty of other opportunities to enjoy real, fresh, beyond organic pumpkin for pies and other recipes. Pumpkin also makes a great soup. Emily is looking forward to making a pumpkin apple bisque. I can't wait to try it. Fresh, real pumpkin is so superior to that stuff you get in a can from the grocery store that you'll never want to go back. A quick Google search yields the best cooking method. We cut in half, remove the seeds and netting and roast in the oven on a cookie sheet until tender. Then remove the flesh from the skin, compost the skin (or feed it to the pigs/chickens in our case) and use the pumpkin in your favorite recipe. Most recipes recommend you puree the pumpkin but we often find this unnecessary depending on the recipe.

Also this week is my favorite winter squash, at least that I've so far found. I try a new variety every year. Last year I tried this beauty, Australian Butter and fell in love with this squash. It has a 'meat' like a Buttercup but is more creamy and it's much larger, which means you have more leftovers and get more out of each squash. Plus, unlike other large winter squashes like Hubbard, this isn't difficult to cut open. I prefer to cut it in half, remove the seeds and cut the halves into quarters (so eighths overall). Then put them in a bit of boiling water, it's not necessary to cover with water because they are good steamed, and cook until tender. Then remove from the boiling water and scoop the meat out of the skin. Just as with pumpkin, some people puree it but we just mash it like potatoes.

You also have Red Russian Kale, Chard Mix, Carrots and Beets as well as another 5 lbs of potatoes.

I'll leave you with a few shots of us getting everything together today.

Our first Winter Club email will be coming out in about a week and a half so keep an eye out for that. If you're new to the Winter Club, be sure to check out the Winter Club link at the right. If you have questions, please let me know. We've enrolled all of our CSA members in the Winter Club at no additional cost. Thank you for your participation in our local, beyond organic food chain and thank you for your ongoing support of our diversified, family farm. See you soon.

Seconds

2011-09-30T10:32:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone:
First, I want to remind everyone that this is the second to last share day for the summer CSA. What a season!!! Next week, October 7th, marks the final delivery day for the 2011 CSA Season. Please remember to bring back all of your harvest bags. Your share will be available in a brown paper bag next week.

This also gives us a good opportunity to tell you that, as a special thank you for supporting your local, beyond organic, family farm, we've enrolled all of our summer CSA members in our Winter Club for free!!! You can click on the 'Winter Club' link at the right to learn more if you've not participated before. Please email me with any questions (or call).

Now, onto the share for this week. I titled this week's post 'Seconds' because of all the references you'll find to that concept. The fact that this is the second to last harvest is just one example. You all found a note in your harvest bag asking you to visit the blog to learn about the motley appearance your butternut squash. Please be assured that it is edible and not harmful...it just looks awful!

Below is an explanation in photos and prose. Our Butternut squash got something called Arterial Wilt. It is related to high moisture around the plants. This is not harmful to humans but very annoying to the farmer! It starts out subtly as in the photo below. A small series of concentric, brown circles.

It then begins to take over the whole outside of the squash. Just below my thumb in this photo is the next stage. That white patch is a mold that begins to damage the inside of the squash.

What you could do, if you want, is cut off the bad portion completely, see below.

However, as you can see below, if I cut off just the very top (just below the stem) the wilt doesn't penetrate deeply into the flesh of the squash, even at the advanced stage that this one is at.

So...I recommend you proceed as you normally would for a butternut. Cut lengthwise (after removing the stem as above).

As you can see, this squash is 99% fine. So why is it so annoying to the farmer? For one, this isn't a 'marketable' squash. We're considering applying to sell at farmer's markets next year and this sort of thing is a wrench in the works of a good market display. Even though the squash is perfectly fine for fresh eating, who would look at it and give the farmer time to explain that there is nothing really wrong with the edible part? I certainly wouldn't, and couldn't blame anyone for doing the same!

Second, and more importantly, it affects the storage quality of the squash. Winter squash is meant to be stored and eaten from the cellar all winter. But this Wilt will keep spreading and eventually rot out the entire squash. Thus, you need to eat it this week.

Now, onto the next 'Second' reference. The garlic in your share is what I would call 'seconds' garlic. There is absolutely nothing wrong with most of it except that it isn't as pretty as what you would find at a farmer's market. The reason being that I didn't get it out of the field quickly enough this season. Having a three year old, a new baby and no apprentice really added up in certain areas. Garlic was one of them. The garlic in your share is perfectly edible and most of it will store quite some time. It will not store as long as a pristine, well-cured bulb though. I suggest you use the garlic in the next 1-3 weeks.

Also, if you find any individual cloves that are really soft please remove them so they don't spread any softness to the other good cloves in the bulb.

Now, onto a 'second' that you won't get. Here is what we put in the share each week for carrots. Relatively large, uniform roots with few, if any, blemishes. This is something we would not mind having at a farmer's market. I've had very good luck with carrots ever since the 2009 season when I took the time to really learn how to grow them well.

Even still, I don't thin as religiously as some farmers. So I get a lot of 'seconds'. Carrots that are too small, to ugly, have a blemish or two, etc. They're perfectly good to eat and that is why we eat them in our home. You all eat the pretty ones, we eat the small ones.

And then there are the ones that nobody eats. One thing that differentiates the Parker Family Farm from other Market Farms, is our interest in self-sufficiency, sustainability and community self reliance. One manifestation of these concepts is our interest in and practice of saving seeds. Carrots are a biennial crop when it comes to seeds. In other words, they won't produce any seeds the first year. They need to be saved through the winter and then replanted in the spring when they go into seed production. Biennial crops are harder to save than annual crops (seed bearing). I've had some luck with certain annuals. Since I have harvested so many monster Danvers carrots this year, I'm going to try to save them and grow them out for see next season. Take a look at these beauties!

Here's Lizzie giving a little perspective! These things are huge, uniform and amazing! Hopefully, I'll be able to save them and replant next spring!

Here is a first that is also a second. This is the first week you received Leeks in your share. But, these are what I would call 'Seconds' too. The only reason being that they aren't as large as market leeks. I saved those for next week. I save the larger ones for later because they tend to handle frost better. The smaller, more tender leeks can do it, but they bruise more easily and loose their attractive leek-ness. No, that's not a word but you get the idea.

We've also included Fernleaf Dill this week. I love the days when we harvest dill. It makes the milk house (and your hands when packing it) smell amazing! One of the best ways to use fresh dill (if you're not pickling, which is another of the best ways) is to sprinkle it on lightly cooked veggies. I like it on carrots and potatoes. When you cook small potatoes until they are just tender and then sprinkle freshly chopped dill on them, you're eating what we call PoDilloes! Yummy.

Assuming we get a frost at some point (I'm beginning to wonder) this might be the last of the dill. Either way though, this is the last week of tomatoes. I'm ripping the plants out so I can move the greenhouses to their winter beds. It's been a great season for these little producers. You have a mixture of Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes and Peacevine Cherry Tomatoes. See you next year Little Tomatoes!!!

We also put another 5 lbs of potatoes in your share this week. I finally finished harvesting potatoes this week on Tuesday morning. Several long days on hands and knees digging through our potato beds has me thinking about other, more efficient ways to harvest. However, this year's work paid off as I harvested a total of 1,293 pounds of potatoes. That's the highest yield I've ever recorded and it will go a long way toward keeping our Winter Club Members fed this winter! Great work tubers!

Now, onto some more seconds...and firsts! This past weekend was the annual Common Ground Country Fair. Hopefully, some of you made it out to this wonderful event. For the first time this year I entered some of our veggies into the Exhibition Hall for judging against standards. I learned a lot about the process and will try more next year. Best of all, we won several 1st and 2nd place ribbons! Below are some of our entries with the ribbons.

We also want to give a big congratulations to Brittany and Joy who just closed on their new farm on Monday! We're certainly going to miss having Brittany around next year but we're very anxious to see all that she'll accomplish in her new place and look forward to having her join the ranks of the small farmers in Maine who are working to change the food system and the world for the better.

Finally, you may notice in the coming months that we have changed the name of our farm. When I started Parker Produce several years ago, I was hoping to provide local produce to area restaurants in an effort to change that aspect of the food system. However, I quickly decided that this didn't provide the avenue for change I was seeking. There simply wasn't enough opportunity to connect the people in our community back to their food. That's why I moved away from that and toward the CSA. It is also why, along with an expanded, improved CSA, we're also looking into selling at farmer's markets next year. Also, with the immense pressure that currently pushes against the family farm, we are joining the ranks of the many small, diversified farms around the country that are pushing back against draconian tactics from the federal and state governments and globalized, corporate agribusiness, which are all working to destroy small farms in favor of centralized, huge 'farms'.

Thus, in order to better reflect the values of our family and farm, we've decided to call ourselves Parker Family Farm. We hope our members will bear with us as we make this transition and we thank each of our members and customers for their ongoing support of our local, beyond organic, diverse farm.

Winter Squash and the Colors of Autumn

2011-09-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

I just posted a blog...and realized our computer was still signed into Emily's blog. So, until I get a chance to move it over here, check out http://brinkleyparker.blogspot.com/2011/09/winter-squash-and-colors-of-autumn.html
Sorry for the error!

Goodbye summer...hello fall.

2011-09-16T12:16:00.000-07:00

Well, fall came in with a bang after yesterday's rain storm. Today is the first official day of fall. You know how I know? Because Brittany and I were both complaining about how cold our hands were this morning. It's usually the first day of fall when that happens despite what any calendar might say. And there was no gradual slide into fall. There is apparently a major frost warning for the entire state tonight. That means it's goodbye to some of the things we've been enjoying all season. Today's share has the last of the tomatoes for sure and will probably have the last of the cucumbers and summer squash as well. They've all been good to us and I can't complain since it's been a great season and a long one at that.

Also, there will definitely not be anymore basil if we get a heavy frost. Basil doesn't like cold and it despises frost...or perhaps the frost despises basil based on how the basil looks after a frost.

And I know frost isn't good for pole beans.

Well, enough of what we won't have for the rest of the season. Onto the great fall crops we do and will continue to have. Potatoes are in in a big way. We've started the big push on these wonderful tubers and you've received 4lbs today. A mix of White and Red again to keep it interesting. One member who stopped by to pick-up already mentioned chowder. Doesn't that sound awesome on this early cold day?

You'll also find Carrots and Kale among your heirloom and hybrid tomatoes, summer squash, basil and pole beans. Next week will bring more fall crops as we move into the winter squash realm! Enjoy and I'll see some of you at our picnic and farm tour tomorrow.

Shell Beans and Aromatherapy!

2011-09-09T12:22:00.000-07:00

Greetings all, and welcome to the final month of the Parker Produce CSA 2011 season! We're nearing the finish line as we like to say around here. I'm sorry for the late blog but I tried to upload a video about our shell beans and it wasn't working. I just tried it again and looked at the video and it turns out it's good that I couldn't upload it this afternoon. Everything is blurry so the close-ups aren't much use. We may try again if I get time but until then, here is a shot of the Vermont Cranberry Shell Beans in your share.

As you probably notice, they aren't much to look at when you view the pods. However, take a look at the beans inside and you'll see a very, very pretty bean. Shell Beans are best slow cooked in simmering water for a good hour. Then you can use the cooking water for a light gravy and add some butter and salt and pepper. These are delicious! Here is a link to a conversation I found when performing a quick google search for shell beans. http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/549780. And here is a link for a recipe using Shell Beans and heirloom tomatoes. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Heirloom-Tomatoes-with-Shell-Beans-Vinaigrette-353850 This just gives you a bit of an idea about how to use two items in your share this week. We pulled about 92 lbs of heirlooms out of the garden today (not counting the cherry tomatoes) so you received an assortment!
This also gives me a chance to talk about the change in attitude when harvesting as frost approaches. I've been able to be picky this summer (pun intended I guess) and left several tomatoes on the vine to ripen fully. However, as frost approaches, I am less and less picky. As you can see in the photo below, the tomato on the left is green. It fell when I was walking by. The middle tomato is just starting to blush red. The one on the right is fully ripe. I have started picking tomatoes that have only started to blush. Average first frost date is September 15th in Newport. So at anytime we could get hit with frost. The hoop house can mitigate some of that but not a heavy frost. I would rather you have a tomato that has to sit on your window sill for a couple days to ripen than for me to have a hoop house full of black, mushy tomatoes that got frosted. The same is true of other items like basil and cucumbers. It won't be long before we're switching gears from summer to fall crops anyway.

Several of our herbs were ready in the garden today so you'll notice quite a range of wonderful smells from the share this week. Below is Forest Green Italian Parsley. Parsley is very, very good for you.

I've included another round of Common Sage. This herb has such a wonderful smell. However, I can imaging it might be too much for some folks so be careful when you open all the share bags this week.

Finally, Oregano! I've never had luck getting this to germinate but this season I had a good charge of seedlings to put into the herb garden. So here it is. Oregano is one of those herbs that is great to dry. We use butcher's twine and simply bunch what looks good and hang it from a nail or any old thing, out of direct sunlight but where there is good air movement. The same is true for sage. Then you have locally produced, beyond organic herbs this winter when you're in the kitchen preparing dinner.

You'll also find a good bunch of basil, zucchini/summer squash, more tasty jade cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, another bunch of carrots, chard, and kale. This week's share is very heavy so please be careful.

September is here...

2011-08-29T05:35:00.000-07:00

And that means the garden has begun its last desperate attempts to throw everything it has into seed production in the hopes of producing offspring for next year (read 'seeds'). That's good for us as humans since seeds come in nice little packages called fruits and vegetables. Yum.
One of the benefits of this lifestyle is low grocery bills. And here's why. We've been canning up a storm to get ready for winter. Lizzie loves to help in the kitchen. She helped me peel potatoes, wash carrots and peel beets this week. What a trooper!!!

This week's harvest was another record on the Sun Gold Tomatoes. Each of our share members received about 8 lbs of tomatoes this week. To put that into perspective, you just spent a little under 10% of your budget at the farmers market if you took your share purchase price and went to the market all summer instead. Good deal!!! Of that 8 lbs about one pound is Sun Gold Tomato. Enjoy!!!

Speaking of records...this is what 153lbs of tomatoes looks like before we break it into individual share amounts. Pretty impressive! Well done greenhouse tomato plants.

And...the heirlooms are finally here. This week we picked in enough quantity to put them into the shares. We have simply added up the total and started filling bags so you'll likely get a miscellaneous mixture of some of these types of tomatoes. To read some of my thoughts on heirlooms please visit one of our archive pages from last summer. I love them (that's the short version).

More carrots!!!

This week also marks another 'first'. Both for you the member and me the farmer. As you know I trial new varieties every year. One of them this year is this pole bean. Cherokee Trail of Tears is the name of the bean and it's truly the most wonderful taste I've ever experienced in a pole bean. I will definitely be growing these from here on out. I tried one in the garden today and nearly fell over. It stopped me in my tracks. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

If you're interested in learning more about this see you can visit the website of the company from which I purchased it. http://rareseeds.com/ (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds).

OK, so I was harvesting carrots the other day in the rain and Emily, Lizzie, Kate and Maeve (my sister-in-law and niece) came out to the garden for a visit/breather for the kids/photo shoot. I pulled this amazing Danvers carrot just before they got out there. I couldn't resist showing it off. I've never seen a Danvers get this big. I'm going to save it and replant it next year and see if I can get it to produce similar offspring. I have about 9 beds of carrots left and hopefully I'll find another one or three of similar size. I may enter it into the Common Ground Fair Exhibition Hall.
Have a great weekend!

Very full...very heavy share bags.

2011-08-26T12:08:00.001-07:00

Hi all:
This will be quick. I want to get to Bangor to avoid Festival traffic. Not sure it's possible but we'll see. First thing I want to report is that this week's share has grapes!!! I never intended to include grapes in our CSA and only planted the vines for interest. However, they're going crazy and have lots of fruit so you all get the benefit. These are seedless and tasty. Enjoy.
Also, the pocket camera I usually carry finally succumbed to farm life. It no longer focuses at all. Thus, Emily takes photos for me from now on on her fancy camera. She's also a trained photographer so they will be great photos as is evidenced by today's blog. Here, Lizzie and Martin help daddy with the wheelchair cart.

Our second planting of summer squash finally came due.

Potatoes! There would be more but it got dark fast last night and it was also raining. I quit while I was ahead. And by ahead I mean blind and soaked...

It used to annoy me to no end when I dropped a tomato on the floor while packing or found a bunch that had blossom end rot or other blemishes and had to compost them. If you've never seen a pog (herd of pigs) go crazy for mushy tomatoes dumped in their feed bowls then you don't know why it no longer bothers me that much. I'll be dumping 15 gallons of fresh 'seconds' in for the pigs tonight. It's better than T.V. Seriously.

This is just pleasant. Next year's bean poles...assuming Irene doesn't have other plans this weekend.

Ok, so we have sweet corn. Every share got half a dozen. But we're organic and don't spray insecticides so you have to do what people have done forever and not get grossed out by nature. You may find a worm in your corn. Just cut that part out! It's fine! The corn is still delicious! And rest easier knowing you are eating sweet corn that did not have chemical poisons dumped all over it!

Things to come...

This week's share is very heavy because of the zucchini, potatoes and all the tomatoes. Speaking of that. Hope you like tomatoes. Be careful with the bags please and enjoy!

Time to spare...nearly

2011-08-19T12:10:00.001-07:00

Another harvest day, another great sunrise at the farm, shrouded in fog yesterday.

Good morning hens.

Good morning pullets.

Good morning turkeys.

Sorry for the late blog post everyone! Yesterday was very, very busy. For those who don't know, Brittany is out of commission for a bit as she recovers from surgery. Learn more on her facebook page as she keeps us updated. We wish her a speedy recovery and are sending good thoughts her way!

After yesterday's harvest I was thinking 'I can't believe I used to harvest alone every week, and have earlier delivery times.' What was I thinking? As though I needed it, yesterday was a nice little reminder of how crucial it is to have good (or in the case of Brittany, excellent) help on the farm. I barely made it to deliveries by the skin of my teeth as the saying goes.
But enough about that. I can think of no better way to start this post officially than to show off a triumph. The rare and elusive perfect Brandywine Tomato. It's nearly impossible to get these to grow so well and produce blemish free fruit but here is one great specimen. And that means the heirloom tomatoes are in full swing.

This week's share continues to contain only hybrid tomatoes from the hoophouses but soon you'll be getting heirlooms too. and they may look a little like some of these beauties.

But what hybrids lack in flavor (and ours are actually pretty good if I do say so myself), they make up for in vigor. As you've probably noticed, your tomato bag is more and more full each week. Go tomatoes!

