Blackbirds Return, Sabbatical Planned

The red winged blackbirds have returned to Minglewood... the first true sign that spring is surely on its way. We no longer can rely on the robins and bluebirds to send us this message since they now seem to be here all winter long. Winter has been relatively kind to us in this part of upstate New York - not much snow, at least for the second half of the season, and remarkably mild temperatures for early March.

The farm is slowly waking up from its winter hibernation and activity can once again be seen in the fields and greenhouses. The warmish weather motivated me to do some 'frost seeding' of clover and annual rye while there is still a chance for some frost. This is a great way to establish and early cover crop. Below you can see me broadcasting seed right over top of the winter killed cover crop of oats that were seeded last fall. The freezing and thawing of the soil actually works the seed into the soil where it will lie dormant until temperatures rise to the point to allow it to germinate in the early spring.
We have also been busy thinning out the woodlot to get our oak logs ready for inoculating with shiitake mushroom spawn. We will start the process of 'drilling and filling' in a couple of weeks when it's a little warmer. These logs will then sit for an entire year as the mushrooms colonize the logs, and be ready next summer to produce shiitakes.

Winter is the time for fixing things. One of this years projects has been to repair and rebuild the greenhouse table beds we use for growing baby salad greens. This has been a long and tedious project and I'm only a little more than half done. If I can stay on schedule, they should all be done before I need to start growing in them in another week or two.

The main heated greenhouse was started up last Monday, so the first seeding of lettuce and spinach are up and growing. These will be transplanted out to a fieldhouse or 'high tunnel' in early April and hopefully be big enough to harvest for our first markets in May.

Sabbatical Planned

In addition to all this activity, Tammara and I have been doing a lot of planning... for a big trip from August - October. For those of you who don't know, Tammara leads a double life. When she is not selling vegetables at the farmer's market or doing the farm bookkeeping, she is working as director of a non-profit organization that accredits land trusts, which in its self is more than a full time job. After eleven years of farming, and many more of full time work, we are both ready for a summer vacation. Recently Tammara's employer instituted a sabbatical program that will allow her to take twelve weeks off. With an offer like that, it was too good to refuse - none of us is getting any younger.

So, our plan is to take three months off this year, from August through October, and travel throughout the western US and Canada. We will farm this year, but on an abbreviated season from May through July. This was a difficult decision for us to make, we hate to disappoint our dedicated customers who shop with us all season long. Hopefully, this trip will give us time to reflect and re-energize, so that we can come back and continue to farm with renewed enthusiasm and excitement for many years to come. So take heart - this is our anti-burnout strategy, and will be back for the whole season in 2011.

Feliz Ano Nuevo

Happy New Year and greetings from sunny Yucatan. Somehow those long exhausting days of August seem very far away. Every year at the height of the season I have a mental melt-down and cry "This is crazy - it's just way too much work!". I always manage to get through the worst of it and survive until the late fall and winter. I have to remind myself that there literally is a light at the end of the tunnel - a winter vacation somewhere in the tropics. All those dollars charged to the farm credit card eventually add up to a lot of frequent flyer miles and this has allowed us to take a week or two off some place warm nearly every year since we started the farm.


Most years we find ourselves some where in Central America; it's relatively affordable to travel there and the Caribbean coast is equal if not nicer than most of the better known Caribbean islands. We have slowly been working our way through all the countries of Central America, visiting some of them more than once. San Salvador is the last country there that we have not visited yet.

This year we took off a little earlier than normal, and spent the week between Christmas and New Year's on Isla Mujeres. This is a small island just of the coast of Yucatan, Mexico, about a twenty minute boat ride from Cancun. We rented a place with our good friends Steve and Lisa, and their daughter Allie. We had a wonderful time, doing as little as possible. There was a grand fiesta on New Year's eve, where the whole town turns into a big street party, but mostly we just caught up on relaxing.

Now we are back to our regular winter routine. Tammara is once again busy with her regular job at the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, she unfortunately doesn't ever get much of a break. I am busy starting to prepare for the next season, which at this stage is mostly computer and paper work. There's lots of planning to do including crop plans and budgets. Organic certification updates are due shortly, and seed orders are already a little late.

