Garden Photos

The plums are ripening; New mulch is going
in under the Land School's fruit trees

Lettuce beds beginning to grow!

Purple beans for next week's market

Our beloved Pippa

Arugula? Spinach? Dill? Are you coming?

Relief comes to the previously choked out basil

Raspberry season!

Gourds in the little hoophouse

Harvest of the Week

Beautiful Beets

Carrots 

Cucumbers 

Cut Flowers

Eggplant

Garlic

Green Beans

Herbs: Basil, Dill, Cilantro, Parsley, 

            Peppermint, Rosemary

Kale

Lettuce Mix

Onions

Green Onions

Hot Peppers

Potatoes

Sweet Corn? (let's hope!)

Swiss Chard

Tomatoes

Zucchini and Summer Squash

Upcoming Harvests

With a wet, slow start to the season, and with an intention to shift the garden's major time of production to fall during the school year, there are many things growing in the garden which we have yet to harvest and bring into market. We are hoping to have sweet corn for tomorrow. Edamame, melons, our usual abundance of tomatoes, bell peppers, and all of the broccoli family crops (cabbage, cauliflower etc.) should be coming soon!

Edamame, dill, beets, and cilantro

Summer's Fresh Herbs

As usual, we will have a luscious array of herbs at the market tomorrow: dill, cilantro, parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary and peppermint. Fresh herbs are one of my favorite gifts from summer's gardens. They encapsulate the season for me with their bright green intensity and their lively, energizing flavors. What can we do with these small yet exciting plants? I love to eat them in salad, chopping them up to add to lettuce mix. Rosemary is the perfect addition to roasted potatoes; parsley goes wonderfully with boiled potatoes. Here is another idea:

Chimichurri 

Chimichurri is a sauce whose origins lie in Argentina. It was introduced to me by my dear Puerto Rican sister-in-law; Puerto Rican cuisine has also adopted this lovely green sauce, and now it finds its way to our kitchens of the Midwest. Try it on top of rice, meat, on a sandwich, or as your favorite new chip dip. 

1/2 cup fresh cilantro

1/2 cup fresh parsley

1 tablespoon fresh oregano

1 clove garlic

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes, or 1/2 Land School jalapeño pepper

1 tablespoon minced onion or shallot

3 tablespoons lemon or lime juice

1/4 cup olive oil

Place all ingredients except olive oil in a food processor or blender. While processing/blending, slowly drizzle in olive oil. Adjust seasonings to taste. 

The kittens have been named! They are Castor and Pollux,
named after the Gemini stars. This is Pollux, in his full cuteness. 

Eight rows of beautifully weeded carrots that
will feed us through the Fall and Winter!

Harvest for August 14

Bounty of the Week

Carrots
Beets
Green Beans
Kale
Chard
Lettuce Mix
Herbs: Basil, Parsley, Rosemary, Mint, Cilantro
Zucchini and Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Tomatoes?
Hot Peppers
Onions
Green Onions
Garlic
Cut Flowers
Potatoes

Pesto!

I made 10 cups of pesto this week with the leftover basil from last week's market. It is now packed into jars and nestled in the freezer, where it awaits us with the promise of another winter full of delicious meals from the farm. We will bring bulk "pesto bags" of basil into the market again tomorrow. The basil is looking beautiful right now, so if you are a pesto lover, this is the perfect time to stock up for the winter. 

2 cups loosely packed basil leaves

1 cup nuts (walnuts, pine nuts, or other nut of your choosing)

3 cloves garlic

1/2 teaspoon salt (if you like using parmesan cheese in your pesto, omit the salt. If you are freezing the pesto, don't add the cheese before freezing; add it when you thaw it, just before using.)

1 or 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice

1/2 cup olive oil

Put the basil, nuts, garlic, salt, and lemon/lime juice in a food processor. Process until smooth. While running, slowly pour the olive oil into the food processor. 

Carrot Cake

2 cups flour (white, whole wheat, or gluten free)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 eggs

3/4 cup turbinado sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2/3 cup melted coconut oil or butter

1 1/2 heaping cups crushed pineapple, strained

2 1/2 heaping cups grated carrots (from the Land School!)

1 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup raisins

Rosemary Cream Cheese Frosting:

2 cups cream cheese

1/2 cups powdered sugar

juice of 2 lemons

1 teaspoon vanilla

1teaspoon chopped fresh Land School rosemary! 

Preheat oven to 350. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a larger bowl, beat the eggs and then add the sugar. Slowly beat in the oil/butter, vanilla and pineapple. Stir in the flour mixture with a rubber spatula, mixing just until incorporated. Add the carrots, walnuts, and raisins. Pour into lined muffins tins or greased round or square cake pans and bake for 25-35, or until toothpick inserted comes out clean. To make the frosting, beat together ingredients until combined. Frost cake when it is done baking and is completely cooled. (Recipe adapted from happyolks blog)

Harvest for August 7th

Here is the dirt!

