Solstice Crops and Organic Inspections

Happy summer! I guess it's now official as of last week, although it certainly feels like it's been summer for some time now. All the rain and warm temperatures have continued to push the season right along and all the crops are growing like bonkers. Our perennial gardens around the house are in full bloom; iris' are just about done, but the day lilies and cone flowers have filled in. Tammara planted a new bed last year and it has been a joy to see new blooms nearly every morning. Here's one of our favorites- a peach colored double day lilly.

Escarole is one of the new crops we have started to harvest in the past week or so. For those not familiar with this green, it is a wonderful Italian cooking green in the chicory family. It looks a lot like lettuce, but is generally a bit too bitter to eat raw. Steaming or sauteing it mellows the flavor and makes it the perfect ingredient for traditional "beans and greens".
Scallions are also back on the market table recently. The crop looks good this year, tall and robust, but not too fat. These are great chopped on a salad or added to your favorite stir-fry.

Spinach continues to do well, with no sign of the spinach blight that took it down last year. The long hot days are starting to force older plantings to bolt (go to seed) faster than we would like, but hopefully by planting new beds every week we will continue to have a good supply.

Snap peas have been a bit of a disappointment this year. I planted 400 row feet of Sugar Ann peas and had less than 5% germination. I am convinced it was bad seed and not attributable to the weather or pests. On the same day I also planted 200 feet of Sugar Snap peas which came up fine. So we have Sugar Snaps, but no Sugar Anns. Unfortunately, the Sugar Anns are a much tastier, productive and manageable variety. Sugar Anns grow to about a three foot vine which is easy to trellis and loaded with peas. The Sugar Snaps grow to six or seven feet and are now a tangled jungle mess with far fewer peas. It's quite the adventure just to find a hand full of peas. We use the buddy system when we go to pick them so we don't loose anybody.

Crops which are done for the season include brocollini (Chinese kale) and salad turnips. We will miss them and look forward to eating them again in 2011. We should have most of our other standard crops through to the end of our short season.

On a different front... today we had our annual organic certification inspection. The purpose of the inspection is to make sure all our records are in order and to verify that the farm is in compliance with the federal organic regulations. We have been certified since 2002, so after eight years we pretty much know what to expect and the process doesn't take more than a couple of hours. I've actually grown to enjoy the process - the feedback is generally positive and it's sort of a pat on the back that we are doing a good job.

The process of review has forced us to become better organic farmers. Through our record keeping system we must track every crop from seed to sale. This means you must document where you bought the seed, where and how you planted it, when and how you fertilized it, if you used an allowed treatment for pests or diseases, when you harvested it and where you sold it. It's a lot of paperwork to keep track of, but it's all important information that you should keep anyway and will help in planning future seasons.

At present we are the only certified organic farm selling at the Saratoga Farmers Market. I honestly do not understand why more farms have not gone through the process. It does take a bit of time for the record keeping and it does require a fee (about 1/2% of our gross sales after a NY State rebate), but I believe it is the best assurance to the customer that what they are buying is really organic.

Well, this week looks like more rain and showers. Hope you all stay on the dry side.