FarmerErin

I give presentations!

2012-02-19T17:31:00.000-08:00

Tell your friends to come see one of Farmer Erin's slide-shows if they want to hear more about what CSA's are really about! We still have memberships available, but not for long. I will be speaking at the following locations:

Tues. Feb 21st, 11am @ Perinton Presbyterian Church, 6511 Palmyra Rd.
Sun. Mar 4th, 11:45am @ Artisan Church, 1235 Clinton Ave S, Roch.
Tues. Mar 6th, 7pm @ Victor Library, 15 W Main St, Victor

Feel free to print out a flier & hang up in the office, cafe, or local yoga studio! Pdf's are at www.mudcreekfarm.com, click on "Meeting in Rochester" or "Meeting in Victor" Thanks!

I'm always available to give talks to your local group -- just send me an email and we'll pick a date that works for both of us. Winter is a better time for me to give presentations!

Rootstravaganza!!!

2012-02-16T06:59:00.000-08:00

Buy a late winter ROOT SHARE!

15 lbs of yummy Mud Creek Farm root-cellar goodies, only 20 bucks. These carrots are super sweet & crispy, and perfect for snacking on! Also some delicious beets, rutabagas, & parsnips.

Pick up March 7th at the winter Highland Park Farmers Market.

Email erin@mudcreekfarm.com to reserve your share NOW- limited shares available.

Go see some free movies in Brighton!

2012-02-11T18:41:00.000-08:00

They all look really interesting... I will be on the panel for the documentary on young farmers "The Greenhorns" on March 21st! Check 'em out:

WINTER FILM SERIES ON LOCALIZATION

10 regional organizations are sponsoring a series on LOCALIZATION: ECONOMY, FOOD AND ENERGY" at the Brighton Town Hall Lower Auditorium, 2300 Elmwood Ave., in Rochester beginning Wednesday, February 22. Co-sponsors will have information tables at 6:30 pm followed by programs starting promptly at 7 pm.

The February 22 movie, the "Economics of Happiness", features voices from 6 continents including Vandana Shiva, David Korten, and Bill McKibben among others. It describes a world moving in two opposite directions: government and big business promoting globalization and consolidation of corporate power, while communities are coming together to resist and build human scale, ecological economies based on "Localization".

The February 29 program, "Local Lessons from Distant Travels: CSA as Rural Economic Development in China and Taiwan" will feature Elizabeth Henderson, organic farmer and a leading spokesperson for sustainable agriculture, sharing stories and photos of her recent trip to Asia.

March 21, "Greenhorns", a documentary film, explores the lives of America's young farming community - spirit, practices and needs - building a case for those considering a career in agriculture. This movie, as the others, will be followed by a panel. Two young women farmers will participate in this discussion.

April 18 will feature "Empowered", a regionally produced film exploring how innovative Tompkins County citizens are exploring renewable energy options in solar, wind, geothermal and veggie oil. This documentary shows how a community is banding together to work for energy independence. Film producer, Suanne McMannis, who with her husband has lived off the grid for 10 years will participate in the panel following the film. She says "If my neighbor knew he could put up solar panels and make money, he would probably do that instead of signing a lease for drilling oil".

The program is free of charge. Donations are welcomed.

Co-sponsoring groups include: Abundance Cooperative Market,Center for Sustainable Living, Color Brighton Green, Federation of Monroe County Environmentalists, Finger Lakes Bioneers, Genesee Valley Community Supported Agriculture, Living in Harmony, Rochester AreaVegetarian Society, Seeking Common Ground, Sierra Club Rochester Regional Group.

2012-02-08T16:17:00.001-08:00

CSA Fairs Happening!

Here's a great chance for someone who's interested in joining a CSA but wants to know a little more about it. All the CSA farmers in the area will be here, at tables with photos of their stuff & sign-up forms, available to answer any questions about their farms and the CSA shares. Tell your friends! One fair in Rochester and one fair in Canandaigua.

http://www.nofany.org/csafair

Sign up now for 2012!

2012-01-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

What could be better than looking at large colorful photos of summer vegetables in a warm room while the snow & sleet falls outside?

Mud Creek Farm CSA 2012 Informational Meeting:
Monday, February 6th, 7 – 9 pm
Perinton Community Center,
1350 Turk Hill Road, Fairport, NY

Learn all about Mud Creek Farm & the benefits of joining a CSA.
Farm slide show by Farmer Erin. Free carrot snacks!
All are welcome - if you are an existing member, tell your friends who may be interested in joining but need a little more information. There will be plenty of time for question/answer conversations about all aspects of the farm. See you there.

PS: There are still plenty of spots available for full-share and half-share members!

Season Totals

2011-12-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

TOTAL FOOD HARVESTED IN 2011 AT MUD CREEK FARM: 62,338 lbs

That's about the weight of five elephants, harvested by hand from less than seven acres of mud, using only organic practices. Imagine how many people we could feed if those seven acres of lawn or cornfield near you were put into organic vegetable production. We have over 300 families eating vegetables from our farm. Enjoy the holidays!

WINTER SQUASH: 5,678 lbs
TOMATOES: 5,439 lbs
CARROTS: 5,179 lbs
BEETS: 4,096 lbs
LETTUCE: 3,884 lbs
CABBAGE: 3,389 lbs
POTATOES: 3,211 lbs
SUMMER SQUASH: 2,754 lbs
EGGPLANTS: 2,511 lbs
WATERMELONS: 2,336 lbs
CHINESE CABBAGE: 2,264 lbs
SWISS CHARD: 1,752 lbs
BROCCOLI: 1,721 lbs
CUCUMBERS: 1,571 lbs
GREEN PEPPERS: 1,552 lbs
BOK CHOI: 1,476 lbs
TURNIPS: 1,337 lbs
WINTER RADISHES: 1,100 lbs
KALE: 1,066 lbs
LEEKS: 1,045 lbs
PARSNIPS: 911 lbs
FENNEL: 888 lbs
RED PEPPERS: 613 lbs
GARLIC: 540 lbs
SPINACH: 484 lbs
ARUGULA: 417 lbs

Some reading material while you digest...