Speaking of hybrid vigor, as you might know from following our facebook page, I've been working in the greenhouse on the rainy days to lower the tomato plants. They were up to the top of the houses and showing signs of curling around the rafters. First step, strip all foliage off the bottom of the plant (I go up to my chest for starters). You can see the single stems and walkways full of leaf stems in this photo.

Next step, climb up the ladder and uncurl the sisal from the tomato hooks and lower the plants gently.

And curl them into a spiral, ever so delicately. As you can see, the stem turns into a spiral and rests on the ground. I hope I don't have to do this again before the frost but we'll see. If I do, that just means more tomatoes!!!

While I was working on this project I noticed this plant in the middle of the Quonset House. No leaves!

And bites taken out of the fruit. That can only mean one thing (and it's not a good thing either). If you can't see the Giant Horn Worm in this photo (and it's there, upside down, two branches below the tomato with the bite), scroll down. Be prepared to feel like you're in the twilight zone. They don't call them 'Giant' for nothing. These things are annoying. Hard to see, they can devesate a plant overnight. I had to rip out the one you see above yesterday. There was still plant left but it was so stressed it wasn't worth the space in the greenhouse.

FYI, chickens like Giant Hornworms...

This week's beans are the first of the pole and more interesting bush beans. Golden Butterwax and Dragon's Lingerie. Yes you read that title right. One of the most interesting and fun times of year for me as a diversified farmer is seed catalog time. I love to sit down by the fire (seed catalog time is November - February) and read these like books, dreaming of summer and what I can accomplish in the coming season. I'm not sure which I like best, the pictures, the descriptions or the interesting and unique names breeders have given to their vegetable masterpieces over the years.

I'm very fortunate to have another amazing helper on the farm. Becky is a friend of the family and she comes up to weed for me each week. She's truly amazing at it! I call this year's dry bean, shell bean and Dragon's Lingerie bean field, beans a la Becky. Thank you Becky!!!

This is a great snap bean that is best cooked lightly. I like to simply saute them in olive oil or butter until just tender but so they still retain their color. Then just add a little salt and pepper and you've got a delicious side.

Gold of Bacau is my favotie pole bean thus far. I try new ones each year but I may stop and just go with this one. It's amazing. The flavor is beyond compare, the texture is elegant and they are huge!!!

This photo is just to show off the carrots in your share and also inform you that at this point in the season I don't include the tops. They have grown too bitter to be used for cooking and they are valuable additions to the compost pile here at the farm. Yey potassium!

Here's a shot to remind everyone of the insanity of the industrial 'food' system. This carrot would be discarded (read thrown in the trash because they don't compost in the industrial system). Why? It doesn't look right. That's it. Is it less carrot for that? Does it contain less nutrition? Nope. So I include things like this. In fact, you get three carrots in one!

We had some trouble with our summer squash this spring (mostly germination) so I'm having trouble meeting demand each week for the CSA. So until our second planting fruits I've started mixing in other types of summer squash. You received one of these types in your share. Let me know if you have questions about what something is.

I call this photo, 'Thanks to diversity'. Because we don't shun all biological processes on the farm and try to create a system devoid of fauna in our garden, the birds drop nice surprises for us in the fall. In this case, 'Love-lies-Bleeding Amaranth from last year showed up in the cucumbers. Thank you birds for giving me something beautiful to look at while I picked cucumbers.

Speaking of beautiful...

Also at the farm, we're getting ready for fall and winter by starting our seedlings. Here is some cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and pickling cucumbers at the edge if the herb garden.

From whence came the dill in your share. You'll notice that there are both flowers and fresh sprigs in the share. That way you get the best of both worlds. Don't have a use for dill right now. That's ok. Hang it to dry and you can use it later.

More seedlings. Come on little ones, winter is almost here...

On the downhill.

2011-08-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

Hi all, we're past the halfway point, which means it's getting to that point in the summer when there is just so much to do it's hard to keep track. Thus, the late blog post this week. Never enough time!
And speaking of that, sometimes it's hard to remember why I've decided to choose farming as a way of life. There is always so much to do, the weeds, the animals, the harvesting, the preparation for fall, winter, next spring, the list is endless. And I'm the type of person who needs to be going all the time. So it's critical to remember why I do what I do. Aside from providing real food for my family, friends, neighbors and community, aside from leaving the planet better than when I arrived, aside from trying to change the course of humanity's actions on earth...there are much more important things in life. Below is one example.

We are graced to live in an idyllic setting just through the woods from the farm on a beautiful lake in a mixed forest. Here is a shot of our wonderful daughter on one of her canoe rides with daddy. Each night after dinner and in the mornings on the weekends (after I make French Toast with 'Good Bread' and our eggs, Lizzie and I check the lake to see if it is calm as glass. If it is, we take a short canoe ride together. Here we are at sunset enjoying the tranquility just before her bedtime. This is what it's all about.

Daddy's little helper loves to paddle like a big girl! And she's quite good at it thank you very much.

And now onto the nitty gritty of farm and garden life. Below is an example of a problem. A big, big problem. This little dandy is called a giant horn worm. It doesn't look like much and in fact I thought it was a swallow tail moth caterpillar at first. But this thing eats tomato plants...yes, entire plants. They are making a big dent this summer across the state. Most pests go in cycles (nature's great that way) and this is a good year for them. This is the first and only one I've seen in the garden, knock on wood. Just one can pretty much destroy a plant in a couple of days. I can tell you that chickens love giant hornworms...;-)

Another problem...sort of. As I mentioned there is always tons to do. Here is an example of a success that breeds more to do. As you can see from several photos throughout this post, the tomatoes in the greenhouses are doing very, very well. In fact, they are up to the top of the hoop houses and curling around the plastic. Thus, they need to be lowered. You can see I've done one here and need to do the rest. This must be done on either a rainy day or very early/late in the day because it's too dangerous to be in the hoop houses on a sunny day between about 9 am and 5pm. On another note, I'll be including some green tomatoes soon because we need to trip the bottom of the plants to one single stem in order to drop them to the ground and give the tops more room to grow again.

Here is one 'New Girl' tomato begging to be lowered!

And here are the Sun Gold tomatoes proving they are indeed hybrids. The rafters in this greenhouse are about 10 feet up. The vines are well past that!

And now for something that is as far from problem as you can get! This is the first vine ripe heirloom to come out of the garden this season. Cherokee Purple and this is from a plant that bloomed from my seed saving efforts. In other words, I saved see from a plant last year and I'm selecting for uniformity without cracking (a common problem with some heirlooms). This is a rousing success...and it tasted absolutely wonderful! I harvested a bunch of heirlooms yesterday and soon there will be enough to put in the shares (assuming the late blight stays in Waldo county - keep your fingers crossed for scorching weather with low winds).

Another success. Found this beautiful Tasty Jade cucumber hanging in the Cathedral house. It's huge! And it was still quite tasty! We took family photos with this one.

It's no match for our little guy who weighed in yesterday at his 4 month check-up at 16+lbs. Not bad since he was just over 5 lbs at birth! Good job buddy!

Lizzie's newest facial expression is definitely appropriate here. 'Dad, how are we supposed to eat this?!?!?!'

And here is another example of one more thing to do. Starting over. It's a continual process when you are a small, diversified farmer trying to use the land intensively. Here is a newly tilled bed in the beginning stages of getting ready for fall.

You may notice some black spots on your basil. We try to get rid of those in the process of harvesting and packing but miss some when we deal with so much basil each week. Be sure to go through your basil and pull those leaves off right away or it will spread. This is a problem that afflicts basil at the end of it's life. It will not harm you but those leaves won't taste good so discard them and use the rest.

Here is another shot of the tomatoes with the basil. I will be cutting of things like this to allow the plants to be dropped. These will be the type of green tomatoes you'll be getting in your share (probably).

Zucchini. Time slipped by me this week and when I looked at the zucchini yesterday I was amazed...and I've seen some big zucchini in my day! I found one that weighed 10 lbs. I am keeping that one and several others. The best thing to do with zucchini this large is make bread or soup or something that involves cooking. Fried zucchini slices are a good choice and we'll be enjoying some at our house this week! I hope to have more time to harvest regularly this week to avoid such gigantic specimens in the future!

Lemon Cucumbers! Yes, they are cool and they are wonderful and I will be growing them each year from now on. They are ready when they look like a lemon (like what's in your share). They are so tender they don't need to be peeled, which is a plus since their shape makes it hard to do so. We've been having a lot of cucumber sandwiches lately and these make great selections.

The grapes are starting to blush!!!

Here is a shot to give a little perspective on the Sun Golds. I'm 6'2"...

And here is why we need to lower them. I can't even reach 3/4 up the plants anymore!

A beautiful assortment of beans in your share this week. The Royal Burgundy Bush Beans (purple ones) are good raw as a snack. Cook them and they fade to green.

Here are a few more quick photos before I head out to rake blueberries today.

These are all zucchini and summer squash. I love variety in the garden!

Here's the 10 pounder!

Halfway there!

2011-08-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the halfway point. And here at the farm it couldn't be more apparent. About this time every year there is a marked shift at the farm, in the garden and generally in the air. You'll notice in your share that we've really made a transition into the full summer and into the fall crops. Also, I had to wear a winter hat for about an hour this morning until it warmed up at about 4:45am. And the sun isn't rising quite as early as it has been and after August 1 that's more apparent. This is when I start to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And also a stressful time because literally everything needs to be done as we weed, harvest and get ready for fall/winter crops!
Speaking of fall crops. This year I'm harvesting my garlic earlier than ever in order to stay ahead of it and have a nicer harvest. I started on Tuesday with Elephant Garlic. I have a love affair with Garlic that nearly rivals my love of tomatoes (well, almost). I love garlic for the variety, the flavor, the smell, the way it tickles all the senses really. I also love it for it's complicated simplicity if that makes any sense at all. Watching it change throughout the year is wonderful and if done right it's one of the lowest maintenance crops there is. And this year, I did it right! I haven't touched the garlic patch since I planted and mulched it last October. And now it's paying off with a great harvest.
Here is the Elephant garlic hanging in my newly constructed garlic drying table. Pretty simple with just pallets, a few nails and some chicken wire from the sugar snap trellis.

And here is some garlic that was harvested this morning. This is Chesnok Red and it's an amazingly beautiful garlic. It's also quite tasty with just a tiny bit of heat and a wonderful garlic aroma. You will find one head of Chesnok Red in your share this week.

And this week sees the first of the 'big' tomatoes. The large tomatoe(s) in your share are from the hoop houses. As you can see from this photo there are a lot more yet to ripen. The numbers will only increase from here forward!

Here are the tomatoes in mid harvest. I've been searching for a basket that would be able to hold my delicate tomatoes without putting divots or blemishes in the heirlooms. Searching without success! So this winter I started designing my own. As you can see it's made from cedar (cut and milled here at the farm) and two perpendicular layers of snow fence. I tested it on the hybrids today just to see if it could stand up to the weight. So far so good. Hopefully it will work!

And here the are in all their glory in the milk house before being packed into your shares for the week.

Don't forget the Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes...as if it were possible. They are so delicious! I commented to Brittany today as we broke for a quick lunch that I sometimes don't realize how thirsty I am until I chomp into a Sun Gold. So juicy and sweet!

Voici!!! New Potatoes! I'll have to check my records but I'm going out on a limb to say this is the earliest I've ever put potatoes in the shares. You'll find a plastic bag with a mix of white (King Harry) and red (Caribe) potatoes. I'm a huge fan of the Caribe for red potatoes. I've been searching for years for something to replace the Red Norland, which is OK but I want spectacular. Caribe is certainly on the list! I love the beautiful color and the flavor is wonderful too! Plus, this crop is from seed I saved myself last year. Originally the stock came from Wood Prairie farm in northern Maine. I purchase all my potato seed stock there unless I save it myself (which I do increasingly with all seed varieties each year.

Also today, I pulled the last of the scallions from the garden. These would be great chopped up and sauteed with the potatoes in a bit of garlic, olive oil or butter and salt and pepper. They would also be a good addition for our egg share members. I hear breakfast for supper coming on.

Also, I cut the first of our Fernleaf Dill for the shares this week. This would also make a nice addition to the New Potatoes that are in your share. Boiled potatoes with butter, salt and pepper is a wonderful summer treat. The dill would also be a nice addition to your cucumbers, of which there are two kinds, in your share. Remember the long ones aren't gone by but rather are trellised vertically and are meant to get long and large. They are great because cutting one and peeling one can get you up to two regular cucumbers worth of meal! We've been eating cucumber sandwiches with local artisan bread from 'Good Bread' and cream cheese from Bagel Central in Bangor.

You won't find this particular variety of zucchini in your share as it's just a trial this year and I only have 4 plants, but I can't resist photographing these wonderful specimens. I love them.

Finally, some of the goings on at the farm. Here is a quick shot of some of the turkeys this morning. I'm running them in the vineyard to control the grass and weeds. They're doing a great job. And they're getting big.

I also moved the pullets outside on Wednesday. This is the last shot of them in their cozy barn house. Now they're out in their mobile laying coop enjoying the fresh air. Another week or so and I'll let them out onto pasture!

Finally, I saw this moth on a radish flower and thought it would make a great photo. I won't show you all the blurry shots of radishes and the ground before I could focus the camera properly. I'm just glad he didn't fly away before I could figure out the lens.

High Summer is here!

2011-07-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

Good-bye peas. Hello other stuff. As of today, you'll notice a marked shift in the types of things coming out of the garden and into your share bag. Spring crops are gone with the last of the snap peas and lettuce out today. Radishes are going to seed in the garden and the spinach is long gone. But the heat of summer brings another transition in the yearly progression of the earth.

Along with zucchini, the last of the Sugar Snap Peas and the last of the Australe Lettuce (hopefully until fall) you'll find your first installment of Sun Gold Tomatoes!!! We're very excited this year to have planted twice as many as last season and to have had them do so well in the greenhouse! They're a bit earlier than usual for us and they are coming in heavy. It's actually almost time for me to lower the vines. I can hardly believe I had them in my short greenhouse (The Quonset Hut) last year. This season I put them in my 'Cathedral' and they're already nearly to the rafters! One word of caution, DON'T SUN GOLD AND DRIVE. It can be dangerous to be snacking on something so tasty and operating a motor vehicle. Yes, Sun golds are that good. Mmmm.

Here is a shot of me harvesting them last night in the dark. One of the biggest challenges we face in agriculture, at least in the northern part of the northern hemisphere (and the southern part of the southern) is that just when the garden puts forth the majority of its bounty, the days begin to dramatically shorten. August 1st is the big date for sudden and serious loss of altitude for the sun. That means working in the dark more and more. Soon, it will mean working in the cold too, but for now the cherry tomatoes are keeping me warm.

This shot is just to show that some of the Sun Golds in your share may need to ripen. I picked twice this week (once last night) and you have to pick them if they're even close to ripe or they'll get by you! From left to right is the progression or ripeness. The one on the left is one that actually fell off when I brushed by a plant. Not one I would have picked. But the next one is. The one I'm pointing to is pretty much perfect and the one all the way to the right is screaming 'enjoy me now before I get soft or split!'.

Here they are in close-up. The lighting wasn't great today (though the cool weather and clouds make for an awesome harvest day!) but you can sort of see how the one on the right is a very dark orange.

Also in the Cathedral, climbing the inverted cedar tops as I discussed in a previous post, is a crop of Tasty Jade Cucumbers. This is the first year I've grown these and frankly, I wonder where they've been all my life. Please don't mistake them for over sized regular cucumbers. These are supposed to get that long and large and they are still great! No jelly filled, over sized seed chambers here. Wonderful.

Also this week we have another installment of Provider Green Beans and the first Golden Butterwax Bush Beans. These are my favorite string beans. They are a beautiful color and they are so tender, even if you let them get by you, which I almost did. Luckily, Brittany did some weeding this week and exposed how ready they were to be picked. Thanks Brittany!!! Don't forget to check out our Recipes page at the right. I plan to make dilly beans with both colors.

You also have another bunch of basil and a bunch of chard in the share this week. Harvesting basil is one of my favorite things to do in the summer garden. I grow it in the greenhouse at the base of our trellised tomatoes. The greenhouse is a nice warm place at 4:30 on a cool, wet summer morning and the greenhouse effect works for smell too. Cutting the basil and disturbing the leaves is enough to create a wonderful 'smell bubble'. I love the scent of basil.

And finally, a little teaser. Also in the dark last night, I harvested the first of the large red type tomatoes. This year's winner of first to ripen is New Girl (a hybrid that I tried for greenhouse production). I had one for lunch today. Delicious. I think by next week we'll have enough to put into the shares. Until then, enjoy the rest of what your local food chain, your local farm and your local farmer have to offer.

Eight Weeks!

2011-07-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
I'm going to try to make this quick because the garden exploded and your share bags reflect that. This means we finished bagging and packing right at 3 today, which is when our first members come to pick up and the absolute latest we can be packing. Usually I don't hit that deadline until well into August! A good problem to have!
Here is a shot I couldn't resist this morning. I'm so happy to finally have grapes after planting these two years ago. I didn't think the plants were going to make it as I planted them on a marginal piece of the garden where I can't plant row crops (too hilly/rocky). They've finally come into their own! Can't wait for fall...ok, just the grapes, lets not rush summer, it just got here.
Here's another quick shot of our washing station. Yes, those are my shoes. Yes, I garden in bare feet. I'm sure this is some sort of 'no-no' on the FDA list of horrible things. Luckily, our CSA members understand how silly something like that is. Gardening in bare feet is one of life's great pleasures. If you have a garden, take your shoes off. You'll never want to put them on again.

Here is a teaser. I harvested these sungold tomatoes this morning to jump start the plants. This is what I got out of 60 feet. We pick this first initial planting and there isn't enough to put in the shares. But this tells the plants to kick it into high gear. Remember that a plant's purpose is not to feed humans, but to produce little baby plants to carry on the gene pool. Picking the tomatoes makes the plant think it has to produce more 'offspring' before winter and it goes into high gear. Almost all plants that fruit are like this.

Filling the rinsing station at 4 am.

New this week, Provider Green Beans! Wahoo! Harvesting last night I was eating the breakage. (That's my name for the ones that don't come off clean.) And I started thinking that green beans are yet another example of how local, fresh, beyond organic food is just better. I pity anyone who has to purchase green beans from the store. There is no comparison in taste (or nutrients but that's more amorphous to your brain). Check out our recipe page (link at the right) for ideas on preparation. In our house we just saute them lightly with some scapes and olive oil or butter and then sprinkle them lightly with salt and pepper. That's assuming they make it to the house and pan without being eaten raw.

Here is a shot of goings on at the farm. John is raking hay in this photo to get ready to bale. You know it's the height of summer when you can rake hay at 8:30 in the morning and find it's already pretty much dry. Usually, you have to wait until the dew evaporates, rake at about 10 and then wait a few hours to let it dry further, then bale. Not so today. 80 degrees at 5am.