Coming up this next weekend is a great conference that may be of interest to our followers in the Saratoga area. The 28th annual Organic Farming & Gardening Conference, presented by NOFA-NY (Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York) takes place at the City Center in Saratoga Springs, NY. It runs from Friday the 22 to Sunday the 24. This is a great conference for the whole local organic community to come together. There are workshops on all types of farming and gardening issues and topics. Sessions are geared towards both farmers/gardeners and consumers of organic food. The meals are a real bargain and are prepared nearly exclusively with local ingredients. This conference rotates around to different parts of the state each year, so it's a real bonus to have it right in our back yard. Here a link to NOFA-NY web site for more information,http://www.nofany.org/

Hope you all are having a great winter, maybe we will see you at the conference.

Seasons Greetings

Contemplate the joys of the season

Best Wishes for a prosperous 2010

Food, Inc. Comes to Town

Just a quick note of interest... the documentary film everyone has been talking about, Food, Inc. is coming to the Saratoga Film Forum. If you are interested in food issues, especially where your food comes from, you must see this movie. Here's the what the Film Forum review had to say about it: Otto Von Bismark once said, "Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made". This is especially true , perhaps, of laws regarding the production of sausages or of food in general. However, Food, Inc. does just that, lifting the veil on our nation's food industry and exposing the dark underbelly. Controlled primarily by a handful of multinational corporations, the global food production business has as its goal the production of large quantities of food at low cost, resulting in large profits and greater control of the global food supply by these few companies. The health and safety of the food, animals, workers, and consumers are rarely these companies' chief concerns, and are often overlooked by the government. Food, Inc. reveals surprising and often shocking truths about what we eat, how it's produce, who we have become as a nation, and where we are going from here.

The film is being shown on Thursday and Friday nights, November 12 and 13, at 8 p.m. It is also being shown on Sunday afternoon, November 15, as part of a special Local Foods, Local Films event. In addition to Food, Inc., two short films by local filmmakers, focused on food and farming issues will be premiered. Local food will be provided by One Caroline Bistro and Mouzon House. Tammara will be leading a panel discussion after the films for any one interested in talking about them. It should be interesting event. Here's a link to the Film Forum for more information: http://www.saratogafilmforum.org

Seasons Come, Seasons Go

Another season has come and gone. Our last market was held this past Saturday on Halloween morning. Despite predictions of rain, the day turned out to be quite nice and surprisingly warm. This brought out a lot of our regular customers to shop one last time and gave us a chance to thank them for their season long support and wish them well until spring. We ended the season with a reasonable selection of produce at the market - plenty of salad and cooking greens, scallions, radishes, and broccoli.

After the last market we attended the annual farmers market lunch at Mouzon House, the great restaurant located just south of High Rock park. Many of the farms provided produce and other products for the lunch which was attended by many of the farmers, their families and farm helpers, and dedicated customers. The event was very well attended and it was a fun festive way to end the season.


On Friday, our last harvest day on the farm, we had our own end of season celebration. Pizza and ice cream satisfied a hungry crew. Many a slice were put away, making the afternoon drag a bit as we all tried to overcome our food comas. Martin wins the honors for most slices consumed - it was impressive.

It is a bitter-sweet time of year. I am certainly looking forward to a break and some much needed time off, but also a bit sad to be saying good-bye to a great crew who have become good friends. Everyone goes their separate ways. Martin will shift his focus back to his artwork as he prepares for a gallery showing in Hudson, NY for February. Laura leaves tomorrow for Guatemala for some warmer weather and travel adventure. Luke returns to selling records at Last Vestige while he plots his strategy for becoming the next big thing in the music and art worlds. Maureen is also planning for travels to warmer climates - hoping to make arrangements for an extended stay in Florida. Tammara and I will be doing some traveling as well; North Carolina to visit friends during Thanksgiving, and Yucatan, Mexico around New Year's.

The farm is in good shape as we head into late fall. The earlier cover crops of oats, peas, and vetch came up beautifully, turning the fields a wonderful emerald green. This is a nice sight during the time of year when everything else has turned brown. The later cover crops of rye and vetch didn't seems to germinate - I guess it was just too cold to get them started. With some luck, maybe an Indian Summer will be just enough to get them going. If you can get them started they will at least be there to grow in the early spring.

There are still lots of clean up projects to do, but most of the critical things have been taken care of. The pace of life can now finally slow down a bit; time to recharge, renew, and relax. I hope to keep this blog going, at least in a limited capacity, through the winter. When we get a chance to look at all our records and notes we will do a season recap - what crops did well, which did poorly, and how did this season compare to past ones. There are also a number of good farm conferences and meetings that we will be attending, so we will report any interesting information we can gather. So, until next time .... cheers!