2011-11-23T14:20:00.000-08:00

A great collection of resources to get you salivating about Good Things going on associated with Food:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/no-turkeys-here/

Saying goodbye to another season...

2011-11-04T07:50:00.000-07:00

The weeks following the first hard frost are always rough for me emotionally. An entire 8-month season of built-up energy and momentum, knocked down by this final inevitable blow by the gods of weather. It's the great Humbling. The beginning of the Great Rest.

From the first excited spring plowing, the tiny seeds nurtured in the greenhouse, the hours spent weeding and cultivating, irrigation tape laid out and repaired, water pumped thousands of feet to nourish healthy roots, to the harvest bins dragged alongside plants brimming over with bounty. The mud has warmed and dried, yielded a crop of rainbow-colored nutrition, and now grows cold again. Everything goes back to mud.

I have a few more weeks of digging up root vegetables and packing up the farm. Then the landscape which over the summer saw kids running through fields of flowers and farmers in sunglasses driving tractors carrying watermelons turns into pure tundra. Snow will drift through the fences and gates and dead tomato vines, the earthworms will burrow deep into the soil, and the deer, unhassled, will poke their antlers through the snow to graze on our rye. I will be warm and cozy, pouring through seed catalogs, adjusting the crop map, and reading books about soil health.

I wrote a poem for the occasion:

nests of

mourning doves, robins, nervous killdeer in the bean field

another generation, long ago grown feathers and fledged

empty farm without even crickets

sunny morning after a frost

stillness

life seems to have gone inside

or south on vacation

leaves are gone and far things seem closer

though open space feels larger, even more open

the urgent need to plow, to harrow, to cultivate

is absent

and in its place

a kind of comfort-seeking calm

the need now is to sit down smiling with friends

sharing hot food and drinks

nest

A nice video about factory farming and our "return" to what's good...

2011-10-26T15:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfSGt6rHos&feature=colike

Also, rumor has it that if you dress like a farmer and go to Chipotle on Halloween they'll hook you up with a burrito for 2 bucks. My question: what if you go as a farmer dressed as a mummy? I have to use up all that old frost cloth somehow...

Deets at http://www.chipotle.com/en-US/fan-antics/boorito/boorito.aspx

Farmer Erin's CSA 101 presentation next Thursday! Invite your friends!

2011-10-15T12:25:00.000-07:00

"The Fairport branch of AAUW will host a free talk about community-supported agriculture from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Perinton Recreation Center, 1350 Turk Hill Road.

Erin Bullock, a Fairport native and owner and operator of Mud Creek Farm in Victor, will discuss running a sustainable organic farm specifically targeted to feed our local community without the use of pesticides or herbicides."

Photos from a beautiful fall harvest!

2011-10-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

Hope you guys are enjoying fall's offerings as much as I am!
Tristan shows off our amazing fall broccoli.
We windrow our winter squash and then pick it up into bins on the tractor.
We lay out the squash in our greenhouse to cure for a few weeks. The pie pumpkins will be ready to give out next week! Get your pumpkin pie recipes out.
We really love our new barrel washer-- we wash carrots, beets, celeriac, and other roots in it. It is built by a farmer up in Pulaski, and is basically a rotating wooden barrel with spray-jets of water inside.
Muddy roots in on one side, clean roots out the other side!

Looking for brave souls...

2011-10-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

Do you know anyone who wants to learn to make a living growing food?
Please pass this along...

Mud Creek Farm CSA is looking to hire 2 interns for next year's season (April - November 2012). We grow 50+ types of vegetables in Victor, NY, and have a lot of fun doing it! 2012 will be our fourth year of operation, and we expect to have around 250 CSA members. We grow using organic and sustainable methods. We offer many pick-your-own crops to our members, and have on-farm distributions. We grow all our own transplants in our greenhouse, cultivate with tractors, and use lots of cover crops.
Experience not required, just eagerness to learn how to grow vegetables for a living! Must be a hard worker, be able to stick to tasks even if it's hot, cold, or raining. Attention to detail necessary! Organizational & people skills a plus. Must have a strong back and be able to tell good jokes in the field. Farming is continual learning through new challenges every day. We're excited about having you part of the team! Your position will be 40-50hrs a week, minimum wage. Food included: vegetables are free, other staples can be purchased with us if you choose. We have a nice outdoor kitchen & are excited about sharing delicious farm meals with you. Rustic camping on the farm is an option. We have 28 acres leased and are open to any other side-projects you may wish to embark on, as long as they don't interfere with our main veggie operation. Check out our website for basic information: www.mudcreekfarm.com And browse the blog: www.farmererin.blogspot.com If you're interested in applying, please send a resume & letter of interest (why do you want to be an intern at Mud Creek Farm?) -- erin.dandelion@gmail.com Then come visit this fall! We are harvesting for another 6 weeks, and would love it if you volunteered for a day so we can see how we'll get along.
See you soon, Farmer Erin

Rethinking the american dream

2011-09-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

A great short video!

New Dream Mini-Views: Visualizing a Plenitude Economy from Center for a New American Dream on Vimeo.

Things CSA members can do to further the "plenitude economy":

-Learn to can, or buy an extra freezer. Lots of farm 'seconds' go to waste - reclaim them for your winter meals, instead of supporting industrial farms, the packaging that goes into aluminum-canned or frozen food, and the long-distance shipping of fresh foods in the snowy season. Properly preserved farm food is more nutritious than most of these options anyway. And cheaper.

-Learn how to grow your own food! Even if you're not a green thumb, having some skills in basic food production could be handy someday. We welcome volunteers on the farm, and feel free to ask me any questions, I love sharing knowledge.

-Use the CSA community to your advantage! Find people in your neighborhood to carpool with, have canning and cooking parties with, and exchange recipe ideas.