Here is a shot of our herb garden in all it's freshly weeded and mulched glory. So nice to harvest in this section of the garden. Weeds make harvesting a pain.

And here is what came out of the herb garden. Sage! Never had luck with Sage before but focused on it this year and it turned out well. If you have no ideas for using sage, perform a google search for 'sage' and 'insert other ingredients from your share bag here'. Also, you could just do what I'm going to do and bunch it and hang it in your kitchen to dry with some butcher's twine. The smell is worth sacrificing the taste for now. There will be more later in the summer.

We've also come into our own with zucchini in the garden this week. Everyone got some and I've been able to stay ahead of it size-wise so it's still nice and tender.

Last week I showed a picture of our inverted cedar trees trellis in the greenhouse. These Tasty Jade Cucumbers were hanging from them in all their glory this morning. I couldn't resist picking them. You'll have some in your share soon! The little white cuke in front is a Dragon's Egg Cucumber.

Also this week you'll find more of the long red radishes, the last of the winter planted carrots, two heads of lettuce, another bunch of basil, a bunch of chard, snap peas and if you're one of our bread share members, a loaf of bread. If you're an egg share member, please be careful with your bag. They are heavy and the eggs are in there. If you drop the full bag, you can bet your eggs are toast...

Enjoy and have a good weekend. Stay cool!

New Stuff!!!

2011-07-15T04:07:00.000-07:00

Greetings friends and members of Parker Produce, local food and alternative agriculture. I hope you're having a great time in this wonderful summer weather. Before we delve into what's been going on at the farm and what's in this week's Produce Share, I want to take a moment to remind everyone to take a look at MPBN's Maine Watch television program for this week. I was asked to be a guest on the show to discuss food sovereignty and our right to eat real food with the Commissioner of the Department of Agriculture which is promoting big, industrial agriculture at the expense of small family farms and the health of Maine's population. You can watch the show tonight at 8:30 or Sunday at 5pm. You can also view the show at http://www.mpbn.net/Television/LocalTelevisionPrograms/MaineWatch.aspx
Now, onto this week at the farm!
Here is a pre-dawn shot of some beet greens with the hay field and the moon in the background. Beet Greens are among the new items in this week's share!
Plus, here's the newest vegetable lover at the farm. Martin is starting to get his fine motor skills down. I gave him this to hold and the next thing I new he had it in his mouth. 'At a Boy!!!

Something about the 'dog days' of summer doesn't sit well with Brinkley. He thought the shade of the Sugar Snap Pea vines was a good place to hang out in the 86 degree heat of the other day. He was right!!!

Also, this isn't about the share this week but will be soon. This is one of the reasons we need to support small scale, local, alternative agriculture. What are we going to do when petroleum is not longer an option? Lots of farmers (including organic and alternative farmers) use plastic trellis material that is thrown away after one year's use. At Parker Produce we're constantly looking for alternatives to, well, pretty much everything. Here you can see some cucumbers climbing up some inverted cedar tree tops. We cut, and mill most of our own lumber here at the farm. Most of the time the tops of the trees are wasted or sent to the chipper. But what if we could use them for something? It works quite well!

Now, onto this week's harvest. Among the many new items you might find in this week's share is Cauliflower. We're quite happy with how this year's cauliflower season is turning out. I say, might find, because not all plants mature at the same time. So, we put certain items on a rotation. This is one of them. If you didn't get cauliflower in your share this week, sorry. But you're on the list to receive it next time or the time after that. You will get some! I can almost promise (I cannot account for acts of nature ;-).

There are lots of options for preparation on cauliflower. But my favorite has always been one of the simplest, the way my mother used to make it. Steam lightly and then smother in a cheesy/creamy sauce and some butter! My mouth just watered.

Also this week, the first basil harvest is here!!! This is one of my favorite things in the summer garden. Harvesting basil is a real treat because it fills the greenhouse with its aroma! Plus, we absolutely love basil in the Parker household. Lizzie is a huge help in processing for pesto! Don't forget you can use your garlic scapes for pesto. There's that mouth watering again. One note, Basil DOES NOT GO IN THE FRIDGE!!! The cold of the refrigerator will ruin your basil and turn it into a slimy, black mess. When you get home, cut the basil stem tips like you would a dozen roses. Then place the bouquet into a glass of water on the windowsill and cover the whole thing with the open plastic bag. If you left it long enough it would actually send out roots...but why would you want to do that with basil?!

Also on rotation, zucchini! When they're small like this they are so tender and delicious you can eat them raw. I don't but you can. These beauties would be perfect grilled just as they are! Gourmet chefs use the flowers when these are purchased fresh at markets. I've never tried but it sounds interesting.

Also new this week is a bunch of Hakurei Salad Turnips. Don't like turnips. That's fairly common. Please try these. I bet you'll like them. These aren't your run of the mill turnips. They are delicious just like this. I eat them like small apples in the garden. But they're also good sliced thinly and put into a salad.

And finally, something that's new even to me. I try new varieties in great number each year. Some you never see, others I like and grow again. This will be one of those. Cincinnati Market Radish. No, they aren't carrots. These radishes are truly amazing, beautiful and prolific. Enjoy with your Astrale Lettuce and the Hakurei Turnips and you've got yourself a good little meal!

Just made it!

2011-07-08T04:09:00.000-07:00

The title of this blog might confuse some folks. But at Parker Produce our thoughts are with Brittany as she went home with an illness today. Her work ethic is beyond compare and it pained her to go on a harvest day. But we want her to get well and we also want her to know I finished bagging and packing at exactly 3pm. Just in time!!! No worries. Hope you feel better Brittany!!!
And to speed your recovery, here's a picture worthy of a hallmark get well card. We had a severe thunderstorm at the farm the other day and this is one of the good things that came of it. It was amazing and neither this picture, nor any of the others I took, do it justice.

I've been hard at work this week trying to keep from getting overwhelmed (too late!!!) by weeds. Here is a row of beet greens amidst Royal Burgundy Bush Beans. This is just prior to cultivating.

And here is the same row after I used the stir-up hoe. I love simple but effective tools.
Also, our new baby laying hens arrived this week. This one is cute...but suspicious.

Here are a couple of shots of me on Tuesday trying to stay ahead of the Sugar Snap Peas. They're so big that they are starting to manipulate the trellis. They're so yummy but sometimes a pain. As you check out the next couple of pictures keep in mind I'm about 6'2" tall. These plants are serious. They'll grow to 8 feet or more in a season.

Here I am at just after dawn. Still chilly.Only a few minutes later it's very, very hot. What a week of weather we've had.

In this week's share you'll find another round of Chard. I'm pretty happy with the Chard this year. I finally got the planting quantity correct so we have no trouble giving everyone a full bunch. Below is an idea for what to do with Chard (or other things). Tempura. I made up this recipe but it's a fairly common idea so you could google the word for recipes or you might already have one. We liked the Chard the best of all the things on this plate, including spinach, scapes and snow peas. I dipped the chard into a plate of scrambled egg and coated the whole leaf (but not the stem as it makes a convenient handle). Then I dipped it into a mixture of all purpose flour and quick cooking oats. Then I set it into a very hot frying pan which was holding rendered fat (from bacon). If you're vegetarian, vegan or just don't save your renderings, you could probably use vegetable or olive oil. Just be careful because they ignite at lower temperatures and off-gas some nasty things when too hot. Once they were fried up I salted them liberally with sea salt and enjoyed them. A great meal for a hot afternoon. Disregard the charred spinach in the middle of this photo. My first attempt was during the same time Martin decided he was suddenly really, really hungry and needed a bottle NOW DADDY!!!

Here's a shot of something I set out for the 4th party we had. Carrots (in your share again today!!!) Sugar Snaps and Chard stems. Chard stems are a great substitute for Celery. I don't grow celery. Too hard, never had luck, gave up. Chard is more interesting anyway!

Here is a shot of the bags just after packing prior to them going into the coolers. The very best problem a CSA farmer has is not having enough room in the bags at the beginning of July! What a season so far.

Ok, Shell Peas are here! We should have more next week when we can get in a full day's harvest. I consider Thursday night part of a full day's harvest. I was at a farmstead tour at the home of John Bunker (the Fedco Trees guy) in Palermo yesterday into the evening and didn't get a chance to get a jump on the harvest. So I had to harvest your carrots and radishes today. Usually root crops are good to hit the night before because they weather the process well. More peas next week! But this 1/2lb in your share should be enjoyable. Caselode is the variety and they are delicious.

Here is a little video of me explaining how to open the peas. Not everyone was as fortunate as I to grow up in a home where the kids helped with the food storage. Shelling peas, cleaning blueberries, crushing blackberries are all memories I have of childhood. I didn't know it at the time but I really was fortunate to be learning how to accomplish these tasks. Now, as we attempt to 'put by' as much food as possible for our family, Emily and I can pass these traditions onto Lizzie (and Martin when he is old enough). Luckily, Lizzie is young enough to love helping with these things. Anyway, if you don't know how to open and shell the peas, hope this helps.

Also this week, a red romaine lettuce called Eruption. An apt name. It really does erupt and we nearly missed our harvest window before it bolted. I only lost one head. The trouble with lettuce is that it can't be harvested early and if you blink you missed it. I got pretty lucky because this is a beautiful lettuce. Enjoy.

I was harvesting your Tango Lettuce today and heard quite a noise. I looked up to find this hen on top of the old hen-mobile. I was once told chickens don't fly very well. I disagree.

Hope everyone is enjoying their vegetable, egg and bread shares. Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback. Until next week, enjoy.

July is here!!!

2011-07-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

And that means things are going crazy in the garden! But before we get to that I figured I'd post a couple of photos of goings on at the farm. I was cultivating and 'hilling' more potatoes the other day in the amazingly high heat and humidity, sweating buckets even without a shirt on and I looked over to see Indy lounging placidly in his wallow. I though it deserved a photo.

And this morning when I was trying to feed and water the pigs I couldn't find one. I was worried until I noticed a set of hams sticking up out of a gargantuan hole in the ground. Pigs are so entertaining!

Also, here are a couple of shots of things to come. Look at the basil plants lining the walkways in the greenhouse like emergency lights in an airplane. Much more satisfying though. We love Basil in the Parker household so this is always a welcome sight. Especially since last night I dropped a freshly seeded tray of fall basil and dumped out the whole thing! I had to come look at this in the greenhouse after that to calm down...

And beside the basil, another welcome and warm sight. A future tomato harvest in the making. Hopefully this makes your mouth water as much as mine.

And now onto today's harvest. Last night we actually began the harvest by pulling off the Sugar Snap Peas for the first time. These are an amazing pea, not just for their flavor and thirst quenching, crisp texture, which by itself is worthy of praise, but also for the sheer quantity of biomass these things can create. It is truly amazing how fast and much these plants grow. They will get to be nearly 7 or 8 feet tall before they are done and I'm quite sure they could keep going if I didn't pull them off the trellis to start another crop. At this point we've mixed them in with the Sugar Ann's you've been getting but soon those will be done and it will be straight Sugar Snaps.

I also harvested another installment of Crunchy Royale Radishes. The crop is doing so well I just love to pull the row cover off and take a look. Here is the before shot.

And here is the after. This is how we bunch them in the field as it helps keep track and is easier to count, wash, pack, etc. Last week you received the radishes that were thinned from this row. This week, you're receiving a more uniform radish bunch in your share and don't forget you can use the greens if you wish. See our blog from last week's harvest to view a link.

The radishes would go nicely in a salad with the Tango Lettuce you're receiving in this week's share. We went with only the green since the Red Salad Bowl has bolted. I'll have to replant for a later crop. You might also consider including some of the Carrots in a salad but more on those later.

You may find that the lettuce is too wet in the bag. If so, open the bag and place a quartered paper towel on top of the lettuce. Place the bag, still open, in the crisper of your fridge. After about a day, remove the towel. It will have wicked all the excess water from the lettuce and will cause the harvest to last much longer in your fridge.

This shot is only to show how we do things on harvest day. We pick, cut, rinse, pack and bring everything from the garden into the cool of the milk house. Then we do what you see below, that is cover the crates and buckets with plastic bags to retain moisture. Respiration is one of the leading causes of loss on harvest day and can lead to limp, lifeless, vegetables. We don't want that after working so hard to produce them in the first place.

And now, to the masterpiece of the week. As you'll see from the picture in the header of the blog, we have carrots, full sized, ready to go, delicious, beautiful carrots! Brittany and I were chatting in the garden when we were harvesting these and frankly, I'm going to fore go humility for a moment. The fact that you have carrots in your share this week is nothing short of amazing. These carrots were planted in our mobile greenhouse on March 6th when there was still 3 feet of snow just the other side of a six mil piece of plastic. I then spent 3 weeks carrying 10 gallons of water to a trip out to the greenhouse from the house to get them to germinate and then water them after they had. Then, in April, Brittany weeded the majority of them and I got the rest (she really did most of that).

In short, I am very, very proud of these carrots and very happy to be able to provide our CSA members with carrots this early in the season. This says nothing of how they came out. Frankly, they're amazing. I had one for lunch and they are delicious. I hope you enjoy them and if you have friends that might participate in other CSA's, feel free to eat your carrots in front of them.

;-)

I wrote at the beginning of this post about things going crazy in the garden. There is a reason the ancients used to celebrate the Summer Solstice! It's like a light switch for the plant world. 'Oh yes, the days just started getting shorter...we'd better hurry up before winter is here."

One thing that makes its appearance at this time of year is the Garlic Scape. Below is a series of photos related to this little wonder. I call it that because Garlic Scapes are nature's answer to us just about running out of stored garlic from the last year. You can use these as a substitute for garlic cloves. I suggest this week our members use these and the Scarlet Nantes Carrot tops from the share to make Carrot Top Pesto. Delicious and healthy! Carrots are wonderful as a nutrient pump. That means they reach way down into the topsoil and bring up nutrients that other plants cannot get. Carrot tops are high in calcium and potassium and the don't forget chlorophyll will naturally detoxify your body. http://cathyshambley.blogspot.com/2009/07/carrot-top-pesto-you-must-be-joking.html

Here is Brittany, waist deep in the garlic patch, harvesting all those wonderful scapes.

I truly hope everyone enjoys this week's share, and all the season's harvests. Please don't forget that I love to hear feedback from everyone to help me improve the CSA. Until next week, be well and thank you for your participation in our local food chain.

A good morning's work

2011-06-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

I spent the morning using a wheeled cultivator to cultivate several rows of dry and shell beans. This is an amazing, yet simple tool that I am using for the first time this season. I can't imagine where it's been all my life!!!

Here is a plot of dry/shell beans before I began cultivating. See all those nasty little specs of green in between the rows. Those are all pig weed. For those not familiar with this little plant, it's amazing. It's also edible being in the amaranth family. But it gets tough too fast to make it practical to harvest and once it gets to a certain point it goes crazy. Then, the entire crop you planted is lost. Pig weed is truly an amazing plant. Too bad I despise it so.

This is just another shot of the whole bean plot facing north up to the barns in the background.

Here is a shot from the other end when I'm exactly half finished. What a satisfying sight!

And here we are again at the bottom, this time though, I've just finished and those little weeds are gone. I'll go through this again in a little while, perhaps a week, to really clean it out and then the bean plants will shade the ground enough to keep them from germinating!

And here is something the wheeled cultivator couldn't have done. Sugar Snap Peas that are ready to harvest. But alas we can't even walk through the rows due to weeds in the walking paths.

That is, of course, until Brittany worked her magic. 10 rows weeded to perfection! Thanks Brittany! Now we'll harvest our first pull off the Sugar Snaps for this week's CSA Share Harvest!

One month of local, beyond organic food!

2011-06-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

Greetings from the height of summer in the Parker Produce Garden! Hopefully everyone has enjoyed the first month of the CSA season. This is a good time to take stock and offer feedback about your experience. Remember, the more we hear from you, the better we can be at improving our CSA this season and in the coming years.

This week's share includes spinach, chard, lettuce mix, radishes, peas and new this week, Red Russian Kale. Be sure to check out our recipe page by clicking the link at the right and look at the Kale Chips recipe. We love this in the Parker household!

And here is an interesting link for ideas to use radish greens. http://www.ehow.com/how_5620696_use-radish-greens.html
I'm very excited by this radish crop, it's the best crop I've ever had! I've had nice radishes before but never edible greens. Usually the flea beetles render them tough and inedible and leave them looking unappetizing. Not so this year due to some extra work and vigilance! Enjoy!

Here is a shot of a wonderful sight. A lush carpet of radish greens just uncovered for an evening harvest. I harvest root crops in the evening the night before the CSA harvest. That way they have all day to metabolize sugars and since they keep so well in the milk house, it saves me some time on Fridays.

I was walking through the Quonset Hut Greenhouse yesterday and noticed this moth. Quite beautiful...as long as it doesn't eat my sweet potatoes!

This morning, I dug about 21 rows of walking paths and composted them all. You can see from the photo, this is all done by hand. After adding compost, I rake out the row with the 3-tine cultivation rake you see in the wheelbarrow. Then I switch to one of the most useful tools in my belt - the 30" bed-prep rake. This is a ton of work but it looks very nice and makes planting and harvesting more efficient. Any home gardener who has ever tried to harvest when they didn't leave themselves walking paths knows what a nightmare that can be.

Here's a quick shot of the piglets. You've not lived until you've seen pigs who are waiting 'patiently' for their supper, dive in head first! Better than T.V.

Here is another shot of those radishes. These are the ones from your share this week. Crunchy Royale is one of my favorite varieties for small round radishes. As you can see in the foreground, I interplanted with cucumbers.

And now to what I spent about 2.5 days working on this week. Hilling potatoes. In this shot they are all uncovered (i.e. the row cover is off) and I'm using the shade of a potato plant to help keep my water cool. I needed lots of water during this project.

After uncovering the first step is to take this wheeled cultivator and try to get some of the weeds and grass and loosen the soil between the rows.

Blogspot doesn't upload the photos in the order I input them. That's annoying! So this is a bit out of context but this homemade tractor implement is what I used originally to create the furrows for the potatoes. It works quite well for that.

Here is just a fun shot I thought of when I saw this image. I garden in bare feet whenever possible. It's a true perk of this gig to walk around the 'office' without shoes all summer long.

Here is the potato field all covered with Agribon - 19 Floating Row cover. Hopefully it keeps the Colorado Potato Beetles OFF my potato plants.

And here is why I have to cover over all those beautiful potato plants. I'm not sure who thought the Colorado Potato Beetle was a good idea but I'd like to have a talk with that person. This little beetle, and more specifically it's larvae, can do some serious damage to a potato crop. If the infestation gets bad, the entire crop can be devastated. Hopefully the row cover works!!!