Frozen Tundra

You know it's cold when you open the walk-in cooler and it feels balmy! It's been a chilly week here at the farm - down in the mid-twenties almost every morning. The frost has been so thick it almost looks like snow. The farm is looking fairly desolate and bleak. This has essentially brought the growing season to an abrupt end, although we are continuing to harvest a few crops. It always amazes me to see the resilience of some plants that are able to nearly freeze solid and yet totally recover after they thaw out. The greens and brassicas are particularly good at this. As long as the leaves are not frozen when they are harvested, they seem to look and taste fine.

We have two more weeks to go in our market season. Many of our crops are done, but we will still continue to have a reasonably full table at the farmer's market. We have a decent supply of lettuce and all the salad greens, plus lots of kale, stir-fry greens, radicchio, frisee, potatoes, radishes, and of course our regular offerings of sprouts. We will also have a limited supply of broccoli, turnips, broccoli raab, and tomatoes. So even though the crops have stopped growing, there is still plenty of great food on hand at the market.

Activities on the farm have shifted from growing to clean-up. In the past two weeks we have dismantled all the hoop houses that were covering the tomatoes and peppers. (The tomatoes are now slowly ripening in the basement). We have also pulled up all the landscape fabric that was covering the melon patch. This is a really dirty and smelly job, and the cold weather didn't make it any more fun. The crew made the best of things - dressing warmly and and taking breaks for batting practice with frozen half rotten melons.

There are lots of clean-up and maintenance projects to go: mowing down old crops and around all the surrounding fields, cleaning out greenhouse beds, and fixing all the stuff that has broke this year that we haven't had time to deal with. All I can say is - thank God for winter!

Fall Colors and Mystery Brassica

Fall colors have arrived at Minglewood. It seems a little later to get started here this year than it has in past seasons. I know that the shift in colors is triggered by the shortening day length, but I'm sure the temperature and moisture has a least some effect as well. Perhaps with all the rain this summer the trees were less stressed than in other recent years and thus slower to change colors. For whatever the reason - they sure are pretty to look at.

The clear, dry and sunny days of September have left us for these past couple of weeks with a return to yet another cold and rainy spell. We received over 3 inches of rain in the past week, turning the fields to muddy mess once again. Fortunately, I did get the fall cover crops seeded before the rains started, so we have a nice crop of oats, peas, and vetch coming up over most of the farm. It's not likely that we will be able to use a tractor on the fields again this fall, so areas that still have vegetables growing on them will just have to stay open through the winter and get cleaned up in the spring.

Fall is prime time for all the brassicas - the vegetable family that includes cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. It is possible to grow some of these crops during the main growing season of spring and summer, but they really thrive and do best during the fall. Each year we grow a selection of brassicas - some standard broccoli and kale, bunches of broccolini (Chinese kale), broccoli raab, Japanese salad turnips, baby Boc Choi, and all the mustard greens for our stir-fry mix. We also grow some unusual cauliflower varieties - usually Romanesque and a beautiful purple variety.

Much to our dismay, this years patch of Romanesque turned out to be quite the surprise. In past years this beautiful heirloom variety takes so long to form heads that we often don't have them until early November, after our farmers market season is over. So this year I planted them several weeks earlier, hoping to have them head up in October. For some reason they all started forming very open heads in early September and looked like they were bolting. The crop appeared to be a total loss and I was very disappointed, as this is one of my favorite crops to eat and always an eye-catcher at market. The heads are are supposed to be small
and conical, sort of like a seashell,
and they are bright green. Anyway, I ignored the
patch for the past month and then this past week
I noticed something very strange... perfect little
purple broccoli-like florets growing out of the tops of the bolted heads. They are truly bizarre, but what the heck, I cut a few and steamed them up, and what do you know- they were really tasty! Now my problem is if I sell this stuff - what do I call it? I think I've settled on 'Roman Sprouting Broccoli'. Now if I can just patent it before some one else discovers it I'll be rich! Look for it at market this week.




New this past week at market as well - those tasty little salad turnips you'll remember from the spring. Slice them up raw - like a very mild radish, or steam, roast, or saute if you prefer.
Don't forget that the greens are edible too.