-Get involved in town politics & help stand up for farmland protection in your community. Preserving the last remaining acres close to the city is important if we want to continue to have a convenient source of organic food, as well as the experience of participating in U-Pick crops & bringing the kids to a real farm. We need voices~ farmers are always time-crunched, so are not as able to represent themselves in town meetings.

Guest posting: Intern Margaret!

2011-09-14T12:01:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I have probably smiled at you in the shed at distribution, or cornered your kids out in the field to show them a nifty plant or beetle. So far it has been an AMAZING experience growing food for you all at Mud Creek and getting to know you a little bit. My days here are fascinating, challenging, very enjoyable, and never the same twice.

One of my most satisfying tasks has been tomato trellising. Hopefully you have been enjoying your pounds and pounds of colorful, lumpy, delicious tomatoes in the share recently. We're overwhelmed too! But it's a hugely satisfying reward after many weeks of care and attention to the farm's half a mile of tomato plants. After raising these little guys in the greenhouse, we transplanted them outside, mulched with straw, and irrigated repeatedly during those long, hot days of July and August. Tristan also pounded metal stakes every several feet between the plants, onto which Colleen and I have been weaving successive layers of trellis to hold the plants upright, for better air circulation and ease of harvest.

Trellising is an intense job, requiring whole-body coordination and always seeming to happen on the hottest, stickiest afternoons. When I trellis, I don long sleeves, gloves, hat, and a backpack holding a box of sisal twine. The twine runs over my shoulder and through two holes at either end of a thick wooden dowel. I tie the twine fast at one end of a row, and then walking along, I scoop up the trailing vines and use the "shuttle" to loop the twine tightly around the stakes. The tomatoes are caught between twine on either side, creating a tall, flat hedge. Rows pass more quickly as my arms and legs learn the rhythmic movements of this giant tapestry weaving/ dance/ wrestling match with the tomato vines. Scoop, walk, twist, pull, scoop, walk, twist, pull-- and so the wild jungle is tamed...only to quickly outgrow its restraints with the next week's rain and sunshine. Bending the wills of these living beings to our own purposes is an ongoing task!

As I returned from trellising last week, sweaty and exhausted, a small movement caught my eye in the cherry tomatoes. A brown spider was weaving her web in the highest tomato branches, the fine threads of her intricate pattern glistening in the sunset. How easy it looks for her! I thought. When she's finished, does her body feel as tired as mine does? Does she feel as proud and accomplished? And what striking similarity there is in our designs, our motives, the motions we make each day in a continual dance with the rest of life.

Oats are up!

2011-09-14T11:49:00.001-07:00

These oats will green up our bare fields for the fall, creating a nice mulch to till into the soil in the spring.

Dust, Mud, and Labor

2011-09-06T09:14:00.001-07:00

Farmwork is always changing. As soon as you start to get bored with one scenerio, another quickly replaces it. I meant to write this a few days ago, about sweat and dust and pushing through. But now I'm wearing my winter hat and muddy boots, having spent the day pulling up sticky dark beets, and last weekend's experience seems like ages and ages ago.

Over Labor Day weekend I got most of our winter cover crops sown-- about 5 or so acres of oats this year. All the bare soil on the farm will now turn green over the next week with sprouting seeds. This is the final epic planting of the year, now we just rest and watch as the rain soaks in our millions of tiny seeds. And for the last few months we just HARVEST. Reap what we've sown.

The epic day this year happened to fall on a Saturday. I knew it was coming, but I never know just WHEN it will happen. Then one day the weather report tells me the Big Rain is coming, so I better get my planting done BEFORE. See, with 5 acres of cover crops, you really can't irrigate or anything. Seeds planted into hot, dry soil might bake in the sun before they get a chance to germinate. It's only a small window of when I can actually drive in the fields with a tractor (not too wet) and right before a rain to water it all in. And then I have to Act.

I was angry because Luke couldn't help. He had to bake bread and go to the Public Market. I thought about begging him to skip the market so he could help me seed the cover crops. My whole crew was gone for the weekend, happy to have a break after a huge harvest week. I had not had a day off in almost 2 weeks. I was exhausted. But I knew this was the important window, and I finally accepted it. Me, a tractor, and my willpower.

Friday morning, after a full week of harvesting, we staked out three acres of new beds in the Pie Field, which is across the street, behind the hedgerow, and about 800 feet long (and shaped like a piece of pie). I had convinced Margaret to work an extra half-day, and we worked well together as a team. By 8:30am sweat was dripping off our faces. The high for the day was 87 degrees, and the humidity was so great that the air seemed almost solid. The field was dry and dusty, and we wore long-sleeve shirts and sunglasses against the glare. We walked the 300' measuring tape around the fields, using 3-4-5 triangle math to make our right angles, jamming in stakes with pink ribbon to mark the corners. About 45 minutes into it, we had to start over, because I wanted to move the whole field 10 feet to the east. It's important stuff, creating new spaces that will grow years and years of vegetables in an organized system of beds. You have to start with a good foundation. But in the heat and the exhaustion, sometimes it feels quite insane.

I borrowed my neighbor Jack's twelve foot grain drill, and his tractor. This tool would help us get the job done fast. I poured it full of oats. I drove up to the first field, pushed down the lever that works the hydraulics, put it into fourth gear, and went. The oats fell out into twenty or so separate chutes that buried them right into the soil about an inch or so down. A grain drill does exactly that-- drills the grain into the ground. No need to do anything else, just wait for the rain.

I switched into high-first gear, and the dust kicked up by the front tires was horrible without sunglasses. Thankfully I had remembered to wear them, but the sweat from my face would build up underneath and cloud the lenses now and then. Another lifesaving item I had thought to wear for the day was a clean T-shirt wrapped around my neck, to sop up the sweat on my face. This worked really well! The day before I had experienced the "not having a clean place on my shirt to wipe my face" phenomenon... you start getting creative, but sometimes you just run out of places. See, the sweat and the tractor grease somehow attract dirt, and also I always end up with black snot at the end of the day. TMI maybe.