Potential Harvest:

Carrots!!!
More Green Beans
Red Potatoes
Cucumbers!!!!
Zucchini and Summer Squash
Beets
Kale and Chard and maybe other Greens
Green Onions
Sweet Spanish Onions
Garlic
Garlic Scapes (Last Chance)
Cut Flowers
Lettuce Mix
Herbs: (Basil, Parsley, Cilantro, Other herbs)
Maybe Tomatoes

My Last Harvest
Break out your hankies. I leave for sunny California on Sunday morning. Come to the market to wish me farewell. I am super excited to have new adventures and simultaneously quite sad to leave the Land School. This week we welcomed Laura Kosowski in her new role as farm manager. Yay! When I get settled, I'll let Laura know how folks can stay up to date with my progress as I enter my steep learning curve on the California coast.

Silly Guineas 
Last week we had finally got all the chickens in the new coop and only had to catch the guinea fowl. Katie and I caught them using a fishing net and trapping them in the red barn. One by one, over the course of three days. Then we moved them into the new coop for 4 nights. That should have been enough to reset their instinctual need to roost in the same place every night. Then today we let them all out for the first time in a week for the chickens (4 days for the silly guineas). Tonight all the chickens dutifully went into the new coop. The guineas, on the other hand, decided to roost in the tree. Now they are making an awful ruckus, as I write this. We hope that no owls attack tonight and that tomorrow they have the good sense to join the chickens in the new coop.

Kitten News
The kittens who showed up last week have successfully endeared themselves to Katie and Laura (and many others). Their vet visit went well. Worms but no major health issues. They are both boys. Names are still an issue. Maybe twin names. Fred and George (twin redheads). Castor and Pollux (geminis). Sol y Luna. Or other names that Katie and Laura decide.

July 31st Harvest

Here is the dirt!

Harvest for the week of July 31st:
Green Beans!
Cut Flowers
Lettuce Mix
Greens: Kale, Chard, Pigweed
Onions, Sweet Spanish and Scallions
Garlic and Garlic Scapes
Herbs: Basil, Parsley, Cilantro, Mint, and More.
Zucchini and Yellow Squash
New Red Potatoes
Maybe: limited quantities of Cucumbers, Blueberries, Beets

Thanks Junior High Apprentices
This week we welcomed 5 Junior High Apprentices for an eventful week on the farm. The weather could not have been better. 70's and sunny during most days, cool at nights for sleeping, and enough rain to keep the dust down. We had two big projects and many little projects.

Donna led the students in a push to get the new coop ready for the chickens. They hung up the roosts, moved the nest boxes, and installed a little chicken-sized sliding door. Finally on Wednesday afternoon the coop was ready. So tonight after dark we snuck into the old coop and kidnapped the chickens one-by-one and brought them to the new coop. We will keep them locked in the new coop for a while to help them adjust their sense of where home is. There was just one problem. The guinea hens are very sensitive to changes in their environment, and all the removals and changes in the old coop has put them off of going in the coop at night. Monday and Tuesday nights the guineas were mostly in the tree behind the farmhouse and tonight there were no guineas at all in the coop. We will have to entice them into the old coop and then somehow transfer them to the new coop. It is very exciting to get the chickens into the new coop. Thanks to Donna and the students!

I led the students in the garlic harvest. We only harvested 10% of the garlic during the Garlic Festival, because it was mostly not ready. This week, with their help, we pulled and hung up about 3000 heads of garlic. Now the long barn is pungent with smell of curing garlic. Thanks to all!

Some of the other projects: sharpening tools, planting napa cabbage and late broccoli, weeding carrots and beets, trellising tomatoes, picking berries, watering gourds, and having a bunch of fun.

Harvest for the Week of July 24th

New red potatoes
Zucchini and yellow squash
Onions, fresh, green-topped
Bunched beets with greens
Fresh garlic
Garlic scapes
Herbs: basil, parsley, cilantro, mint
Lettuce mix
Cut flowers

New Red Potatoes
This week we have started picking the new red potatoes. They are absolutely divine. We have two methods of preparing them. Diced and boiled, and then dressed with butter an salt is the current winner. But recently in the farmhouse kitchen we have also been dropping the diced potatoes in about a 1/2 inch of boiling sunflower oil and deep frying until done, then straining them out of the oil and drying the excess oil off on paper towels before salting and serving. The new potatoes are so full of water that they don't make great french fries per se, but the flavor is so good that it makes up for it.