Here is the potato field in the middle of being uncovered for hilling. You see the rows of soil between the green? I shoveled each and everyone of those over a two day period. Why anyone would pay for a gym membership is beyond me. Go outside and work on a small diversified farm for a few weeks and you'll wonder why you ever though the gym was a good idea.

Those are hay wagons in the background. It's definitely summer when John starts haying!

I'll close today with a little pontificating about local food vs. the industrial alternative. Local, fresh food is always better. The radishes in your share are a great example. Many people instantly default to 'I don't like radishes' when you mention these little beauties. But my contention is that that person simply hasn't tasted a radish. What you can get a the supermarket simply cannot compare. There are a lot of things like that.

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

Early Carrots and the Chard has arrived!

2011-06-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Another week, another harvest. Here is the pre-dawn view out my 'office window', ie over the garden. Just awesome!
And here is the pre-dawn view of the western part of the farm. The moon over that maple tree always gets me this time of year. Makes waking up at 4 am totally worth it. Well, almost, the vegetables make up for the rest ;-).

And here comes the sun. Sunrise and sunset are real treats here at the farm. This morning's was no exception.

Here is a shot from the harvest I did on Tuesday for Barrels Community Market in Waterville. I use kneepads in the garden when harvesting or weeding. You only get one body and it makes sense to take care of it! We have a lot of rocks here in Maine and my knees don't appreciate rocks the way some might.

Another shot from Tuesday's spinach harvest. Yes, this was taken on the 15th of June. Yes, that's a winter hat and fleece coat. Yes, that's a piece of spinach bigger than my head!

Now onto this week's share. Chard!!! What an awesome veggie. Color and flavor and good for you too. What else can you ask for? this is a braising vegetable though you can certainly eat it raw and we often too. Also, cut the stalks from the leaves and use them for crunch in a salad or stir-fry. I can't stand croutons and don't get me started on 'Bacon Bits'. But when I need extra crunch in my salad, I use chard stalks. They're better and more colorful!

Here is a shot to remind people about some of the choices I make in bagging. The carrot on the left was given to the pigs. The one on the right went into someone's share bag. A little crack or blemish is not worth wasting an entire carrot, or whatever vegetable is in question. However, sometimes the deformity warrants the food being tossed to compost or animals!

Early carrots which were actually planted last October and overwintered nicely in the garden. They are sweeter for having been in the cold. This is only a teaser with thinnings and baby carrots. We have lots more on the way and I just planted some more at that! Hope you like them. Don't forget the carrot tops (when they're young) make excellent pesto that is amazingly good for you! This is why we leave the tops on when they are baby carrots. When they are older we use them in the compost as they are a bit too bitter for pesto.

We also included a new lettuce mix. This red/green mix consists of Tango (green) and Red Salad Bowl. I really like this mix for color and good flavor. The Tango is a first cutting which makes it more tender than later cuttings.

I have to run to Bangor now for deliveries but plan to do another couple of blogs this week about things you'll see in our garden that don't exist in the industrial 'food' system. Until then, check out this interplanting of beans and lettuce.

Enjoy!

Letting the chicks out and trellising tomatoes...

2011-06-13T04:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Thought I'd post a blog on this rainy day before heading out into the garden to work (read 'get soaked'). Yesterday's rain didn't keep me from being productive! I was able to get a good handle on trellising in the Cathedral (this is the name I've given to our biggest greenhouse because it reminds me of Notre Dame). Here are the before and after shots. How satisfying!

I also let the baby chicks out for the first time this weekend. When they're very little they need to be indoors and under heat lamps (in the brooder) to get established. Then, I move them outside but keep them in their mobil pen so they get to learn where home is. This is where I keep their food and water and it's good to establish a home base. The reason being that when I let them out they are quite happy to roam all over the place. Here they are heading into the raspberry patch. I start them in here so they can have cover from overhead predators while they grow a bit. We have eagles, osprey and hawks around the farm and baby chicks look mighty nice to any of those creatures.

As you can see, Brinkley is a huge help.

Second Harvest

2011-06-10T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
We open this week's story with peas!!! We're very excited in the garden this season to have peas so early. We're really using our mobile greenhouses to our advantage. These were started in February and it paid off with early peas. This photo is from this morning as the sun was just rising. These are Oregon Giant Snow Peas. They are the flat, large pods. Snow peas are great raw but really they are useful for any stir fry with vegetables (I suggest using your scallions and some of the spinach too).
Also in the bag with the snow peas are some Sugar Ann Snap Peas. These are also good in stir-fry meals but frankly, why waste the candy? Really, these are so sweet and good raw, we never even get them back to the house from the garden before they are gone. I put them all in the same bag to save on plastic but they are easy to tell from the snow peas.

This week's share also contains some of the same items from last week including the scallions I already mentioned, more Red Salad Bowl Lettuce and each of you got a full pound of spinach! The spinach was going crazy in the garden this morning. Between Brittany and I we spent 4 hours harvesting just spinach and pulled 50lbs out of the garden!!! Remember that while our spinach is tender enough to eat raw, even when it's large like this, it can also be braised. For a lesson on proper braising, click the archived post to the right under 2010 in June titled 'first harvest 2 of 2' and scroll down to the picture of Red Russian Kale. Braising is a great technique for cooking greens but not loosing the crispness or volume. Boiling this spinach will reduce it to about one hearty meals worth. Hard to believe looking at those two voluminous bags but it's true. Braising will keep you in spinach all week.

Also, this week is our first installment of Australe Lettuce. This is the head lettuce that is in the share bag. Isn't it beautiful. I tried this last season and it will forever be a keeper in our garden. I love the taste, the texture and the color is amazing in a salad or on a sandwich. Awesome stuff. Plus, from a production point of view, it's meant to be harvested small like this (actually it's called a miniature head lettuce). This means I can put more into less space and it is also easier to bag than some of the other lettuce varieties you'll get from us this season. We also put in another installment of radishes and that will be it on them for a few weeks until our next batch comes in. Hopefully that will be soon as they are a different variety and I'm looking forward to it.

And now, some photos of our work around the farm. I've been slowly working up our grape arbor over the past couple of years. I planted the grapes on some tough ground (read 'rocks') so they've taken a while to get with it. I was annoyed by that at first until I realized it just gives me time to work on the arbor. I only have to put up another piece when the grapes reach high enough! Convenient. Right now I'm working on putting up the skinny vertical pieces you see. This will give the vines something to cling to and expand upon. I want a wall of grapes!!!

Finally, our turkeys have arrived. They actually arrived last Friday (the first CSA harvest day of the season of all days) and I brought them home from the post office. They are doing quite well at this point but turkeys are very, very delicate. It's interesting based on the wild turkeys we have around the farm. I only ordered heritage breeds which are still able to fend for themselves and have some natural instincts but domesticated breeds are still just that. So as long as I can get them past the 'everything is a danger' stage, we'll be in good shape! Well, enjoy the share and I'll see you again next week.

First CSA Harvest of 2011 is here!!!

2011-06-02T18:50:00.000-07:00

Finally! The moment is here. First CSA Harvest and delivery/pick-up of the year! This first one is very 'spring' oriented (obviously!).

Chives! Yes, those are eggs. No, the chickens didn't put them there. It's art! Actually, I did that to show what some of our members will hopefully use some of the chives for. Farm-fresh eggs with fresh spring chives! Great breakfast!

Another shot with the flowers! Did you know you can use the flowers? A quick google search will show you lots of ideas!!!

So I wasn't planning on radishes today but pulled back our row cover and they were ready! So you get some. White Icicle and French Breakfast Radish mix. Yes, they are supposed to be that long, not like the little round ones some may be familiar with. No, you don't have to eat them for breakfast.

This photo looked more clear on the camera. I was going for the scallions. They are looking pretty good in the garden coming up between some Australe Lettuce (which will be in a future share). This is a great example of the very intensive way we use space in the garden!

You'll also find a bag of Red Salad Bowl Lettuce in there. I love this lettuce because at the base it's green and the colors look great in a nice spring salad. Plus, it is good!

Spinach! By the boatload. We pulled 40 lbs of spinach off the garden today. This photo doesn't do it justice! It was like a carpet, too thick to even get through the walking paths. It's interplanted with carrots and peas. Yes, those are flowers on the peas (super early!!! thank you movable greenhouse #1).

Bread Shares! Check this out. I opened the bags to take this photo and was blown away by the awesome smell of freshly backed bread. This again is from the Rau family in Newport (right down the road from the farm). If you are jealous of the members who picked this option - it's not too late!!! Let me know if you would like to receive a loaf of this amazing, artisan bread each week with your produce share.

And here are a couple of shots of our work on the farm over the past week. Jim in the background with me fighting a slight breeze to cover our potato field with floating row cover. Hopefully this will keep off the dreaded Colorado Potato Beetle.

And here is our new washing station at the head of the garden. As you know we don't 'wash' produce. However, this does allow us to remove excess soil from things like radishes and carrots and cool spinach and lettuce, etc. See our salad spinner on the right. I made some changes to it this year and now it's more durable and more mobile.

Well, enjoy until next week and as always, I love/welcome your comments. That's how we improve!

Meet some of the crew!

2011-05-11T04:44:00.000-07:00

Greetings all:

The delivery season is fast approaching but the farming season has never stopped here at the farm. I've been working since last October on getting ready for this season with seed orders, tool orders, networking, education and the nitty gritty, day-to-day, physical work of farming here in our beautiful hilltop location in Central Maine.

I wanted to take a few blog posts to introduce those who will be working with us on the farm this season. First, Brittany returns triumphantly this year in a new capacity. She'll be helping us out in the gardens this season and with harvesting but she'll also have her own garden at the farm. I can't wait to see what she produces and I know it will be amazing. Above, she's beginning to put our tomatoes into one of the hoop houses. We call this one the Quonset House.

There are certainly other people working with us on the farm but my camera data cord is not within reach so I'll post more on them later. Until then, meet some of the rest of the farm crew.

Here is Indy. I spoke about him in the last blog post. He's doing quite well and warming up to me quite nicely. I know it's because I bring the food and scratch his back but sometimes I think he might like the way I smell...like something good to eat. He tried to latch onto my knee the other day! This picture doesn't do him justice. He's a beautiful animal weighing in at about 250 lbs. right now. He'll get larger for sure but he's very active and working up some ground around one of our stone walls that's overgrown with honeysuckle (an invasive species by the way).

This photo tackles two birds with one stone. Ok, its actually one person, 30 birds and there aren't any stones but you get the idea. Lizzie is helping daddy feed the chickens in this picture. Yes, this was only about a week ago and yes it was cold enough for all that clothing.

Finally, here is a shot of my two favorite helpers (well, one helper and one future helper). Here is Lizzie and Martin at Martin's one month check-up the other day. He's doing well, gaining lots of weight and keeping mommy and daddy up at all hours. Just the way it should be! (Don't tell him I said that).

As always, everyone is encouraged to come out to the farm and look around, ask questions, etc. And if you ever want to work in the garden (as some CSA members do throughout the season) we love to have help from people who want an even more direct connection with their food.

A new season begins...

2011-01-19T18:41:00.000-08:00

Well, actually the season is cyclical and never really ends or begins. Right around Thanksgiving the seed catalogs start rolling in and I begin scouring them and planning what to grow the next summer. I also inventory what we have for seeds. Below is just one of several boxes.
But tonight I began a yearly ritual that, to me, signifies the 'start' of the growing season. I began mixing my seedling soil. As I said, it's an annual ritual and one that is shared by gardeners and farmers worldwide and has been for a long, long time. I mixed my first batch of soil tonight in the basement of my home. While the plowtrucks went by outside I was downstairs, the dust and scent of peat moss heavy in the air, black, crumbly compost in buckets and rake or spade in hand, I spent about an hour and half mixing up a few batches of our starter mix.
Once I have a good bunch stocked up I'll begin making soil blocks and setting them on a homemade rack in the basement.

It's cool and damp down there which is the perfect condition to keep a few thousand soil blocks in until early/mid-February when I start planting our onions...

As I begin this process for 2011 I'm reminded how close the growing season is. Now is the time to sign-up for all of the many new, (and returning) exciting, local, beyond organic food options we have on offer. Visit www.parkerproduce.org to learn more about the many ways to enjoy real food from a family farmer you trust.

December Share!

2010-11-24T06:38:00.001-08:00

Christmas is upon us!

At the Burgess Farm that means Christmas Tree Sales for a solid month! It's a lot of fun for everyone and that includes the whole family who is involved at the farm (including Lizzie). But by Christmas Eve we're all happy it's the last day of sales.

A quick note about the apples. They froze in the root cellar during that really, really cold stretch a few days ago. I was pretty bummed when I found them the next morning. But I did some research and found a University of Wisconsin paper showing that they are still fine to be used in cooked dishes like pie or sauce. Keep them frozen and then right before making whatever you are making, thaw them and cook them. In other words, they wouldn't be very good fresh eating because when they thaw they'll turn very, very soft.

I did not get to post a blog for the Thanksgiving shares so I figured I'd try to do it early for the Christmas Shares. Below are some photos of what is in the holiday shares.

Leeks on the left, Turnips in the middle and Australian Butter Squash on the right. This is my new favorite squash! It is interesting to look at, delicious and yields a ton of food! What more could ask for from a squash? Actually, from a gardening perspective it offers more. I've never seen a squash plant yield so many squash as this one did this fall. In the back are a couple of decorative 'Moonshine Pumpkins' and some Falstaff Brussels sprouts. The beautiful dark color will be augmented by the flavor now that they have seen frost. These loose their color as they are cooked.

This photo is from the Thanksgiving shares so it includes New England Pie Pumpkins. I will try to put one in each share but I'll also be putting in Long Pie Pumpkins. Delicious heirloom pumpkins that were the pie pumpkin in Maine a century ago. They are the only pie pumpkin that will ripen consistently after harvest. I picked them mostly green in September and they have been ripening in the root cellar since then. I also have included several types of potatoes in this share and hope you enjoy the variety.

Another shot of the Australian Butter. I love this squash!

Here is a shot of the leeks this morning just after I had uncovered them. They have been frozen and thawed a few times under there but the plastic allows the ground to warm enough to dig them. And Leeks are hardy enough to take a few freezings and still be edible and quite good.

Here is everything all laid out before it went into the box for the Thanksgiving shares. The December Holiday Share will have many if not all of the same things though some of the greens will be different due to the cold snap we just had (No Chard for instance).

A couple of specific notes:

Here is a shot of a carrot that has begun to crack at the bottom and show signs that it is not holding much longer in the field. The portion I'm holding however, is still perfectly good. I put carrots like this in during the winter because 'perfect' carrots are far and few between and there is no reason to discard an entire carrot because one section is bad. Cut off that part and eat the rest. The carrot will be sweeter for the frost. Yummy!

And here is a shot of the Long Island Improved Brussels Sprouts. You might have received this one in your share (or one like it) that shows the little black specks on the sprouts and stem. This is a result of excessive fall moisture followed by several freeze/thaw cycles. They don't look great when like this I admit. But, Brussels Sprouts are like several other Brassicas. They taste better after a few frosts. Not all of the sprouts you received will look like this, most look fine. But these specimens are still good. Just peel off the outer layer to reveal the good part on some of them.

Nothing to report on the turnips...I just liked this photo. ;-) They were frozen solid in the field but this is another hardy crop that will be able to stand that. You should be able to thaw them out just before using and have a great dish!

Here is a final shot of the garden for 2010. It was a great season and it was nice to be a farmer. More importantly, it was nice to be your farmer. Thank you for supporting local agriculture and choosing to feed yourselves and your family local, beyond organic, real food from Parker Produce. We hope to see you next season.

Happy Holidays to all!

Final share for 2010

2010-10-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Another season comes to an end for the Parker Produce CSA. It was certainly a great season. The weather made up for its niceness for the rest of the summer. We had 30 mile per hour, sustained winds and horizontal rain for the whole morning and into the afternoon. We tried to stay inside as much as possible but eventually had to brave the weather for a few things. Here Brittany is putting the Leeks into the bags after pulling them off the garden this morning. You'll notice this week's leeks are a different variety and they are much, much longer than last week's.
Blue Hubbard Squash is also in this week's share. It's a wonderful squash. If you're one of the folks who claims they don't like Blue Hubbard because it's too watery...I would suggest that perhaps you haven't tried cooking it quite the right way. Hubbards are a baking squash. Here is a a quick link describing the method I would use http://www.recipetips.com/glossary-term/t--34114/hubbard-squash.asp. These are from our garden and they came out pretty well this season for the stress of a late weeding. We also put in Buttercup from John for those who said they would like it.

Here is a shot of the leeks by themselves. As I said you will notice how much longer they are than the ones you received last week.

You will also find Red Russian Kale, a bunching green in this instance. We've been holding onto these all season and they turned out very well. Here is a recipe that we like in our house http://www.suite101.com/content/roasted-kale-a25130. Oven roasted Kale is a crispy treat. You'll have to scroll down past all the advertisements, etc. We also don't cut the stems off. They make nice handles for the kale. This is a delicious treat.

Finally, here is a shot of Brittany and I in the driving rain (which you can barely make out in the picture...which is weird since I could barely see Emily through it when she was taking the photo. Here we are using water collected from the barn roof to wash the leeks and carrots. This was the last thing we did before going in, sitting by the fire and getting dry. What a way to end the season.

You'll also find some tomatoes that need explanation. Green! We put a few ripe ones in, all that's left in the garden. Brittany pulled the bulk of the green tomatoes off the garden last week and they've been in the milk house. They will ripen in the warmth of your kitchen in the dark. Not all of them will ripen as some of them weren't mature. However, it's worth the effort to put them in a dark, warm place and check them daily or perhaps a little less frequently. This is a great way to enjoy local, beyond organic tomatoes later than possible in our climate. Here is a link to some interesting recipes for green tomatoes. I am actually going to try the pickles. Should be interesting. http://tipnut.com/green-tomato-recipes/

I hope everyone has enjoyed the season and that we will see you all in the Winter Club and next season! Enjoy and thank you all for participating in our beyond organic, local, real food chain!

The penultimate share...

2010-10-08T16:50:00.000-07:00

Hi all:

We have Internet access again so I figured I'd post a quick blog update for this week's share. Many of the items are the same as last week which is good because I didn't have the camera this morning. Luckily, I took photos last week.

Here is a shot of the radishes just after they are harvested. This is how I count in the field. Bunching them in the field and keeping track of the bunches is the only way I've been able to keep track. This is much easier than guessing and having to come back out to the garden from the packing shed if I don't get enough.