So, over the course of the afternoon, all the empty fields got a pass with the oat-filled grain drill. No major disasters! Except that I was running out of light, and more importantly, energy. It was almost 8pm, and I was still sweating. I was so tired and hungry that I felt myself dangerous operating heavy equipment. I was going to run over something. The weather report said the rain would hold off until Sunday afternoon. But Sunday is my Day Off! I was dreading waking up early again. But my feelings of unfairness paled compared to that strong urge that said PLANT, THE RAIN IS COMING. I still needed to get the pathways in the Pie Field seeded to ryegrass & clover. We do this so we can have nice mowed travel lanes around our fields when we're harvesting. Better than mud, or weeds. So I decided to go to sleep (actually collapse in about ten minutes) and get up early the next morning to just "Git-er-done".

I woke at 6:15am Saturday morning. It was dark. I checked the hourly weather and the radar-- a chance of thunderstorms at 8am, then clear until the afternoon when it was really coming. It looked like the early storm was going North of us. I packed a water bottle and some snacks on the tractor. I crossed my fingers, and peeled back the tarp on the grain drill. I poured the clover seed into the hoppers as soon the first light of the dawn allowed. I started her up, and made my passes around the field edges. From the seat of the big tractor, I saw the storm clouds building in the West, as the red sun rose in the East. The heat and the humidity were stifling. I watched the clouds go North, as expected, and for twenty minutes, a giant rainbow covered the Western sky... I took this as a good sign. When I had to run back to the shed for more seed, a four-leaf clover jumped right out in front of me, begging to be picked. I put it into my dusty shirt pocket, and took it as another sign of luck. This is going well, I thought.

I filled the hoppers with ryegrass, and changed the setting (it's a much bigger seed), and went over the same ground. I contemplated how I would seed the edges of the fields, where the stakes were... what I did last year was just walk around the edges with a hand-held seeder. With my energy level where it was (I was a little bug-eyed, talking to myself and making up songs about silly things), I decided against this. Instead I plowed right over all the stakes with the drill, overlapping and pushing down our carefully-placed markers, not needed after this pass anyway. I was ready to return the tractor to Jack's barn, before any giant storm clouds decided to surprise us. I high-tailed it down the road, going almost as fast as the tractor could go. I waved to the guys on the golf course. It was Sunday morning, there was almost no-one on the road. I drove under the Thruway overpass. That was busy... lots of folks going somewhere for their Labor Day off. All I wanted to do was go to bed.

I did get the rest of the day off. Of course, I couldn't feel completely at ease until the raindrops started, much later that evening. And now it's rained over an inch in the past few days, with more expected tonight and tomorrow and the next day. There is an immense satisfaction in getting a job DONE, right when it should have been done, when the timing is so critical. And now I get to sit back and watch my fields turn green.

I'd like to celebrate Labor. Free and glorious labor done for the sake of itself, for the sake of joy, and for the sake of feeding hundreds of people. Labor that comes with dust in the creases of your neck. Labor that results in very deep sleep, healthy hunger, and large biceps. Romantic? Yes. Farming is really tough-- I still strive to earn as much as a teacher makes, have weekends off, health insurance, save for retirement, and go out to dinner sometimes. I'm not quite there yet. I hope that all CSA members realize just how much they are truly and actually supporting their farmers. We are a crazy bunch. Its about more than just getting paid. It's about a making a Living.

Midsummer crop report!

2011-08-24T18:34:00.001-07:00

Thought everyone might want an update about how the crops are doing:

Watermelons look AWESOME - they are huge and beautiful, we just need to be patient for another few weeks until they get super-sweet. It won't be long. Can't wait till the melon-tossing (our most fun harvesting technique) begins.

Onions have been curing in the greenhouse, which hardens their papery skins so that you can keep them on your counter. We're giving out the sweet white onions first, and holding the yellow storage onions for later. Red onions will be handed out next! Overall, not the biggest yield this year, due to the lack of rain, and late planting.

Garlic though, was an awesome crop this year, huge heads. It's hanging in Jack's barn right now, and we'll start giving it out soon. Since garlic keeps well, we might hang on to it for a while (and give you lots of onions in the meantime), and hand out lots of garlic later in the fall, with our potatoes and squash!

Potatoes-- also not the biggest yield this dry year. Next year we'll have to figure out a way to irrigate them (difficult due to our hilling techniques) if it doesn't rain all summer again! The vines on our early plantings are starting to die, which means harvest is imminent-- Maybe next week. Digging potatoes is also a fun kids-helping activity.

We got more leeks! We got lotsa leeks! Get out your leek & potato soup recipes. You can use the whole plant, from just above the roots all the way up to the green leaves-- I like to saute in butter, and add to anything.

Winter Squash look amazing, the field is a sea of green jungle-like vines. I've seen spaghetti squash larger than some of our watermelons. We're keeping them irrigated well, and they look happy. Powdery mildew, the disease that usually means their demise, has just landed on some of their leaves, and now it's a race to the finish: can the squash ripen before the fungus kills the plants? Hope for many days of dry sunny weather, as moisture on the leaves helps the enemy.

Beets and carrots will be plentiful throughout the rest of the season. We really love growing these crops... and eating them!

Celeriac, our delicious fall soup staple, is doing okay, but hasn't gotten as much water as it wanted this summer, so may be smaller, and earlier too.

Fall brassicas (broccoli, cabbage, greens, turnips, radishes, kale) are bursting out from under their row cover. We have had a hard time with the flea beetles this year-- they are hopping tiny black beetles that make all the tiny holes in the leaves. Usually they are just do superficial damage, and our row cover prevents them from munching too much. But this summer they are voracious! Our kale and brussell sprouts are almost toast. I'm hoping that the kale will push through, because it's usually so robust. But I finally broke down, and ordered some expensive certified-organic spray-- Pyganic, it's a pesticide made from chrysanthemums. To save the kale. And to save all the broccoli and cabbage that is about to become flea beetle salad bar. If you see me out in the back field with the sprayer, know that it was my very last choice. I hate spraying. But these tiny little bugs finally got the better of me. Ah well, one of nature's humbling lessons again.