Zucchini
The zucchini have been so delicious that I forget how bored I usually get of zucchini. These new first zucchinis are treasures. Both tender and flavorful. I have been slicing them into chunks and pan frying in butter until they start to brown, then grating cheese over them and sometimes adding wild mushrooms. Yum.The quantity that is added to the pan influences whether you can actually brown them a little. Add too much and all the water they sweat out and it undermines your frying. But that is no problem, it just becomes a saute. Finish it with some chopped fresh herbs.

Fresh Garlic and Garlic Scapes
At our garlic fest last week we only pulled about 10 percent of the garlic. Maybe less. It just wasn't mature enough to store well. So this garlic is fresh and powerfully pungent. You can store it on your counter and it will start to cure there - if it lasts that long. This is really good garlic picked at the peak of flavor. The garlic "scapes" are the top portion of the plant that we have to remove as the plant is maturing. If you leave them on the plant, they develop flowers and a top-setting cluster of bulblets. Those bulblets sap energy from the underground bulb and affect the size. So anyway, we removed the top 15% of the plant. It turns out that these are tasty treats. Chop them up into green bean-sized pieces and cook by frying, steaming, boiling or baking. You can also make "garlic scape pesto" by using your blender and some creativity.

Beets, etc.
The beets were saved from weeds on our first summer work day. We are only bringing a few of these into the market, so the rest can size up even more. Lettuce mix: it is our goal to have lettuce or lettuce mix every week. Sometimes rain or lack of it can affect our planting schedule, but usually we will have something lettuce-y for you. Same for onions. Starting this Thursday look for the onion family to be well-represented every week. The fresh onions should be stored in the fridge, but can also be left out for several days. They will start to dry out, but not go bad.

Coming Soon
What is coming: There will be some cucumbers soon and a lot more in about 3 weeks (some on the early plants were killed in a windy thunderstorm when they were just tender transplants). Carrots are at least a couple weeks away. Green beans are maybe going to be ready for the second week, and then every week after that until the first frost. Tomatoes will be slow this year, but (as usual) excessively abundant when they do come in. Plan to can and freeze in September. Peppers, eggplant and melons are coming along slowly too, but each is poised to take off and produce well. Kale and chard were both planted late, but have been growing very well for the last two weeks. Next week we should start pulling some leaves off.

Why is this year so slow? Part of the problem was too much rain. We could not plant things when we wanted to plant them and so we had to make do with late planting. Then the month of June had some cool days. In fact, yesterday was the first day I even thought about how nice it would be to put in the window air-conditioning unit in the bedroom. Heat-loving crops (pumpkin, squash, okra, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, zucchini, melons) thrive in these summer warm days. 85 degrees and humid. They grow like crazy. We have not had enough of these days yet. But I have the feeling the summer is about to heat up.

Garden Update With Photos

Sunflowers leftover from the Plant Sale. We meant to plant them long ago, but the soil was too wet. Now I think they might flower while still in their little plastic pots. Too late to plant these.  

Broccoli family crops ready to transplant next week.

The Grapes on the grape arbor look like they have set a lot of fruit.

One of the plums has also set a great quantity of fruit.

The plum tree on the right is coming back from some sort of setback. It had undersized leaves this spring and some dead branches.

The "Centennial" Hops are thriving in the Hugelbet next to the old corn crib.

The raspberries on the west end of the bed are dying - this happened last year when it so wet too. They stopped dying when it dried out last year - so maybe this year.

The flower block has been swamped by rain. The flowers will recover with a little fert and cultivastion.

Little basil plants. They were going to flower in the greenhouse, but we planted them anyway. They will recover.

On the right: beets that were saved on the second member work day. On the left: carrots are hopefully germinating under a protective blanket.

Three successions of green beans. The ones on the left have not yet come up.

These are the carrots that we saved with the apprentices.

Swiss chard that we planted this week.

Allis G set up to cultivate pumpkins.

This G is set up to make a trench.

Asparagus. We stopped picking a couple weeks ago.

The blueberries are all protected from grazing animals.

Look! Some berries look like they are about to turn blue!

On either side: tomatoes. Down the middle: watermelon.

Pumpkins!

Tomatoes.

Brussels Sprouts right and middle. Cabbage left.

Biodegradable "plastic" mulch: peppers, eggplant, melons, cucumbers, zucchini. Between the mulch rows: dry beans in double rows.

The golden field is a drying rye cover crop.  Last week it was four feet high.

Corn! sweet corn (three kinds), popcorn, blue corn, painted mountain corn, red flint corn, bloody butcher corn, and broom corn.

Potatoes. This has been the perfect growing season for potatoes.

Onions and leeks. Waiting for a little weed and fert.

Right: garlic. Left: sunchokes.

Arctic kiwi. Not dead.