Here is a nice shot of the top of the garden. This is just before the radishes were harvested. You can see the new greenhouse in the background. Happily, I've now completed the doors and end wall on the two ends and I'm in the middle of putting up the superstructure inside. It's much more secure now than it was in this photo. In the foreground you can see some of our low-tunnels which we use to cover things until the greenhouse tomatoes die off from frost and I can move the greenhouses over the fall/winter crops. Many of the things that will be available to our Winter Club members will come from this section of the garden which I can easily access in the cold, snowy winter.

Regarding this week's share, I first want to mention the leeks. Since I didn't have access last week, I hope everyone figured out a few things about the leeks. First, leeks are an amazing vegetable. They are a member of the onion family, they are beautiful, store well and hold in the field throughout the winter months if treated properly (i.e. mulched heavily). Most importantly, they are delicious and smell amazing when sliced and cooked. A couple of things you should know about leeks.

The first is the myth that only the white part is edible. I am continually shocked by the types of people who perpetuate this. Eliot Coleman himself mentions this in one of his books. The ENTIRE leek is good! And it all tastes like leek! There, now that's out of the way. The recipe I have for potato leek soup calls for 6 leeks. The recipe is considering only the white part of the leek. I've made the soup before with 2 medium sized leeks and used the entire leek. It's better. The photo above shows where I would cut the leek. The yellowish part above my finger is what I would discard, the rest is perfectly edible and tasty.

Next, due to the way leeks grow, are harvested and cleaned, they retain soil between the leaves. There is no way around this other than washing them thoroughly when you prepare them. As you can see in the above photo, this is one way the leeks collect water and other nutrients.

Here is one way to clean them. In the photo above, my ring finger is pointing at the outer layer which is often not worth keeping as it's mushy or damaged. You can peel it off like a banana peel. In my thumb and forefinger I'm pulling back a section of leek. You can do this and hold it under running water until it is clean. You will have to do this with each layer. A much better method in my opinion is possible if you are preparing an entire leek for something like potato leek soup. Simply cut the leek into medallions or any other cutting style you like. They put the pieces into a colander and rinse them that way, very thoroughly. You may even consider floating the pieces in a sink full of cold water for a while, then rinsing them in the strainer. It's more work than an onion but totally worth it.

You'll also find some winter squash in the share this week. If you are one of the folks who said you would like conventionally grown squash you'll have Buttercup in there (the green one). Everyone also got some Butternut (the yellowish one). The Butternut is actually from our beyond organic gardens. Those ones did alright after all. Brittany pulled them all from the garden this week and when I got there that day I was pleasantly surprised at how much we actually had. It didn't look like that much in the garden.

You'll also find two mixes. One is a small greens mix which contains Endive, Red Lettuce, Baby spinach and baby beet greens. The other is a braising mix containing Red Russian Kale and Mixed Chard.

Also in this week's share is the dwindling tomato crop. Frost is expected on Saturday night so we (and by we I mean Brittany-thank you Brittany) worked this week to pull all good tomatoes off the garden, green or not. They are all in the milk house, hopefully ripening. You will have received some green tomatoes today too probably (not everyone got green ones with their cherry bunches). You can put them in a darkened place, keep an eye on them and eat them as they ripen. Please note that not all green tomatoes will ripen properly. Simply discard the ones that don't.

Also, this week is the last of the zucchini and summer squash. I know some of you haven't enjoyed that part of the share. I am sorry about that but I have to say it's one of my favorite parts as the farmer. There really are few plants that I know of that will produce as much food from one plant as a zucchini plant. There are lots of options for zucchini of all sizes and perhaps this winter I'll have a chance to get some recipes together for them. That will help next year!

As always, please let me know if you have any questions. Next week is the last week of the CSA season for 2010. Please remember to return all bags and sign-up for the Winter Club.

Ready for fall!

2010-09-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Thank you all for your patience as I've been neglecting the blog the past week or so. It's amazing how autumn brings out the 'stuff to do' list in full force. Speaking of autumn, Brittany and I have been preparing the garden for fall, winter and next spring. It's a great time of year when all of our work throughout the summer culminates in a great harvest season and we can visualize the garden in the coming season. Below are a couple of photos showing some of our work to ensure our fall and winter crops are protected from any oncoming frosts. The greenhouse in the distance will soon roll over the row covered plants in the foreground. You cannot see it but our newest greenhouse will also roll over the row covered crops on the left.
These row covers will protect our crops for our Winter Buying Club. This is the program we have that allows our members to avoid being forced to return to 'produce' from the industrial 'food' system at the end of the CSA season. Each week I publish a list of available produce, the price per unit and our Winter Club members email me with a list of what they would like. Then, I harvest the produce and deliver it to one of several predetermined, convenient locations. It's a wonderful way for our community to enjoy our beyond organic produce throughout the fall and winter. We hope this year to be even more successful at prolonging the season through the winter months. Please email me at ryan@parkerproduce.org if you would like to sign-up for our Winter Club. There is never any obligation to purchase produce.

Finally, the share this week contains one of our squash success stories. Delicata squash! See the photo below for id. This is the first year I've grown Delicata and I'm glad I did. While my buttercup and butternut were doing nothing, these little beauties were working like crazy to produce this beautiful bounty. Here is a recipe that sounds wonderful but it's really just to get your creative juices flowing. There are lots of other preparation methods. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Delicata-Squash-with-Rosemary-Sage-and-Cider-Glaze-104125

I usually wash the squash, cut it in half lengthwise and then roast it in the oven at a high temp. (depending on the time of year and the outside temp.) on a cookie sheet with the skin side down. I spread raw, local butter on the flesh and sprinkle salt and pepper on it. (Some people like Nutmeg on their squash when roasted this way. I despise nutmeg so I never put it in but people say it's great.)

Also this week is another round of our potatoes. Despite some set-backs, we've had a wonderful crop of many of the varieties planted and we will have more in the next three weeks (Can there really only be three weeks left in this year's CSA season?!?!) You'll also find a braising mix including chard, kale and beet greens. Our tomatoes have slowed down in this fall weather but we're still getting some. As long as we're getting enough to divide amongst our members, you'll be getting them in the share. Also this week is another round of onions, carrots, and our full shares received a rosette of endive. I hope everyone enjoys!

A break in the weather...and now it's fall

2010-09-10T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
I hope everyone is really enjoying this wonderful change in the weather. Brittany and I were ill-prepared for this morning's temperatures at the farm. When I awoke at 5 the wind chill was down to 40 degrees F. We were both wearing long sleeved tops and pants and I even broke out the wool cap! What a difference a hurricane makes. This is what I was talking about last week when it was 98+ degrees F and I was considering that a frost could happen anytime. Supposed to be 40 tonight I hear. We picked the tomatoes pretty hard today. You might have received some tomatoes in this week's share that need to sit a bit on the windowsill. The same message from last week applies. Please go through the tomatoes and get them dried out. I actually rinsed the cherries today because they were cracking so much. Brittany and I did a very good job of avoiding the cracked ones but the weather change is really messing with things. They are so fragile!
Here is a shot of me trying a new idea. We get a lot of fertility off the farm from municipal leaf collections from the town of Newport and Brewer. I don't really like the time it takes or the fact that I have to drive all the way to Brewer with a very large truck to get the leaves. I have done some research and other alternative farmers use the fertility from their own farms as much as possible. It turns out that hay can really increase fertility in the garden. I am trying it and I hope to report good results.

I also want to mention one of the problems we've had in the garden this season. Even in a 'perfect' growing season we can experience problems. I must confess that these problems are mostly of my own making. You've noticed I'm sure that we haven't had many cucumbers. I tried something new this year by growing cucumbers among the corn after reading that cucurbits can be grown that way to keep raccoons off the corn. It turns out that it only works with certain types of squash. Cucumbers aren't quite hardy enough to cope with the shade from the corn. Lesson learned, never experiment without growing the crop the regular way. I apologize to everyone who was really expecting cukes this year and hope we've been able to make up for it with other stuff (i.e. tomatoes...and more tomatoes and tons of other stuff).

Keuka Gold potatoes. This week's potatoes are Keuka Gold. A wonderful potato! Here is a link describing why I purchased this seed originally http://www.fedcoseeds.com/moose/MooseItem.php?id=7280&MooseName=keuka gold&descKey=7800. I have talked to several small farmers who actually don't like them. I cannot figure out why. I love these potatoes. They are great for making mashed potatoes and good for baking too.

Also, the Kohlrabi is in for the rest of the shares who didn't get it last time. We offered the first of it to about half of you this summer. But that left a few of you who didn't get it. I hope you enjoy it. Here is a link about Kohlrabi http://www.care2.com/greenliving/how-to-use-kohlrabi.html# but you can learn a bit about it from a google search.

The rest of the share holds the usual fare. We are also saving lots of seeds this year, as much as we can anyway. Below are some beautiful beans. The color is amazing and I can't wait to harvest the majority of them. They are even more beautiful when they are fully dried.

I will be getting in touch with all of you in the coming weeks about some of our future plans for next season and your thoughts on this season. I hope everyone is enjoying the share.

Update on the previous post

2010-09-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention an important fact about the potatoes. Green on the potatoes needs to be cut off. A lot of people don't know this but that is actually indicative of the presence of a toxin that the plants produce if the tuber (the potato, actually not a root but a tuber) is exposed to the sunlight. The chemical is toxic but take it from someone who has eaten his share of it, it takes a lot to make the average person sick. But don't take the chance and cut it out. All the green means is that the mulch we used didn't quite cover that particular potato. The rest is edible and you can just cut the green part out. Here is a link to information about the green you might find on some potatoes. http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/potato.asp
There are always some potatoes that don't get covered up. In the industrial, global 'food' system, they are discarded because they don't look right. In a local system, they are recognized for what they are, a good, hearty food that might require a little extra work to remove the part you don't want. Thanks for participating in the latter! Enjoy.

Potatoes, Tomatoes and Decisions

2010-09-03T16:55:00.000-07:00

Evening all:
I'm short of pictures tonight, as well as time since I'm prepping for high winds so I'll make this brief and just include some information about certain things that need to be taken care of in the share.
First, the tomatoes. The cherry tomatoes are suffering a bit from this heat and lack of water. I don't really irrigate except when it comes to seedlings being planted out. They need a bit of a boost. Other than that I really try not to irrigate because it is very, very damaging and has long-term consequences that people haven't begun to think about (unfortunately). Thus, sometimes crops begin to become stressed. Hopefully the promised rain from the hurricane will help get us back on track.
The stress in the cherry tomatoes is showing in thin skin. The moisture is being sucked out of the cherries into the atmosphere. Also, the plant itself is unable to give up as much moisture to the fruits as it's simply attempting to survive at this point. Thus, the skins are weak on the cherry tomatoes. It is very, very important that you remove your tomatoes from their bag, look them over and rinse them lightly in a colander. This will remove any tomato juice that may be on them from any cherries that split or burst in transit. Carefully go over your tomatoes and look for signs of splitting. This is especially prevalent in the cherry tomatoes. Remove any that have split. You may wish to eat them right there is that's the only thing wrong with them. If you don't have fruit flies (sometimes at this time of year they are a menace) you can leave the rest of the tomatoes right in the colander overnight to dry. Then store them as you normally would. This is all very important as it will prolong the life of your tomatoes through the week. If you don't do this, please expect some rotten tomatoes in the bottom of your bag before too long. Isn't biology fun?
Second, Potatoes are in! We've included the first of the potato harvest in today's share. I don't have the camera or I'd include the photos I took today. Sorry. But they are the ones in the brown paper bag. Please note that potatoes do not go in the fridge. When potatoes get that cold the starch (i.e. the thing that makes a potato a potato) turns into sugar. If you've ever tried to eat one after that's happened you know not to do it. Not very appetizing. So please store them in a dark, cool place with lower humidity. Here is a link about storage of potatoes (this link applies to all of the potato varieties you'll get this season from Parker Produce. http://www.ehow.com/how_3480_store-potatoes.html And here is a link to Johnny's Seeds page about Kennebec potatoes. Just for information about the specific variety.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-6684-kennebec-og.aspx
Also this week is Basil, Garlic (Inchelium Red), Onions, Carrots, Zucchini and Summer Squash.
The 'Decisions' part of the title implicates our thought process as we move closer to potential frost. I realize most people probably think the idea of a frost is just silly in this heat wave. However, the average first frost date of fall in Newport is September 15th. That leaves us only two more harvest weeks prior to the potential. Thus, we have to start harvesting things as though there will be no tomorrow. Certain things in the garden can survive a frost or two...winter squash is a good example. However, some things are not tolerant of any frost at all...Tomatoes and Basil are good examples. They immediately shrivel and turn into disgusting masses of previously wonderful stuff. In fact, as soon as the nightly temperature starts to consistently drop into the 50's, tomato growth is done. (We have some in a greenhouse which gives us a buffer on that.) So we have to start harvesting very hard and you may start to get things like green tomatoes in your share. I'll try to explain when that happens but just a heads up.
Please see the link at the right about storage information from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Emily took this class last year with her sister as a fun thing to do and a great way to learn some very, very valuable information. It has proven very useful in our household. I don't agree with all of the over-protective steps they sometimes preach but the class is very valuable and exposes people to a great way to preserve the harvest. Check it out and see if you can get to know someone who wants to/does preserve food this way. You'll love going to the root cellar in the winter and finding all of your hard work of fall lining the shelves.

No sleep but lots of tomatoes!

2010-08-27T17:28:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
The Parker family is just back from the opening of the American Folk Festival. I hope everyone gets a chance to go see some cultural events and check out the great music and dancing. We like to see some of the groups from Louisiana with our Cajun princess!
I didn't get much sleep last night. Not sure why. I was a bit worried about the shares this week I guess. I wasn't sure we were going to have much because of the heat. I never have had so few greens as there are right now in the garden. Actually we have lettuce and endive along with the Chard but it has been so hot and dry that they have all turned bitter. Usually I'd be able to pull off those plantings right up through fall when the next round comes in. Not this year though. However, after last year's solid summer of rain and cold when greens and lettuce where the only things that would grow, I'm not complaining. Plus, my fears were lessened when I went out in the morning to the milk house and took in what was on offer...the results of a hot, dry summer keeping the late blight (now as close as Dixmont) at bay. It will come to the farm eventually when the weather turns but hopefully by then we'll be nearly done harvesting tomatoes anyway.

Look at all those beautiful tomatoes. As I said, I usually have more variety than this at this point but it's been so hot that we're down on variety right now. Luckily, we're up in volume. I could barely lift the coolers today to take to Bangor. I haven't tallied up the harvest record sheets for today yet but I'd say we harvested several hundred pounds of tomatoes and gave out quite a few pounds to each of you. I'll be running some numbers this week if I get a chance and you'll all be getting an email from me regarding totals for the summer and other housekeeping business. We're down to about 7 weeks left and we'll soon be into a different type of weekly offering again with root crops and fall hearty veggies. We'll also be bringing back some of the cool weather crops as we're planting right now for fall and winter. Until then, have fun with the tomatoes! Below is a beautiful shot of the pole beans that were harvested and bagged today. What wonderful color. I'm always interested to know what are people's favorites, not just amount varieties but which ones. In other words, I like to hear from people that they like tomatoes and could do with less lettuce (or vice verse) and also, which types of tomatoes, lettuce, beans, etc. you like best of the ones received. This information and communication is invaluable to me as the person who grows your food. I need to know what you all like to make decisions for next year about what to purchase for seed and grow out.
A tid-bit about tomatoes that you'll need to know when summer weather changes drastically and briefly as it did this week. We've had a solid month of no substantial rain. That means everything is very, very dry. In the Parker Produce gardens we use age old techniques to mimic nature and protect against fluctuations in weather. This includes loading the soil with organic matter, planting close together and mulching when possible to avoid bare ground, retain moisture and allow for natural cooling around the bases of plants. Therefore, our plants survive without irrigation for longer than most conventional 'farms'. However, plants have defense mechanisms just like humans when things go too far toward one side of the spectrum as this summer has with hot and dry. Tomatoes are a good example. The fruit forms with less water than what is ideally needed. But this week we got a lot of rain in a hurry, the temperature dropped for a day. Both good, except they happened too rapidly after too long. Then the temperature spiked again and the sun came back. With tomatoes that combination (along with harvest schedules) lead to what you see below. Cracking. This is different than the cracking you have seen on some of the large heirlooms. This is a sudden wound that opens in the tomato and doesn't have time to heal the same way as the larger versions that just grow around the opening and callous over. These tomatoes are still edible but you need to eat them right away. Essentially, they are leaking on the rest of them in your bag. If I notice them while bagging I don't put them in, but the volume of tomatoes that Brittany and I deal with means that inevitably, you'll probably get some like this (see below). I ask that our members open up their bags when they get home and go through everything. Take a look at the tomatoes. In fact, the best thing to do is gently poor them out of the bag into a colander. Rinse them to get rid of any tomato juice from a cracked cherry or two and take time to find any that are cracked. Eat them right there or save them for dinner, or whatever. But get the cracked ones out of the pile. Then you can let the others air dry and then store them like you normally would until ready to eat. Not too much work but necessary to keep the one bad tomato from spoiling the rest. Hope you enjoy. See you at the Festival!

2010-08-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a bit of irony. Each Friday we have to discard a certain amount of detritus and refuse while bagging. This week it was mostly just tomatoes that had blossom end rot, got damaged in transport up to the milk-house, or generally that I didn't think were good enough to put into the share. This bucket has just tomatoes for the compost pile. In other words, on Friday I threw away more tomatoes than I harvested all year from the garden last year! What a difference in seasons.
We also pulled enough Green Zebra tomatoes off the garden this week for everyone to have one. This is actually ripe when green. Well, when it blushes yellow like those in the photo (and in your share). Another delicious, interesting heirloom.

You may have already come across this but below is an example of something we're likely to miss when bagging. These yellow tomatoes are 'Gold Nugget'. They tend to get this brown spot pattern on them when the plants are nearly done producing. I just can't spot all the spots (play on words not intended). I don't recommend you eat them. They won't hurt you but they certainly don't taste very god. I highly suggest that people go through their tomatoes upon arriving home and remove any that are damaged from transport, have spots, etc. Discard those that have the spots and eat the cracked or bruised ones immediately.

With every plus comes a bit of a reality check. People everywhere seem to understand that this has been a 'good season' for gardening. That's been true. However, we're running into the hard facts of climate change. Below is a photo from Friday morning just outside the milk-house. John's (Em's dad) already has lots of squash and pumpkins ready. It's August. That's not right. Everyone is experiencing the same thing. Everything is early. The age old agricultural patterns and rules are falling away. Who knows what will come in the future. Anomalies like this will only get worse and more frequent according to the vast majority of climate and environmental scientists.