What else... tomatoes! We're in the peak of their production now, and we'll get another good month hopefully. Then we'll harvest green tomatoes before the frost sets in to kill the vines (yes, it's coming--- mid-October usually).

Eggplants will continue to come in, although less production this year than last year for some reason.

Peppers are turning red! Soon we'll stop harvesting them green, and just let them turn red. I love roasting red peppers on the grill, and putting them on sandwiches.

The cucumbers finally are succumbing to downy mildew, the disease which blows in on the wind, and kills them fast. They had a good show, though! What a year for cukes. Summer squash will produce for a few more weeks.

There will be fall fennel in late October. It gets bigger and sweeter in the fall.

Fall parsnips will be big too... but we don't harvest these until November usually. They get sweeter once they're kissed with frost!

NEW PICK-YOUR-OWN CROPS STARTING SOON...

Lots of sunflowers! Make sure you find them, they make such nice table decorations!

Ground cherries (look them up on our website)

Okra

Hot peppers

More cherry tomatoes... in a few weeks it will be unlimited...

Summertime

2011-08-15T18:55:00.000-07:00

We really are in the thick of it. We've started using bushel baskets to harvest our cucumbers and squash into, because our harvest exceeds the amount of grey bins we own!
Tomatoes are ripening-- including the cherry tomatoes, which will start producing by the thousands really really soon.
The lettuce has been soaking up the rain, and we've enjoyed the break of not irrigating for a while.
The flower garden is OUT OF CONTROL. Pick a bouquet for a friend! Bring some to work! A good chance to spread the word about Mud Creek Farm-- we'll be starting sign-up for 2012 memberships in a month :)
You might notice that Luke and Erin are not around this week-- we're up in Vermont, on Lake Champlain, at Luke's family reunion! This is a rare chance for us to leave the farm, and give the interns a chance at managing harvest. We have complete trust that they will do a great job. Let them know what you think of everything this week, your words of appreciation are sure to go far. We hope they will use this week of managing as a learning experience to help prepare them for their future farms!
On the way to Vermont, we stopped by the NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association) Summer Conference, in Amherst, Massachusetts. Instead of attending workshops, I spent the weekend at farm visits, and learning about using draft horses to do fieldwork instead of tractors!
It was a beautiful sight to see. These photos are from Natural Roots CSA Farm -- they have about 300 members, 5 giant Belgians, and no weeds at all.
We were totally impressed by their set-up.
Here, the farmer cultivates a row of tiny spinach seedlings.
Now they are planting broccoli with a horse-drawn transplanter.
We dream of one day having horses on our farm. Eli, our intern who also works at Small World Bakery, has two seasons under his belt apprenticing at horse-powered farms. He knows the basics of harnessing and driving a team, and feels just about ready to take care of his own. We hope he sticks around the area, and helps us bring horses into our operation
While horses might seem less efficient and require more time, land, and patience, in the long run we think they might be a very sustainable solution. With the price of gas and diesel so high, they might actually be cheaper. And then there is the quality of life consideration. Working with animals is highly rewarding-- who doesn't love horses?

And the unpleasantness of working with tractors (the smell of exhaust, the noise, the gas and oil) is out of the picture when you're working with horses. Any task becomes quiet, peaceful work-- no earplugs required. I am smitten.

Taking our farm to the next level (horse power) will take a bit of rearranging. We have lots to think about. First order: finding a land base with enough pasture and hay fields to support animals, and getting a barn. If anyone has thoughts about this, let me know!

Garlic Harvest!

2011-07-29T19:14:00.000-07:00

We had an amazing crop of garlic this year!

We hang it up to cure in our neighbor Jack's barn for a few weeks-- it dries down to get those nice papery husks which help it store at room temperature for a long time. We'll start clipping it down and cleaning it up to give out with our CSA shares soon.

Mud Creek Farm's very own grain!

2011-07-22T06:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's hot out. Sweat starts dripping off our faces around 7:20am and doesn't stop until 8pm. We drink several gallons of water a day. We've been getting up at 5:30am to get the harvest done before noon. Meanwhile, we are trying to plant all our fall broccoli and cabbage, and keep them watered enough to survive. The lower field we're planting into has 400 foot rows, which seem to go on FOREVER when you're kneeling in the middle of them drenched with sweat, sticking tiny seedlings into the dirt. The soil is like hard chunks of concrete, baked in the sun, without any rain to soften them. The earthworms have gone far underground, seeking the deep moisture left from the spring. The rye stems, which we plowed under in this field several weeks ago, are still completely intact, sometimes looking like mulch straw in the soil.

We often grow winter rye as a cover crop, to add organic matter into the soil during the times when we're not growing a vegetable crop on the ground. Instead of harvesting it, we plow it under just when it's at its height of growth. Basically we are composting right on the field-- but composting needs moisture to activate the little critters (fungi, earthworms, bacteria, etc.) that decompose the rye straw and turn it into rich soil organic matter. No rain = no composting. The hard soil chunks and the dry rye straw just sit there until there is moisture. So we put up with harsh planting conditions, hoping that our little cabbage seedlings are strong enough to hold on. We keep them on life-support: our 400 foot drip irrigation lines provide enough immediate moisture for their roots to venture down into the deeper subsoil, where they can access more hospitable conditions. We blanket them with row cover, which keeps the moisture in and the cabbage moths out.

But here's the exciting news from last week: we are grain farmers now!

We had a back field of about four and a half acres (across the street), which we planted to winter rye last fall, to prepare the ground for future vegetable crops. Until May, the field had standing water from our incredibly wet spring, so we couldn't plow it, or even bush-hog it, until it got to be five feet tall. The rye started "heading up"... and Luke and I took a walk through the field a few weeks ago, discussing what we should do with the field. Luke is a baker... and he got an idea in his head.