By participating in a local, beyond organic, food chain involving a small-scale, family farm, you are helping to make changes that might help us turn this around. At the very least, you'll be able to alleviate some of the most difficult pressures that will come when the oil economy collapses. It currently takes 10+ calories of energy to produce each calorie of 'food' in the industrial, global food system. That doesn't even count the calories that come with transporting the 'food' around the globe. You are participating in a different paradigm. Thank you!

2010-08-21T16:52:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Sorry for the delay in posting this week. I forgot the camera at the farm yesterday in my rush to leave for Bangor deliveries! Got it today though after working in the garden. First, I want to let everyone know some exciting news. Johnny's Selected Seeds held a contest for the best farm stand marketing display...and I won! I just got the news this week that our farm stand will be featured on Johnny's blog this week. I've posted a link on the right and hopefully we'll be able to see it.
Now, onto the good stuff. This week's share has some firsts for the season. The first onions were pulled out of the field on Friday morning. Everyone should have a bunch of smallish onions in a bag with some carrots (pictured below). These are 'New York Early Onions'. These have not been cured (which means they haven't been dried) so they will not store in the root cellar for months or anything. They will last a long time in your crisper though.

Also, we've harvested the first of the eggplants from the garden. These are 'Diamond' eggplants. Delicious and beautiful. Eggplant is one of those crops that I rotate through the shares. So only Newport shareholders received eggplant this week. Next week it will be another group and so-on. Here is a link to a website that lists preparation tips for eggplant. I'm a huge fan of oven-roasted eggplant. It makes a meaty, creamy addition to any stir fry. http://www.finecooking.com/articles/how-to/cook-eggplant-to-perfection.aspx Scroll to the bottom and click on the 'next page' links to get to the actual prep. tips.

Also, we finally pulled enough Lillian's Yellow Heirloom tomatoes off the garden this Friday to allow for everyone to get one. Lillian's Yellow is my absolute favorite tomato. I absolutely love these tomatoes. They are meaty (meaning they don't have a lot of seed and seed-gel inside, just flesh) and one of the most unique, sweetest tasting tomatoes I've encountered. Plus, they are amazingly beautiful. I hope you enjoy. I just slice them and put a tiny bit of salt and pepper on them and eat them fresh. They are also the best tomato I've found for tomato sandwiches!

This is a photo of the carrots I mentioned before. These are just the carrots that were thinned from the patch. We take these out so the rest can mature and fill out completely. In the industrial food system these would be thrown away. They are 'too small', 'not uniform in size enough' to be marketable. Some of them would have been put into industrial, freezer bag 'meals, etc. but for the most part they would be discarded. Thank you for participating in a food chain that doesn't waste food simply because it doesn't fit some cookie-cutter, carbon copy idea of what is 'marketable'.

I'll make another post with some other photos but here is one of something you should know about tomatoes. Blossom-end-rot is a malady that hampers some tomatoes. We are able to cull most of them in the field but when you're dealing with the volume of tomatoes we do on a Friday morning, eventually one might get through. I would just compost the whole tomato if you get one of these. It's been my experience that the inside is usually rotten enough throughout enough of the tomato to make it not worth trying to salvage anything. You're welcome to try obviously.

Thank you Nature.

2010-08-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
I hope everyone has had a great week. It's been hot in the gardens and we could use some more rain but the thunder storms this week did dump some on us so that's good. I want to follow up my rant about corn last week by thanking the folks who offered feedback. I also wanted to let everyone know what my daughter Lizzie thinks. See below...
I think her vote is quite clearly defined.
Also, at the top of the blog is a photo of some of our garlic. You'll find a bulb in your share this week (two bulbs if you have a full share). This is the first of our garlic harvest (which is now all out of the field and curing in our greenhouse under a shade cloth). This variety is "Chet's Italian Red" and I'd like to know what everyone thinks of it, especially any garlic aficionados out there. I hope you all enjoy it. If you're looking for something to do with it, you could use some of it with the basil in this week's share to make pesto! Finally, everything is in sink to offer you pesto with both the basil and the garlic produced right here!
Pole beans are here! For those who don't know, pole beans are a long season crop in that they take a long time to come in and then - if everything goes well - they keep producing for a long time. We have several varieties in the garden and the first ones have come in. Pole beans are (in my opinion and that of many gardeners around the world) far superior to bush beans. They offer more diversity of appearance and the flavors are out of this world. Below is just one example. "Gold of Bacau" is the yellow bean in my hand. You can see how large it is and it's still tender and delicious. A bush bean that had beans inside the pod this size would be nearly inedible. This particular bean weighed 1 oz. Hey, I was curious. In the background are "Royal Burgandy Bush Beans". Don't let me give you the impression that bush beans aren't great...they have their role to fill in the garden of the sustainable Maraichere (Market Gardener). These Royal Burgandy beans are actually something I purchased as a trial this year, never intending to put them in the shares (I do this every year with several things and only grow them the next year if I like them). But they are yielding quite well and I really like them. They are excellent raw as a snack or appetizer. The beautiful color will fade when they are cooked.

The other beans in your share are these beautiful, striped pole beans. They are quite tasty and very interesting. They also produce a beautiful dry bean later in the season (if I can let any of them stay on the vine that long...they are so good).

Finally, this week's share is one that involves a lot of tomatoes. I am thanking Nature for thus far sparing us from the blight. I haven't been able to get my greenhouse up and covered as fast as I had wanted but with help from Jim, John and Brittany, we're making progress and that's something. With Nature's help we still have tomatoes and they are coming in like crazy. You'll find several varieties in your share this week. I want to take a few moments to explain some things about dealing with heirloom tomatoes. I am interested in growing mostly heirloom tomatoes as opposed to hybrids. Heirloom varieties (for all veggies not just tomatoes) are those that have been passed down through generations from one grower to another. They come true to form and thus allow farmers to save seed. Hybrids do not do this. Also, heirlooms taste far superior to any hybrid (with the exception of Sungold Cherry Tomato...which several people are trying to de-hybridize). The reason that most of these varieties aren't grown in the global, industrial food system, is that they don't survive travel and don't 'look good'. I actually disagree with this as I find them terribly fascinating and love the look of nearly all heirloom tomatoes. I prefer variety and interest to carbon copied clones devoid of flavor and nutrients. But, they do have cosmetic 'flaws' and thus make them hard to market through visual means (i.e. t.v. ads and supermarket shelves). Heirloom tomatoes are how I know small farmers will survive. You simply can't produce this variety and flavor with hybrids that are designed to be picked before ripeness and shipped around the world in boxes stacked as high as a tractor trailer truck.

My basic rule about tomatoes is this: "Before you mention the way it looks, taste it...then we'll talk". This is what tomatoes are supposed to taste like. I actually remember the day I ate my last industrial tomato. I was at the diner up the road from my house and I ordered a salad. It came to the table, the iceberg lettuce was limp and pale and the tomatoes (I have a hard time even calling them that)...were beyond description. I took one bite, put down my fork and slid the salad back to the edge of the table. That was about 3 years ago. Now, I only eat tomatoes that are fresh from the garden (mine or another local farmer's) or were processed in my home by Emily and/or I for the purpose of canning, saucing or freezing. Bite into some of our tomatoes and I think you'll see why. Once you've had an actual tomato, you'll have an hard time going back. It's worth waiting 9 months a year for the real thing...kind of like asparagus except there you wait 11 and a half months.

That all being said, there are some things you should know about heirlooms to enjoy them fully. They have, as I said, cosmetic flaws. The two pictured above are displaying what's called, 'cat-facing' (one in a spiral, the other in a web). It's very common in larger tomatoes like the yellow/orange ones in your share. It's perfectly fine, it just means the tomato was growing fast and healing itself as it stretched. Just cut that part off and eat the rest. I usually slice them from the bottom and just leave the top green part for the pigs, chickens or compost pile.
Below are some other examples of things you might see. On the left is a paste tomato with split shoulders. Again, just cut around it and eat the rest. In the middle is a 'Goldie' tomato that shows signs of vine stress (meaning it probably was growing with the left side against the vine or trellis rope and grew abnormally) and cracking. This cracking (on the bottom) is also very common in heirlooms and is particularly a bane in Brandywine varieties. Same solution...cut around it. It's easiest to slice the tomato first and then cut the parts out that you don't want. Finally, in the lower right hand corner on this other Goldie with green shoulders is a small wound in the skin. It has scarred over. Most of them do this. If you get one like that, you can probably guess what to do. Cut around the scared part and eat the rest. The one in the photo isn't quite fully ripe with the green shoulders but when it has a spot like that I pick it anyway so it won't continue to grow, thus reopening the wound.

Finally, as I mentioned, these are delicate, extremely so, tomatoes. They wouldn't survive the industrial food system. In fact, some of the ones we harvested this week were damaged in their crates on the way from the garden to the milk house. This brings me to my final point. If you get one with a fresh crack or bruise on it, you need to eat that one right away. Perhaps check your tomatoes over when you get them home and look for damage. It could even happen in the bags and coolers. Any that are freshly wounded (you'll be able to tell) should be eaten that day or at the very latest the next day after being in the refrigerator. All others can sit on your window sill and be absolutely fine for a few days. Any longer and they should all go into the fridge. I hope you all enjoy and please keep the feedback coming. I appreciate hearing from everyone that has contributed to the Parker Produce CSA through feedback. It's valuable, important and great! Happy eating!

Well, I hope everyone has had a great week.

And so it begins!

2010-08-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

Talking to many farmers and gardeners amongst my friends there is a common refrain. We all agree that its nice to go out in the garden and remember why we do what we do. After last summer, this year's weather is a wonderful change. When I walk through the garden I see things growing the way they were meant to...and it's great. You'll notice a huge increase in the amount of tomatoes in your share this week. I have great fun harvesting them, bagging them for all of you and eating the ones I bring home for our family. Again, especially after last summer.
To save on plastic we bag the tomatoes all together. If anyone has any questions about what type of tomato is in the bag, please let me know. But to get into some other information pertinent to tomatoes I have posted a photo below of several stages of tomato ripeness. The front-right row is a row of tomatoes that are not yet ripe. Behind them is the same row of tomato varieties that are actually ripe. You can tell because they are lighter in color when they aren't yet ripe. Also, sometimes they have what are called 'green shoulders'. A great example of this is the fourth tomato up which is an Orange Banana Paste Tomato. You can see there is green around the top.
Tomatoes can be ripened in two very easy ways depending on your goal. When you have some that are almost ripe, you can place them on the window sill in the sun and they will ripen in a couple of days. If you ever get one from us that is mostly green (which may happen as we approach frost) you can put them into a brown paper bag in a dark drawer. They ripen in the dark. You just need to check them frequently to ensure they don't over-ripen.

Also this week is the first installment of sweet corn. For those that have heard me talk about corn before, you may want to fast-forward through this part. I'm about to go off on a bitter tangent. Our corn is planted by hand using a single-row seeder. We do not currently use machines to cultivate (keep the weeds down). We do not spray anything on the crop to keep the weeds down. All weeding is done by hand and with very simple hoes. That being said, consider the following. This year we had to break down and plant hybrid corn. Hybrid seeds are generated under laboratory-like conditions and are patented, thus making farmers dependent upon seed companies (hybrids cannot be saved because they don't come true the next year). We had to plant hybrid seeds because our output needs to be consistent to match our member's demand for sweet corn. Bottom line is that open pollinated varieties are way better tasting but cannot match hybrid vigor. So, we have to plant hybrids as much as I dislike them. Now, each of our CSA members received 5 ears of corn today. In total we harvested 187 ears from our first planting. That 187 came from a patch of ground that is 30 feet wide by about 100 feet long. That's a huge patch of ground. In the same patch of ground, the amount of other food that could be grown would blow your mind. This is especially true if you consider that some varieties of food are 'cut-and-come-again'. A corn plant, under the very best conditions, will produce 2 good ears...and then the plant is done. In order for optimum conditions to be met and for us to produce enough sweet corn to meet demand, we will have to plant way more land to corn, use tractors and large cultivating equipment, which will take fossil fuel. The long and the short of it is that I don't like planting corn. In a sustainable world, it has not place on the scale that it is currently planted. If everyone planted enough corn for their own needs it would be different because small plots of corn are easier to manage, weeds, pests and all. I hope to compile a survey of a few things at the end of the season. One of the most important questions will be whether or not you, our members, want us to grown sweet corn.

Finally, I included a photo of one of my favorite things to do with tomatoes. In the upper left hand corner of this photo is a plate full of thinly sliced tomatoes with a leaf of basil on each one. On top of that is a small square of locally produce, raw milk cheese. What an awesome treat! If you don't have any basil left from last week, you can do this next week. It is delicious.

Lastly, I want to include a bit of information about beans. I'm sure that at this point in the bean season some of you might have run into this but hopefully you haven't or if you did you got around it. The top bean (which I'm pointing to in this photo) is suffering from a mushy, mold problem. This happens when the plants get big and really close together. Air doesn't circulate around the plants as well and some of them tend to mold. Usually, we can spot them on the plant and we discard them. However, sometimes one slips by. Then, it might spread to others in the bag. All you have to do is pick out the bean. I usually just discard the whole bean. The second bean has what looks like rust on it. This is less of a problem because you can eat the rest of the bean after cutting that part off. This one tends to happen when the beans get too big. It's nature's way of telling us to pick faster...or plant fewer beans next year. Hopefully, you've all been enjoying the beans and other things and have been able to get around it if you've run into this.

Also in this week's share is:

Bull's Blood Beets/Greens

Tete Noire Cabbage

Provider Green Beans

Golden Butterwax Bush Beans

Royal Burgandy Beans (these are the beautiful, dark red beans in your bag. They are great raw and cooked but the color will fade when cooked)

Zucchini

Summer Squash

Scallions

A brief taste...

2010-07-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Just a quick blog to tell you a bit about what is in the share this week. I am actually headed out the door to go to Moosehead for an annual trip with some college friends. However, thought I'd do a quick blog with another to follow if I have a chance. Please email me if anything isn't clear. First, a quick taste of tomatoes. I mixed together all the cherry tomatoes that came out of the garden this week and split them evenly. It isn't much on this first week but gives you a taste of what's coming. I just picked the first beefsteak type from the greenhouse so those are coming along. Tomatoes are in the bag with basil.

Next, mixed beets. Red and Gold. The greens on the gold beets are 'iffy'. Meaning that you should check them and remove any that aren't good before cooking the greens. This beet installment is really for the beets themselves. Very sweet.

Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage. An early cabbage installment. A good recipe is Cabbage and Potato Casserole. Search for it on Google and you'll get a good smattering of results. Usually I reserve this recipe for the cold days of fall but after last night's 54 degree temps I'm in the mood. You could also try coleslaw!

Speaking of coleslaw...Kohlrabi! I wish I had more time to do a search for some recipes but do a quick search for it on the Internet. You use the big bulb at the bottom like cabbage. Shred it into a slaw, etc. The leaves are also edible like any brassica.

Finally, a quick shot of everything mixed together in the tomato department.

Also a quick note about the beans. You'll notice that you got a ton of beans this week. Please open them immediately and look through them for a brown mushy mold type thing. Remove any that have this and keep an eye on them as you remove them from the fridge to use batches. More on this when I have time to upload more photos with an explanation. Hope everyone enjoys the weekend.

The great, the bad and the ugly...

2010-07-23T17:15:00.001-07:00

Before we get to the 'official' blog post I want to thank everyone who made it out to the farm for our first annual Parker Produce CSA Picnic on Saturday. It was a great success and really helped reinforce for me how important it is that people see where their food comes from. For those who couldn't make it, all are welcome at the farm to learn the basics about your food chain. Please contact me if you would like to visit and we'll set up a time.
Thanks again also to all the folks who helped make Saturday (and our CSA in general) a success. This includes Em, John and Sue, Brittany and Jim and of course Lizzie!
Here is a photo from the day. As you can see we had great weather! Here is Lizzie showing everyone that baby chickens are nothing to be afraid of!
Now for the regular stuff. You might be frightened by the title...I certainly am frightened by the meaning behind it. First, the good. Below are three photos showing the great possibilities awaiting us. First is a quart of cherry tomatoes from all around the garden (plus two Jalapenos from the greenhouse). Brittany and I have been snacking on the odd one here and there that ripens by itself. This is a difficult time in some respects because it's a bit of a lull in the garden. The spring crops are all gone (no more lettuce till fall and I just started ripping out the broccoli plants to replant the beds to something else) and the high summer crops are just starting to trickle in. If I were a home gardener it would be different but I am a market gardener. So 100lbs of zucchini (what we pulled off the beds this week) is trickling in. If I were a home gardener this amount of tomatoes would be sufficient. Obviously this quart isn't going to go far split between 37 member families. I don't relish the thought of cutting cherry tomatoes into sections and wrapping them in cellophane :-).

But very soon this slow trickle of errant tomatoes will be a faint memory. There is a wondrous point in the summer (a normal summer) when suddenly, everything happens at once in the garden. We'll get a heavy rain, coupled with all this heat and everything will burst. Below is just a taste of the amazing sights in our garden and greenhouse. The anticipation is deafening...

That being said, onto the bad and the ugly. In case you were wondering, both words are for the same thing. Late Blight. As I predicted it has returned to Maine this summer. This is the same thing that prevented us from having any tomatoes and kept our potato yields way down last summer. It was found at a farm in Waldoboro this week and has already spread to others. http://mofga.org/Publications/PestReports/PestReports2010/tabid/1610/Default.aspx

This year, Parker Produce is taking a proactive approach to try and fend off this terrible monster (if you think this is an exaggeration please feel free to look up the cause of the Irish Potato Famine...It really is terrible) while staying true to our core values. We have just begun the process of ordering a new greenhouse which I hope to have erected as soon as possible as the parts arrive. This is a huge expense (in both money and hours of work) at a horrible time but I don't want to loose all those tomatoes again. I'm not sure I could take another summer with no tomatoes. I purposely planted several varieties together in order to erect a greenhouse if this happened. I was hoping it wouldn't but there you go. I'm going to experiment with copper sulfate but NOT ON THE PLANTS. If the blight moves up the state (and really the only thing stopping that is weather and wind patterns) I will loose tons of tomatoes out in the garden. But I hope to save some in the greenhouses by covering the doorways with remay that has been soaked in copper sulfate. I have no idea if it will work but it's worth a shot. Many farmers I know who grow tomatoes in hoop houses actually got a crop last year before they succumbed to the blight. Hoop houses help...I'm hoping this extra step will too.