Our neighbor Jack, who farms a few miles down the road from us, grows corn, soybeans, oats, hay, and wheat. He is always extremely helpful, stopping by at just the right moment when something is broken, and always having the right tool back at his barn to fix it. We asked if he would harvest our rye for us with his combine. He said sure!

Here's a few photos from the exciting morning. As he entered the back field, I noticed the humorous contrast between this huge green machine and our eggplant field.
Once in that great big sea of golden grain, I quickly realized that this was indeed the tool for the job. He got the whole field done in less than an hour-- imagine how we would have done it before machines like this!

We all crowded around to watch his first few passes!
I climbed up in the hopper to see what it looked like-- our very first grain harvest!
We ended up yielding about eighty bushels.
Jack even baled the straw for us. Now we're more than just vegetable growers-- we're grain farmers.

Luke plans to make a whole lot of rye bread. Check it out Small World Bakery's booth at the market in a couple of weeks!

(Neighbor kid Gracie enjoying a few raw turnips)

Guest posting: Intern Kim!

2011-07-08T07:13:00.000-07:00

Hey folks! My name is Kim Henderson, and I’m one of the five interns Erin has working on Mud Creek Farm this year. So far it’s been a really intense, but amazing experience. I thought I’d share a little bit about myself, and my experience here so far with everyone, so you could understand what it is like to be a farm intern.

People often ask me what brought me to Mud Creek. I think there are a variety of reasons I decided to join Erin’s team this summer. For one thing, as a farmer’s daughter, I had experienced how my family farms, but I wanted to experience other, different farms. Erin’s farm is about as far away from my family’s farm as you can get. For one thing, Erin’s farm is organic, and it is a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture.) My father’s farm is also a vegetable farm, but he grows food on a commercial scale, he sells most of what he grows at auctions, and he is not organic (although he is moving in that direction.) I have also farmed on Rivka Davis’ Road’s End Organic Farm, in Starkey, NY. Rivka’s farm is a lot closer to Erin’s farm in many respects, except she wasn’t a CSA either, she sold all of her produce at farmer’s markets. So it’s been a great experience being able to work on three very different farms, all of which are very different scale of production, and managed very differently as well.

Besides farming, my interests are wide and varied. I attended Birthingway College of Midwifery for three years, and see myself as a midwife someday. Farming will probably just be something I do as a side thing, maybe three acres at most, enough to feed my own family. I think I’ll primarily want to focus on attending home-births, growing herbs for my midwifery business, and making herbal medicines. But I do think farming and midwifery can go hand in hand, since many of the midwives I know are also small-scale farmers and/or homesteaders. I think this is because midwives tend to know the value of good nutrition, and because both midwifery and farming are about being good stewards of the earth, while helping people be healthy and heal. One of the most famous midwifery authors, Michel Odent, a French man who started revolutionary water birth centers in France, was a farmer before he became an OB. He wrote a book very well known in midwifery circles called “The Farmer and the Obstetrician.” I need to read that book.

I also like adventures of all types, everything from epic bike trips, to dancing, to hiking, traveling (often with little or no money,) trying to tan animal hides, making home-brews, swimming, fishing, hunting, punk rock shows, eating wild foods, bonfires, canoing, and all sorts of other adventures. For example, I once hitchhiked all the way from Portland, OR to Minnesota to meet up with a group of people, most of whom I didn’t know, to harvest wild rice from lakes in the northern woods. That turned out to be a great adventure! And by the way, freshly harvested wild rice is the best tasting grain you can imagine!

I’ve lived a very unconventional life so far, but it has been very full and imaginative. I’m so glad Mud Creek Farm has become part of my adventure this year!

Battles

2011-07-02T11:43:00.001-07:00

July is upon us! The veggies are rolling out of the fields onto our tables, the tractors are rolling around the fields, the lightning bugs are giving us an evening show, and the salads are amazing!

The days are long, and the sweating starts before 8am and doesn't stop till the sun goes down.

It's about this time when I start thinking that growing vegetables is kind of a battle. So much is invested in each plant, from planting the tiny seed, preparing the soil, keeping it watered, weeding, pruning, thinning, hoeing, cultivating. I begin to feel motherly tendencies, and I want to protect these plants with all of my might.

But vegetables, especially the kinds that have been bred to be most sweet and tender, are delicious. And word gets out, among the non-human population. Critters on four legs, critters on six legs, critters that fly, critters that slide on their own slime. Critters that metamorphasize. They all approach the buffet table and ready themselves for a nice meal, on someone else's tab. It's hard to fend them all off!

Times like these, it's easy to see how some farmers who find themselves feeling vulnerable against all of these "pests" choose to use chemicals as an effective tool for vegetable warfare.

Even the nutsedge, velvetleaf, purslane, and quackgrass seem to march into the territory with bloody axes swinging, ready to push out our tender helpless cucumber seedlings. Having the easy option of herbicide might be a sizable axe to swing back at them.

But here at Mud Creek Farm, we recognize that chemically-created death potions are not the answer, because of long-term negative effects on both us and the environment.

So our tools for battle? We have to be creative.

For weeds we use a variety of techniques, which we are still honing and perfecting. When it comes down to it, we hand-pull. But this is a last resort! We have a cultivating tractor just for weeding. And different kinds of hoes. We are even experimenting with flame-weeding! And timing cover crops correctly help us lower the overall weed seed-bank.

For bugs, we mostly use rotation. This means that cabbage doesn't get planted in the same field where cabbage was last year. Certain insects require special consideration. For Colorado Potato Beetle (CPB), we have to hand-pick the larvae off the plants a few times. We are experimenting with interplanting buckwheat in our potato field to attract the "good bugs" that will parasitize the CPB's. We let the ladybugs and lacewings keep other bugs in check. Usually a big outbreak of a pest will be quickly dealt with by a food web that is healthy and diverse.

Larger, furrier pests, can be more difficult because the food web that keeps them in check is partially broken by the strain of Victor's over-development. We do have a few resident hawks and foxes that prey on meadow voles, rabbits, and woodchucks. Our job is to keep the area thirty feet around the fields mowed low, so the predators can do their hunting. Occasionally we set traps, when severe nibbling is occuring. For the deer, we have the electric fence, which works about 80% or so. We still see hoof prints in the field, but it is only the brave souls. I am hoping my neighbor's soybean field down the road will distract them soon from our green beans! We also do enjoy our venison steaks. We might also try spraying hot sauce on some of their favorite plants, and spreading dog hair around the edges to dissuade them.

On these cloudless, really HOT days, sometimes the sun seems like a pest. Slowly drying the soil out to the point where the plants get stressed and will produce less, or fail to produce an edible harvest. Lettuce bolts (check out our "Christmas tree lettuce") -- it turns bitter before it makes a big harvestable head. Broccoli gets weird, staggered crowns. Arugula and bok choi make flowers. Forget those crops, let's save the rest of the farm-- and then the farmers get stressed! Hours are spent under that blazing sun, fixing and moving irrigation lines, turning on and off valves, and trying to get the pump started. Wouldn't it be so much nicer if it just rained?

For this battle, we have no chance of victory at all really. We just have to make do with what we are given. Half an inch of rain? I'll take it! Three inches of rain? Okay, I'll take that too! No rain? Sure. The ground has survived worse.

Farming-- what a profession to be in! Experiencing a direct connection with the climate and the natural ecosystem have their benefits: we get to work outdoors and have nature all around us! But the realities are that vegetables are just really pretty vulnerable. It takes all our might to protect them.

First two weeks of distribution

2011-06-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

After a crazy spring of planting, we finally have an abundance of food coming out of the fields! Here's some scenes from pick-up.

First harvest 2011

2011-06-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

The crops rise up towards the sun, drinking up the water from the soil and the goodness of the earth. The fields overflow with spring salad bounty.
When we eat all these greens, our bodies are filled with their vital energy.
We laugh in the fields, we sweat. We tell stories and sing songs.
We bend over to pick, fill our bins and carry them back to be washed and chilled.
The harvest becomes a rhythm.
The birds and the weeds join in the rhyme.
What satisfaction to witness the fruits of our own labor. And to lie down at night and sleep very very soundly.

The To-Do List

2011-06-04T13:29:00.000-07:00

I make at least 2 or 3 lists a day. On the backs of envelopes, in dusty notebooks, and we even have this great whiteboard, which is just a big piece of plexiglass screwed to an old refrigerator we use for keeping snacks in, in our outdoor kitchen.
Lately, it seems that even though all of us are working long, hard days, accomplishing a lot, the list is only growing. The satisfying job of erasing something from our whiteboard usually is accompanied by the less satisfying job of writing three more new tasks. But this is the "crunch time" and I was expecting it! We are soon going to add the category of HARVEST to our list which already includes
SOIL PREP, TRANSPLANTING, DIRECT SEEDING, GREENHOUSE SEEDING, IRRIGATION, CULTIVATION, HOEING, HAND WEEDING, and ODD JOBS.

Yesterday we planted about a third of an acre into potatoes. I dug trenches with a one-bottom plow on the tractor, and we dropped spuds at one foot spacing down the line.
It was a big field! I left every third bed open, and we seeded buckwheat, because the flowers will draw beneficial insects that will hopefully keep our Colorado Potato Beetle population down. An experiment in biological control.
Speaking of insects, in our outdoor kitchen we've been having visitors of the apian variety-- Mason Bees! We have these wooden cutting boards (from Goodwill) that have two holes in each side where there were once metal handles coming out to prop the board up on a kitchen table I assume. We noticed that bees (we thought they were honey bees) were going in and out of the holes. Then they plugged up the holes with mud! I was okay with this-- I was going to plug up the holes anyway so we didn't have bees bothering us. But yesterday, I tried to plug the toaster into the power strip, and I noticed they had plugged up every single grounding hole on the strip with dry caked-on mud! Now I was angry. What were these bees doing anyway? I googled "Mason Bees" and found out they were solitary native bees, just looking for a place to lay their eggs. They stuff pollen into the holes with the eggs, and seal them off with clay. Amazing. I decided to build them a better home. We'll see if they like it!
Check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGDO7lfG7sk if you want to build your own!

Heat and what it means to vegetables

2011-05-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

The summer-like weather we've been having lately has been really nice-- if you have an ice-cream cone in your hand. Out in the field, it can be brutal. You can see the heat rising off the bare tilled earth, making the trees in the distance look all wavy. While the newcomer may only be able to stand an hour or so hunched over planting thousands of tiny onion plants, us farmers and farmhands are teaching our bodies to withstand it. We drink gallons of water each day, eat salty foods, and take breaks in the shade every few hours. We wear long sleeves and wide-brimmed hats to keep from burning. Gloves for the hands, sunglasses for the eyes, knee-pads for the knees. We sweat, and we learn to ignore it. At the end of the day, you can trace the white salt lines on our shirts.

Before this last big storm (which really didn't drop too much rain) we hustled to get all the plants in the ground-- tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, fennel, squash, cucumbers, beans, carrots, herbs, leeks, flowers, lettuce, and over 12,000 onions. We plowed while the ground was still somewhat dry-- several new acres across the street are opened up now and will be planted into in a few weeks. Some of the interns worked their first 10-hour day. It amazes me that they were all still smiling at the end of the week, as I wished them a good Memorial Day weekend and told them to rest up and stretch a lot.

For vegetables, what does the heat mean?

Well, all our spring crops are pretty confused, because they were supposed to go in the ground a few weeks earlier than they did, and the weather they like is something cooler than the 80 degrees we've been experiencing. Peas, radishes, turnips, arugula, spinach, tat soi, bok choi, broccoli, and cabbage are some of the crops that love cool weather-- they may decide to "bolt" which means flower early instead of making nice big leaves. That would be sad, but we take what nature gives us, and there's not much we can do about it.