Onto the share. This week's contains many items with which you are familiar that don't need explanation. Beans, beans, beans. Golden Butterwax, Provider and Maxibel Bush Beans are coming in like crazy. My comments about a lull in the garden do not apply to our Bush Bean crop, thankfully. Basil, Lettuce for the full shares, Broccoli for Winterport/Newport, Chard, Collards, Zucchini, Summer Squash, French Breakfast Radishes and Purplette mini-onions (see the header of the blog for a photo of these). This last one was an experiment this year. Each year I try several new things that I've never tried with no intention of including them in the share until the next season, once I've learned about them, tasted them, harvested them, generally experimented. However, sometimes there is enough to put in the share and that was the case with the Purplette onions. Brittany and I really like the flavor and I need to know what you all think. They are great raw in salads and make a great addition to scrambled eggs if you eat them. Should I be growing these next year in more quantity? They are meant to be an early onion crop before the big bulbs of other varieties come in.

Finally, a happy thought, at least for me. Last week I wrote about Mitten Machen, the blog of one of our members, Mary (see link at right). She is doing some great things with fresh, local garden fare to prepare for winter. This is a way of life in our home too. Each week we pull a lot off the garden for ourselves and Emily and I, and now Lizzie, work like crazy all summer to put food in our chest freezer, root cellar, canning cupboard, etc. This used to be how people survived the winter. When 'cheap' oil and corn/soy subsidies disappear it might be that way again. Here is Lizzie, ever the beauty, pausing for a picture in her efforts to help daddy. She loves a good task and loves basil. Put the two together and you get several batches of pesto basil in the freezer. Voila!

July 16 - Snap Beans!!!

2010-07-16T17:12:00.001-07:00

Ok, so I was only off by one week on the whole beans are usually before zucchini thing. They're here! In your share this week you'll find the first installment of snap beans. There are three types in the bag. On the bottom, the larger green ones are Provider. They're called that for a reason. They are the Sugar Snap of the Bean world. Once they get going it's very hard to keep up with their production. The smaller green ones are Maxibel. This is the first year I've grown them and I like them a lot. I'm interested to know what people think. Finally, the yellow beans at the top of the bag are Golden Butterwax. Very tender, these beans hold their texture and flavor even after being stored in a chest freezer all winter. We just finished ours from last summer and they were still great!
Snap beans are wonderful both raw and cooked. We eat them in the garden as we harvest them...quality control. One of the best ways I've had beans cooked is lightly sauteed in butter or olive oil with a bit of garlic (perfect use for the scapes if you still have some) and rosemary. This is something Emily makes at our house and it is very, very good!

We're getting to that part of the season when it's difficult to put greens and salad mix ingredients in the bag. There is a window of about a month and a half when it's just plain too hot for these cool weather crops. We're in that window now. In the fall I get another few plantings in and this type of plant thrives. I try to include some sort of salad base throughout the summer and during this period it just means a bit more work for our CSA members. Below is a series of photos showing what you might find in your Red Salad Bowl Lettuce. On the left is a perfect specimen, nothing wrong. In the middle is a leaf that has gone by. It's nearly translucent when held up to a window or light, shows brown around the edges and is very flimsy or even slimy. On the right is several leaves still attached to the stem. Due to the way lettuce grows and how it reacts during the heat of summer, you may find either one, or both, of these things in your bag each week. I recommend you take the lettuce out when you arrive home with your share, dump it into a clean sink, colander or even on the counter and then pick through it quickly looking for these things. If a leaf like the one in the middle is in there it tends to ruin the rest of the leaves more quickly. Just remove it from the batch. The example on the right doesn't present that problem and you can either remove the leaves while you're picking through or just do it as you use them. Pull the leaves off the stem, compost the stem and put the leaves back in the bag in the fridge. Easy as that!

Here is a close-up of the bad leaf. See how the red color is completely different from that of the healthy leaf at the left.
Also in this week's share is another cutting of basil, both Napolatano (the large frilly leaf) and Genovese (the smooth, glossy leaf). I've included a couple of photos below showing how to store it if you don't use it right away when you get home. It turns out that the easiest method for bagging basil also lends itself well to storage of the herb. As you can see in the photo below, all the stems are together in the bag and at relatively the same place. I do this on purpose.

When you get home, take the bag out of the reusable bag, remove the twist-tie, reach in and twist the basil so the leaves are still in the bag but the stems are out. Hold the stems together and cut the smallest brown portion off the bottom of the stems. Immediately put the stems in a glass of water on your window sill or counter. Leave the plastic bag on the leaves as this keeps the leaves from wilting, thus making them last a bit longer. We actually just had some root which I've never seen before with basil. It must be the high heat and humidity.

The other things in the share are all standard and have been there before, with the exception of the French Breakfast Radish. Some have received these before in our Winter Club and are familiar with them. If not, it's the red radish with the white bottom. French Breakfast is just the name and while it probably had some significance at some point, there is not indication that anyone can seem to find (historically) that these were a breakfast food in France. They are good enough to be but there you have it. Treat them like any other radish and enjoy!

You also have Sugar Snap Peas (probably the last of them unless I get another crop in) and Shell Peas. If anyone has any questions about anything in the share, please let me know. I'll see some of you at the farm tomorrow for our first annual Parker Produce CSA Picnic! If not, have a great weekend.

July 9 - Summer Squash and Zucchini!!! Now it's summer!

2010-07-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

Good evening all:
First of all, thank you to Emily for delivering the Bangor shares today. The coolers were very heavy! I had one of my quarterly board meetings for Food For Maine's Future (link at the right) and had to leave the farm by 10 am. Brittany and I started harvesting the peas yesterday afternoon and bagged all things but greens in the evening. Then we resumed for the lettuce, collards, radishes, etc. this morning. Great work all around!
Now onto the share. I will start by saying that this year contains many firsts. One of them is zucchini and summer squash before green beans. I put a lot of effort into these summer squash varieties this spring to make sure we got a crop even if the weather was like last year. As the weather is the opposite of last year we're getting a bumper crop way early. I hope everyone enjoys the first zucchini of the year! A great way to enjoy them is simply sliced and grilled. You can do the same with summer squash. The smaller squashes (zucchini is a summer squash) can be eaten raw with little effort but if you don't like to chew that much (and you will work harder with raw) you can cook them several ways. Keep in mind that the smaller your slices/cubes the quicker they will cook. Like many other things, the best way to ruin a good zucchini meal is to overcook. It turns them to a mushy consistency. Another great recipe is for fried zucchini. You can dip thin slices in whatever batter you would use to make fried chicken and fry them in oil or butter. Delicious and a welcome summer treat in my home.
We also have some very nice French Breakfast Radishes. Brittan harvested and bagged these so I didn't get to really look at them but what I saw was nice. It looks like they are coming in at just the right time and not getting too woody in this heat. Beautiful.

Other than that we included the usual fare. There are lots and lots of peas this week again and thank you to those of you who took us up on the offer of extra. One member pointed out that peas make great baby food (they have a beautiful 6 month old who is just starting to work on solid food) as they are interesting to pick-up and taste so sweet. Pod peas are great as a teething relief method when frozen. We used to give them to Lizzie and she would pop the whole thing in, chew it up, swallow and hold out her hand for another before I could blink. All the while forgetting about that pesky pain in her gums.

The peas will begin to lessen from now on as Brittany has been working on pulling vines for those that have gone by. We will compost them and put new crops in their places.

We also included:

Collard greens

Lettuce Mix

Broccoli (Newport and Winterport this week)

Carrots

Purple Top White Globe Turnips

and Full shares got the last of the Nancy Head Lettuce.

Several people have indicated they were overwhelmed with lettuce and we cut back as you know. We got a call from one member requesting more lettuce! Turns out she has a great idea for it that is part of an healthy diet. Green Smoothies! Here's what she had to say:

"Victoria Boutenko has an excellent book on the subject. You basically take a type of green (or a few types),2 cups water, add some raw honey and a couple of bananas and you have a green smoothie...You can add whatever you like to the smoothie. My doctor recommended kale or cilantro because these help remove metals from the body. She also suggested a whey protein--but I usually just add soaked almonds, sunflower seeds, or ground flax. I've tried all kinds of fruit to help sweeten them up. Pineapple and coconut are especially yummy...Definitely short on looks, but long on taste and health benefits..."

I think we're going to try it in our home. I have never liked smoothies but Em and Lizzie both love them and I might be able to get on board if the ingredients are from my own garden. Hope everyone tries it. Let me know your thoughts and as always I welcome questions and feedback. Have a great weekend.

July 2 - Summer is in full swing!

2010-07-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone is enjoying this wonderful weather we've been having. The garden certainly has. Rain every once in a while...sun and heat the rest of the time. Perfect Maine gardening weather. I don't have much to report for new stuff this week since you've had everything that's in the share before at some point this summer. I'll just give a quick run-down in list format and then if anyone has any questions please feel free to contact me. (That's true anytime as you know.) This week's share includes:
Basil - Genovese and Napolitano
Dill
Georgia Southern Collard Greens (these are the very large leaves with white-ish stems. See previous posts for description and links to google recipe pages).
Mixed Bunched Chard
Peas - Shell Peas (the dark plump ones), Snap Peas (edible pods), Snow Peas (the flat pods, also edible).
Carrots
Broccoli - Bangor shares are up in this rotation this week.
Mixed Radish
Beet Greens
Nancy Head Lettuce

I've had some great feedback from many of you and I really appreciate it. As a direct result I've cut back on the lettuce in the share the last two weeks. This week it is only the one kind of head lettuce. Many of you commented that you are just overwhelmed with lettuce. If people would like me to up the amount again I'm happy to do so. We have plenty in the garden.
Peas, peas and more peas. We pulled 85 lbs. of Sugar Snap Peas off the trellis this week. There are so many that we harvested nearly every day this week. Jim even came out to the farm an extra day and harvested peas almost all day Thursday. Thanks a million to Jim!!! Great job!
The Sugar Snaps are easy to tell from the others in your share based solely on quantity. Full shares got 2.5 lbs and half shares received 1.25 lbs each. That's unprecedented for us at Parker Produce. Great planning, planting, weeding, trellising and weather have all contributed to a bumper crop. I hope everyone enjoys them. It's actually a challenge to get them off the vine before they get too large. There are just so many.
If you don't like to eat snap peas when they get large you can still take the peas out of the pods and eat them. It's not as sweet but still makes a nice addition to any meal.
Other than that we've been cranking away at the farm and off. Last weekend Emily, Lizzie and I went down to Litchfield (where I'm from originally) and visited my folks. Lizzie goes absolutely crazy for bubbles and my mother bought a bubble wand that makes massive bubbles. I like it as much as Lizzie. Here she is trying to ensure the bubbles don't float very long before meeting their doom in a silent but dramatic POP!
Also, as part of our apprenticeship program we do several things that are 'extra' to the on-farm experience. This week I took Brittany to Four Season Farm in Harborside Maine, home of Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch. First, if you've never been to Harborside, go! It's amazingly beautiful, quiet and out of the way. Wonderful. Second, if you don't know who Eliot Coleman is you can consider him the guru of small scale beyond organic gardening (though he calls his methods organic). He is an amazing farmer and a great writer. He has written many wonderful books and I base many of my methods, though not all, on his writings and examples. Visiting his farm is an inspiration to someone like me and gives me a glimpse of some of the things that are possible when you have years of experience, research and all the farm-hands you can handle. Below is one of his many greenhouses. This one, as you can tell, is completely dedicated to tomatoes. He uses heat sources to push his tomatoes to produce this early and plants hybrids that are specifically designed to be early...one of the few things he does with which I disagree. Although it was hard to remember why as we were standing in his greenhouse with all those ripe tomatoes.

Finally, I want to give a big shout out to Brittany herself. If you're enjoying your share this year you can thank her very much. Our returning members will recall the previous year's shares and might wonder what happened. They have always been quite good for what I was able to do myself (if I do say so myself) with the exception of last year and its weather. But this year we've begun our apprenticeship program and we really, really lucked out. Brittany is an amazing apprentice and she will make an awesome farmer as soon as she gets her own place. She is a very hard working individual with the necessary drive and personality for the lifestyle. Without her the shares that you've been receiving simply wouldn't be possible. She has helped me keep the weeds in the garden in check, helped me transplant way more than I ever have by myself, helps keep the chickens happy by helping me feed, water and move them and does so much more. So, as we pull into the height of summer and the holiday weekend, hats off to Brittany. She's doing an awesome, awesome, awesome job. And here she is while we toured Eliot Coleman's place. Thanks Brittany!

Successful Radishes and early Basil!

2010-06-25T16:54:00.000-07:00

Good evening to all Parker Produce CSA members and random blog readers everywhere! I hope everyone is enjoying this weather and this week's bountiful harvest. Hopefully all full share members got my message this afternoon. The garden is yielding forth so much that I just went out and purchased another set of bags for each of you. Therefore there will be two (2) bags to pick up each week and return the next week (Full Shares only-half shares continue with one bag each week as I can still fit it in...barely).
The picture at the header of the blog is one that includes the radishes in your share today. I planted a mix this spring and I'm very, very pleased with how it came out. That is with the exception of the Black Spanish Radish which hardly germinated and didn't grow well when it did. I won't be growing that again but the others are all winners. You can find White Icicle, Pink Beauty, Crunchy Royale (red), and Plum (purple). All delicious, all great in salads or as a snack. I once tried to make horseradish dip by subbing radish for the horse radish. It tastes good but doesn't last very long so if you try that (find a recipe online) just make small batches and eat it fresh.
Next is the shallots. These are from last summer's garden and have been in our root cellar all winter. Shallots are amazing keepers and I could have kept them longer (into July and some say September before they sprout) but we're just plain out of room in the milk house on harvest day. A good problem to have. Shallots (this variety is Saffron Gold) are an excellent substitute for onions in any recipe. You just need to learn how much to sub. as a shallot bulb is several cloves like garlic and an onion is one bulb. If your recipe calls for cups you can use the same amount. Otherwise you'll have to experiment.
Also this week we got the first of the spring scallions out of the garden to make room for other things. This are just like the ones you've already had except they were planted in Feb. of this year and not wintered over. Therefore they are young, tender and don't need to be cleaned up so much. Enjoy in salads, eggs or as an onion addition to a meal. I usually cut them up and put them into a skillet with hot oil before making a stir-fry. Also consider adding them to steamed greens with a little salt and pepper after sauteing them in olive oil or butter. Delicious.

Also this week you will find another round of carrots (in with your radishes) and some more garlic scapes. Remember that scapes are the seed stalk from the garlic bulb. If you've never grown garlic it's good to know in case you want to. You have to remove the scape as soon as it emerges because the plant has only enough energy to put into one thing. We want that energy to go into making large, uniform, tasty bulbs of garlic below the ground. The scapes are a waste of energy to us. However, they do make a nice garlic addition to our summer meals when the root cellar garlic is gone and the new bulbs haven't matured yet.

This week you will also find the first installment of beet greens (and beets). What can I say about beet greens? They are an old-time favorite. Lightly steamed with some salt, pepper and butter...delicious. My mouth is watering already. Just be sure to clean them well or you'll have gritty beet greens...yuck. That can ruin a good meal. One method is to 'float' them. Fill your sink with a bit of cold water and float the beet greens in there. Dunk them under with your hands a few times, etc. Then remove the greens. You'll see all the garden soil left behind. Just wash it down the sink. You may wish to do this a couple of times. I usually just rinse them off under the faucet because I count on the beneficial bacteria found in garden soil and on plants. Some people are sticklers for no soil on their beet greens though. To each his/her own.

The beets on some of your greens may be too large to cook in the short amount of time needed to steam the greens. Simply cut those off and cook them another way. One way is to roast them in the oven. Just don't let them dry out. Put a little water in the base of your roasting pot and check it throughout the cooking period. You can also just boil them.

Now, onto my favorite thing of the day. Basil! I love Basil. Emily and I (and Lizzie too) absolutely depend on pesto. We make several batches in the fall to freeze for winter. I recommend you just eat this up right away though. There will be another round later if you want to save it. First basil of the summer demands fresh eating though. Pesto recipes abound on the Internet. I got ours from a bargain 'Italian Cooking' book from Borders and it's served us well though now I just wing it and throw other things in too. (As an aside, if your kids don't like to eat spinach, kale, chard, etc. put it in the blender with your basil when you make pesto. I guarantee they eat it if they like pesto pasta.) There are multiple other things to do with basil and when we get tomatoes (when, not if hopefully) we can discuss one of my favorites. But for now I'll just include this link to our old blog where I've posted our pesto recipe. http://www.parkerproduce.org/csablog/id9.html

You will find two kinds of pesto in the bag. The large, light-green, frilly leaves are Napalatano (lettuce leaf basil) and the smaller, smoother, dark-green, glossy leaves are Genovese which is the standard basil found in stores. Both are quite good and offer different things to the cuisine. In the picture below the Napalatano is on the right and the Genovese is on the left.

Finally, peas, peas and oh yes some peas please. Brittany and I have been picking peas all week and we can't stop now. They are coming in like crazy. Jim, the gentleman who comes to the farm to volunteer, loves to pick Sugar Snaps which are the trellised peas he helped plant. The vines are over 7 ft tall and producing like crazy. You have some different peas in your bag this week and I want to explain before someone takes a bite out of one that isn't an edible pod pea. That would ruin a day in a hurry. In the photo below we have a few examples of the different peas in your share. From left to right: Oregon Giant Snow Pea, Sugar Ann/Sugar Snap (interchangeable for your purposes), Coral/Strike/Caselode (also interchangeable). The last one is not an edible pod pea. You can only eat the peas themselves by breaking open the pod. If they make it to a pot of boiling water I'll be very surprised. We just eat them like a snack. Grab two bowls, fill one with pea pods out of your bag. Sit down with a good book and shuck the peas. Eat them. Put the empty pods into the empty bowl. Compost them when finished for a good source of nitrogen. Simple as that. If you do want to cook the peas feel free. They are still just as good cooked. I just can't usually wait that long. Some of the peas may be a bit past their prime. Just separate those ones and cook them. They just stayed in the field a day or two too long before we could get to them to harvest. Nothing wrong with them and cooking will soften them back up again.

Oregon Giant Snow Peas are excellent in stir-fry dishes. Think Asian food (Thai is my personal favorite). I will actually cook those in a stir-fry though they are quite good raw like the sugar snaps/sugar anns.

Also in this week's share is the usual lettuce. There is so much coming out of the garden right now we didn't have time to bag it all. We had to compost some lettuce we harvested today. I don't like doing that but I am comforted by knowing that it will be recycled back into nutrients for the garden. You still get lettuce in your share this week in the form of an head of Nancy (the light green, full sized head) and Australe (the smaller, reddish green head). Enjoy!

Thank you to everyone who has submitted feedback regarding the share and your participation with Parker Produce. I appreciate it very much as it helps me make this a stronger local food chain. Have a good weekend.

A successful CSA?

2010-06-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Hi all:

I hope everyone enjoyed the amazingly hot weather this weekend. We just had a major thunderstorm at the farm and the garden is bursting from the heat/rain. I want to take a few posts to discuss some things that don't necessarily have to do with the harvest and what's in each week's share. Plus, I have some photos that don't fit during the Friday posts so I'll include those too.

I want to take this first post to discuss communication. One of the most important aspects of the CSA model of food sovereignty (to learn more about the concept of food sovereignty please visit: http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=27&Itemid=44) is the fact that you get to know the person who is growing your food. That doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) limited to knowing his/her name or seeing his/her picture on a website. Rather, you get to actually know the person who is growing your food. You get to see where it is grown and ask questions. You cannot get that from the industrial food system. Try finding something out about anything...anything...that you find in the grocery store.

So what does that mean? Communication is possible and vital to the success of the local food movement and it's participants (you and I). As the farmer, I need to tell you what is in the share, how it is grown, why we do certain things, etc. But I also hope to hear from each of our CSA members throughout the season with anything you might be thinking. Do you like the things in the share? What don't you like? Are you getting enough each week? Are you getting too much. If everyone of our members hates chard and throws it away each week it doesn't make sense for me to grow it. (I hope everyone doesn't hate chard :-) Without hearing from our members we can only guess at these things. It's vital that I know, instead of guessing.

As an example, each winter I contact our members regarding whether or not they plan to return to the CSA in the upcoming season. Unless I hear from someone I end up contacting them several times. This season, I contacted one family right up until about a month before the first delivery. I finally heard from them that they would not be participating this year. The reason was that they were disappointed with the amount of produce.

This is a perfect example of a breakdown in the advantages of the CSA model. I never heard from this person after they originally signed up for the 2009 season. Never telling the farmer if you have suggestions for improvement or offering constructive criticism doesn't help anyone. Our farm is out the CSA member and that person/family is out the local, beyond organic produce. I would much rather have made adjustments during the season to the share amounts. It's very rare that I wouldn't have the ability to do that. I routinely have people not return because they got too much food. How do I know unless they tell me.

So I'm hoping to hear from each of our members and families throughout the season with any thoughts you might have. I love to hear great things but I also need to know if you have any issues. I might not be able to fix them but I can certainly try or explain why not. Personally, I think that's the only way we'll be able to keep our local food chain secure and grow our ability to provide for ourselves within the community instead of relying on a global food system that does not have the health of our families, communities or the planet in mind.

Emily and I are also looking at the calendar to find a date to hold our first annual Parker Produce CSA Picnic. We really want to encourage all of our members to visit the farm and see first hand how things are done and meet us (and we'd like to meet all of you). We hope to get out an invitation soon!

Now, onto some photos from the farm! First and foremost, our new salad mixer! We're very happy with the way this came out. I built it over the last two weeks at night and when it rained. Brittany and I tested it out with the share this week and it works great. I only need a few modifications as we work out the kinks.

Also, each day we give the compost pile a good dose of fresh green material from the garden. No day is as kind to the compost pile as harvest day though. You don't get to see all of the things that don't make it into the share. Rotten leaves on the bottom of lettuce are cut off. Any weeds that are easily picked during harvest, tops of scallions, etc. All gets recycled in our compost pile. Here is the pile before the harvest last Friday.

And here it is after! Great amounts of green material are needed to activate the biology of the pile and the temperature inside a well kept pile can reach 160+ degrees F! That's what we're going for as optimal.

Also, we have been moving the baby chickens every day or two onto fresh pasture. Here they are next to the adults. The older hens weren't very thrilled with this move. They seem to be getting used to it now but they wanted to let me know they weren't impressed. Message received! I moved them again today!

Take care until Friday everyone and please remember to let me know your thoughts throughout the season! Talk to you all soon.

June 18-Harvest

2010-06-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Happy last week of spring. Spring is going out with a wonderful burst of energy and growth in our gardens. The weather has been perfect knock on wood and it is as if Nature is apologizing for last year. The weather pattern has been near perfect for great growth with warm days punctuated by weekly rain spells. Once the night time temperatures start to get up into the 60's consistently we'll really start taking off.
Several things in this week's share are repeats and do not need any explanation. However, one new thing is this beautiful head lettuce pictured below. The variety is 'Nancy' and it is coming out wonderfully. It certainly looks great in the garden. Please ensure yours looks good and lasts longer by using the following tips.

Each week when you get your share home you should open the bag and take everything out. Don't just put the whole thing in the fridge. Different items need to be treated differently. We'll give tips in specific instances but for the most part one of the most important things you can do is take things out, open up the plastic bags and fluff things a bit before closing them again. Remember that the veggies and herbs have been crammed into a plastic bag and then into a cooler in tight spaces. Not the best situation for them.
Specific to this 'Nancy' lettuce, please take it out of the plastic bag carefully. Turn it upside down so the stem is facing up and run the faucet lightly over it to remove any extra garden soil. If there happen to be any leaves on that side showing signs of rot, remove them and compost. Once the bottom of the lettuce is cleaned you can put it back in the bag and into the crisper in the fridge. There is a lot of beneficial bacteria in the soil so leaving soil on plants after they've been harvested is a cue to the natural enzymes to start breaking things down. Prevent this by following the steps above.
Here is the first of the broccoli. This is the first spring we've had it. I usually save it till the fall but last year's season was so bad that our fall broccoli didn't come in until three weeks after the CSA was finished for the season. So I decided to plant in the spring too. That being said, I learned some lessons. I planted it out too early and that stressed the plants a bit too much. They are starting to flower and go to seed too fast. Therefore we'll have to put the broccoli on a rotation. This week Bangor members received what we had in the garden. Next week it will be Newport and then Winterport and we'll keep rotating until it's gone. I'm hoping to plant a lot more in the next few weeks for fall broccoli.

Other than that and the usual other things you will find the first harvest of snap peas which is very exciting. The general rule of thumb for a very, very successful year is that you want to have peas by the 4th of July...if you're lucky. Haha. My growing experience, Brittany's help and the cooperation of Nature have helped us blow that out of the water. My other farming friends have indicated to me that they are experiencing the same trends regarding weather patterns helping them out.
These particular peas are 'Sugar Ann' and they are an edible pod pea. You can put them in all sorts of things, from stir-fries to salads to soups. However, if you're like me they were probably gone by the time you got home. How anyone can wait long enough to cook these things is beyond me. In our home we eat them raw as an appetizer.
Also this week is the first of the baby carrots. We're having some trouble with our summer planting of carrots not germinating so I'm going to have to order new seed. The ones in your share were planted in March in the greenhouse before Brittany and I moved it to the new, summer location. They are coming along nicely. Don't forget that the tops (the leafy green, fern-like part) are very good for you, high in potassium and other minerals and make an awesome spring pesto. A google search for 'carrot-top pesto' will yield some recipes. You will likely use your garlic scape for it. That's the curly thing that's in with the carrots. For those who don't know the scape is the garlic sending up a shoot to release seeds. If you want garlic bulbs of any size you need to remove this as soon as it comes up. However, it tastes like garlic and when young and tender like those in the shares, they are a great substitute for garlic cloves. I use scissors to cut mine to manageable sizes.
Now that this week's share has been addressed, let's discuss some great things that are happening and coming up. The following photos are enough to give me lots of hope for this season, especially after last year. Returning members will recall a few things that were missing from last year's share. Things that are a staple of the summer garden. One was summer squash. Our plants waited and waited for sun and when it didn't appear they started to fruit. Unfortunately they were only as big as my hand at the time. I had a few plants that had fruit bigger than the plant. Plants that small can't support fruit and it instantly rotted on the vine. Big disappointment. But this picture shows how well ours are doing this year. Wahoo!!!

Also, tomatoes were a no show this year. I've already discussed my unwillingness to dump copper-sulfide on my plants and soil and that leads to a total loss of crop when the blight is brought into the state (however it got here whether from big box stores, nurseries or however). This year I'm trying some hybrid tomatoes in the greenhouse. Here they are chomping at the bit to form fruit. You can't see it in this photo but many of these are setting their first set of blossoms right now!

Emily says I have a strange love affair with tomatoes. She's totally right. I love them. All kinds, all sizes, all flavors, colors and shapes. That's another reason why last year was such a disappointment. But this year I have hope. the photo below will hopefully fill you with some too. Especially our returning members. Even though I'm growing hybrids in the greenhouse to try to ensure a crop, I can't give up on the heirloom varieties. The tastes, colors, smells and interest are too great. Plus, this is our heritage. Heirloom crops are the ones that are pollinated by nature (bees, wind, etc.) and have been passed down through the generations. Hybrid crops require a seed company and a laboratory each year. The variety below is someone's attempt to de-hybridize a standard yellow cherry known as 'Sungold'. This variety is 'Sungold Select II'. Hopefully, they'll be starting to turn in a couple of weeks! Enjoy!

June 11 - Harvest post 2

2010-06-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Here is what the milk house looks like just after the harvest and just prior to bagging everything up. There is barely enough room for me and Brittany to move around in there. This usually doesn't happen until the end of the season. I don't know what we're going to do when squash and potatoes come in.
Here is the chard that is in your share this week. Below this photo is one where it is in the garden still nicely collecting sunlight, vitamins and rainwater. This chard is bunched for braising, steaming or souping. Like the full sized spinach that is also in your share, most people consider it too large to eat raw or in salads. I disagree but I love vegetables more than the average person. Whatever floats your boat as they say.

Also in your share this week are turnips. This particular variety is a favorite of mine as it has a nice earthy, distinctly turnip flavor. The smaller ones are good for salad sliced thinly like radishes. The larger ones are good for salads too but should be cut up and boiled first to tenderize them. If you're not familiar with preparing turnips you can google them to find some tips. Some people peel them. I don't because it removes too many vitamins...including B12 which is found in bacteria living in the soil. If there is a blemish on the turnip I'll simply use a potato peeler or a sharp knife and leave the rest. Cut off the green tops and the tap root and you're good to go.

This is also a good time to explain a bit about the breakdown between full and half shares. Usually we try for roughly twice as much of any given thing in the full shares. With the turnips it broke down as 18 oz for full shares and roughly 10 oz for half shares. Nature doesn't recognize our nifty little measurements so we have to make do and get as close as we can. For instance, some folks got one large turnip and a couple small ones. One of the full shares, I'm not sure who, actually got one huge turnip that weighed exactly 18 oz. That's one of the deals with the CSA. You get what the farmer has available when it's available in whatever form and quantity is available. I do my best to ensure everyone gets the same amount depending on their share size. Later in the season I hope to have some radishes that were actually bred as salad radishes. They don't really taste like radishes but it's like eating a sugar cube. They are amazing! Enjoy and please let me know if you have questions about anything in the share.

June 11 - Harvest

2010-06-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
Sorry for the delay in posting this blog. Emily, Lizzie and I attended cousin Abbey's graduation party last night and we left almost as soon as I got home from the farm. There will be multiple posts again today so be sure to check the archives at the right for today's date.
Here is a wonderful head of romaine lettuce still in the row. This particular variety is Rouge D'Hiver and is a cold weather favorite. I really can't grow these in the heat of summer but they do great in the early spring and once this planting is fully harvested I'll switch to another variety and then back again in the fall.
Many people in our culture are indoctrinated with ideas about what is healthy and what is not. When it comes to vegetables, the more color the better. The lighter green a vegetable is the fewer vitamins it contains. On the health spectrum of lettuce, 'Iceberg' (the lifeless heads found in restaurants and grocery stores...I won't touch the stuff) is the least healthful. I don't offer any lettuces that fit that description. The darker green the better and the more color the better. Consider that when looking at this beautiful head of red romaine. Delicious and healthy. Some people find the outer leaves tough. I recommend only eating the inner leaves and composting the rest for you folks. However, I eat the entire head and simply slice or tear the outer leaves into more manageable sizes for salads.
Collard Greens! This is one of those wonderful examples of a CSA member requesting that I grow something. I have some neighbors who are originally from Kentucky and they looked desperately for collard greens around here. The ones in the store weren't up to snuff of course. So I figured this year I'd give it a try and these are wonderful. They are the large greens that are bursting out the the plastic bags this week. I found a short video showing an easy way to slice them for cooking. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH0j-98AUH0 Also, a quick google search returned lots of hits for sites showing recipes. I suggest looking through them for some that tickle the fancy. I found a couple that seemed to use them in other recipes and included chicken broth and things like that. I use vegetable broth for any recipe that calls for chicken broth. I recommend this unless you know a farmer who will sell you whole chickens to make your own broth. I really recommend people do not use chicken broth available at the store. It terrifies me and it should do the same for everyone. If you'd like to know more about this please email me and I'll be glad to point you to some information about the dangers of industrial chicken farming. Suffice it to say, local, humane, sustainable is always better and that's true of chicken products as well. Here is the link to the google search. http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+prepare+collard+greens&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8

Also this week: Cilantro! This is the earliest I've ever had it and that's thanks to our new movable greenhouse. I took this picture at about 5 am yesterday in the greenhouse. Oddly enough, neither Brittany nor I like the smell of cilantro. It's one of the most unique and overpowering herbs out there. For most people it's a love it or leave it type of herb. My mother-in-law loves this stuff and actually eats it raw. It makes me shutter! I grow it mostly for her but we had a lot so I threw it in. Brittany and I drew straws to see who would deal with it. We ended up compromising as I harvested it and she bagged it. :-) All nay-saying aside, this is a wonderful herb and it is great in salsas, salads and to dress up light meats like chicken. Sue makes a wonderful bean and corn salad in which I actually like the taste of cilantro. Just proves my friend Mark's theory that if you don't like a vegetable (or herb) you just haven't figured out how to prepare it.

Also this week, dill returns to the share. Last summer's growing season (approximately three days long) was so terrible I didn't even get to plant dill. My growing experience, knowledge base and the fact that Brittany is an awesome help in the garden has allowed me to bring back this wonderful herb. You won't hear me say anything negative about dill. It's awesome. I like it as an addition to any salad. grab a sprig and hold it by the stem and then cut tiny pieces with sharp scissors right onto the salad. You don't even need dressing when you have dill (though I sometimes then drizzle olive oil on top). Also, if you have young children they will love to chew on a sprig of this. Lizzie thinks it's great and even though she wrinkles up her nose when she eats it she asks for more. She ends up spitting it out but it is fun for her to 'help' cook with dill or be my taste tester in the garden. We are trying to get Lizzie to eat more spinach as her iron count is a little low. Spinach is an excellent source of dietary iron (local, beyond organic spinach raised in healthy soil that is). So we actually toss a handful in the blender and then mix it in with spaghetti or any past meal we make. I am going to try throwing in a bunch of dill the next time to add a new flavor. Don't forget to check out the next post in the archives...

First Delivery - June 4 - 1 of 2

2010-06-04T16:59:00.000-07:00

Hi all:
This is the first of two posts. Blogspot only lets me upload 5 pictures to a post. I haven't figured out a way around that so if someone knows please let me know. The other post will be at the right in the archives labeled 2 of 2 with today's date.
First, I just want to remind everyone to rinse the produce. We don't wash produce before getting it out to our members. Washing damages produce and makes it harder to pack without damaging further. Produce should be washed just before consuming. This is also a good time to begin some of my soapbox preaching...sorry.
Produce you get in the store from who knows where has been over-washed in ultra-chlorinated water. That is one of the ways the food industry gets all of nature off the produce. So when you get produce from Parker Produce you may notice certain differences. You may find the occasional bug, the occasional garden soil, what have you. As a participant in a local food chain you are making a commitment to return to a way of life in which we begin to take more responsibility for our food. Washing produce is just the beginning and we thank our members for making that commitment. It takes more time to clean and prepare local, fresh, beyond organic food that hasn't been doused with chemicals and jet washed. It's worth the effort.
Below is a photo of the spinach row just prior to harvest. It's beautiful stuff! This is adult or full-sized spinach. It's really meant for braising. For an explanation of braising, please see the next post. You could also steam it or prepare it in any other fashion you like. I will say however that it's not meant to be eaten raw. Full-sized spinach is usually considered too tough to eat in a salad. I do it sometimes if there is no baby spinach in the garden but usually I braise it.
Here is a shot of some of the beet greens that are in the mix you'll find in your share. They are in there with baby spinach and Red Russian Kale. You'll find more about this mix in the '2 of 2' post.

Also, here are the scallions. These are wintered-over scallions which has several implications. As you can see in this photo, they've begun to set seed heads and I will soon have hundreds of thousands of seeds in this row. The scallions in your share have been reduced quite a bit. The picture doesn't really show it but these come up to my waist. I can't fit that in a bag! So I cut off the roots and the majority of the stalk and put the rest in with your radishes. These are a great early substitute for onions and also good cut up in salads and eggs and things like that.

The implications I was talking about have to do with the fact that you'll have to do a little more work to prepare these scallions that you do with spring planted scallions. Throughout the winter these hardy troopers are standing in snow, wind, ice, rain, sun and then do it all over again. That takes a toll on them. You may find some dead tissue in amongst the bunch or some on the outside of the scallion. That's normal. It's the plant's defense mechanism against the cold of early spring. It's like a layer of insulation. Just peel that part off to reveal the edible, delicious, oniony inside. Cut off the roots and then enjoy. I usually cut what I want off the top with a pair of sharp scissors. If I'm using it as an onion I will use a knife and cut from the bottom (the white part).

The radish! Each of you will find a French Breakfast Radish in your share. It's the odd shaped one with the white on bottom. They are meant to be that big! The other radishes allow me to step back up on my soap box for a moment...

The produce you find in the store all looks the same, has no bumps, bugs or signs of life. Our produce is different. We do not waist food! That's the bottom line. We certainly throw a fair amount of detritus and garden debris in the compost pile on harvest day. But if something just looks a little funny...we put it in the bag. That was the case with the radishes today. Some of them have worm markings on the outside. Personally, I just wash them thoroughly and eat them that way. If it bothers you all you have to do is shave that part off. You can use a sharp knife or a vegetable peeler. The amount of edible food that is wasted in the United States is estimated to be around 90% of the harvest! It's difficult to imagine that but I believe it's nearly accurate. Tons of edible produce is discarded right in the fields of this country because it doesn't look good. Then, at each stop along the way it happens again. In the field, in the packing house, in the grocery store, in the restaurant, in the kitchen, etc. The produce is whittled down until we only see and use the most perfect looking stuff. What a waste. We follow a different philosophy at Parker Produce. Why waste perfectly good food because a bug took a bite out of a leaf or a worm crawled by a radish or a tomato has a small crack in the shoulder. It will taste good.

That being said, we do try to present good looking produce. I was a bit surprised at how the radishes came out. I don't usually have that many with worm evidence. I'm hoping the next batch will weather better.

Finally, another salad mix. This one consists of a red romaine (Rouge D'Hiver) and Endive. I hope you all enjoy the share. Don't forget to check the other post at the right for additional information.