The summer crops love this weather! All those peppers, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, beans, and eggplants are enjoying themselves. We will do what we can to stay on top of our planting schedule and encourage these heat-loving plants to do what they do best-- flower and make fruit!

Well, I guess it's another reason to plant fifty different vegetables-- when nature rolls the dice at least something is going to win. At least we're not under the Mississippi River.

We all put our eggs into some basket. We do everything we can to ensure our endeavors are successful. This robin built a nest on top of our fridge in our outdoor kitchen. We are constantly eating meals and snacking nearby, and scaring her off repeatedly. She must be pretty stressed out. But she's learned to deal with us, and her eggs have hatched and I see her hopping about with worms in her mouth, trying to sneak by when we're not opening the fridge door.
Our chicken mascot, Henrietta, lives a free and lonely life, but is quite in her element, pecking for worms under the mulch and in the woods. She is luckier than most hens.
And our resident mourning dove succeeded in raising her two children on top of our cultivator parts in our tool shed, even though I constantly bothered her by going into the shed to get a wrench or screwdriver several times a day. Here's some photos of the last week in the nest, when they got to be so big she couldn't sit on them anymore.
Awkward-looking, aren't they? She waited until they were almost as big as her, and we watched their feathers develop every day from spiky little pins to more graceful fluff.
Finally, one day last week I went in to get a tool, and I saw the mother off the nest, a foot away, looking scared and strange. She had been talking to them, words of encouragement I can only imagine. I left them alone for a few hours. Then I couldn't stand it anymore and went to look again. Only one bird was left in the nest, with it's awkward neck stretched out, looking around nervously. I went up to it, then stepped back, thinking I should get my camera to get one last picture before it was gone from our lives. At that moment, it flew right up to a high branch in the nearby apple tree. Just like that, nonchalantly, like it had always known how to fly. I looked down at the empty nest, and felt a bit sad, but also proud of that mourning dove family. And privileged to have witnessed the Big Step in it's life.

All of the natural things we get to see around the farm exist here only because there is a healthy eco-system around the Mud Creek/McMahon Road area. We saw orioles this week, and goldfinches, and bluebirds, and pileated woodpeckers. Red foxes commonly cross our fields. Blue herons and red-tailed hawks build their large nests in the wild spaces and edges that civilization hasn't destroyed yet.

We need to all work together as a community to stand up for these citizens of the world, because animals don't have a voice, a vote, or a lobbyist. The land across the tracks from our fields is slated for development, and they want to cram 100 houses on it. I got up last Monday at a town board meeting, to speak out against it. Read the article here: http://www.mpnnow.com/business/x1556869793/Housing-project-in-Victor-draws-concern-from-residents More about that drama later, I'm sure!

The 2011 farm crew!

2011-05-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

From left to right: Eli, Luke, me, Tristan, Kim, Colleen, & Margaret
A hard-working bunch!

Rain and rest

2011-05-17T10:14:00.000-07:00

It's raining again! But this time I welcomed it with open arms as a refreshing break. We had a nice full week of sunshine and warm weather, and got almost caught up with our planting and plowing. We did our first cultivation with our Farmall Cub, and started irrigating.
We plowed all the fields that were supposed to be plowed a few weeks ago, including a new field across the street. The plus side of waiting another few weeks is we got extra growth from our winter cover crop, rye and vetch. It was over three feet tall, and we turned it under the soil to compost right on the spot. Now we have to wait another week or so before we plant anything into it, until the rye decomposes slightly. This means more delay for the onions, potatoes, peppers, and other crops waiting to go in the ground. But the extra organic matter will benefit the vegetables, as well as the nitrogen that the hairy vetch fixes into the soil.
The ground was just about perfect moisture, and the plowing was easy and satisfying.
Meanwhile, as the blazing sun baked the freshly tilled beds we've been planting on, there was plenty of work to be done keeping these baby plants alive! The tender lettuce that we take from the greenhouse and plunk into the ground needs immediate watering or it will wilt in the almost eighty-degree heat. The tiny carrot, parsnip, and beet seeds we direct seed into the field need irrigating almost every day to keep them from drying out until they germinate. Stressful times! We try to stay patient and calm with our irrigation work or it gets quickly frustrating.
Our interns, Colleen, Tristan, and Kim, are getting better at rolling out drip tape lines, hooking up valves, and fixing leaks. It's hard work in the heat, and we all got a little sunburned. We planted celeriac, potatoes, scallions, herbs, and more lettuce, greens, and carrots. We have well over an acre of vegetables planted so far, and the farm looks huge and beautiful.
We even managed to pick dandelion flowers for making dandelion wine! Now we take a few days off to rest up for the next big planting haul-- early next week maybe? Stop by to see some busy farmers when the soil dries up again.

Sun! Busy times!

2011-05-07T18:29:00.000-07:00

The sun has emerged from the clouds, and it's kicking us into gear. While we still have to wait a few days until the fields are dry, we're busy getting lots of other projects done. We've started the mowing-- we mow around the fields to keep the meadow rodent population at bay (mostly voles, rabbits, groundhogs). And it does look really nice. Feel free to stop by the farm and take a walk around-- we've got lots planted and the place is starting to shine.
We did a bunch of tractor maintenance... and there's more to do this week. We want all our tools in the best working order, so we can get the job done efficiently when the ground is ready! Here is Tristan (an intern) greasing the bearings on our 1948 Farmall Cub.
We finally got our tractor shed up! It will park all 3 tractors, the lawn mower, the fertilizer spreader, and 2 pallets of organic fertilizer. Very exciting, as it will clear up room in our tool sheds and our intern kitchen!
Plants keep coming out of the greenhouse by the thousands, ready to go in the ground. We are gearing up for another round of broccoli, cabbage, bok choi, lettuce, and more.
The onions (now out of the greenhouse, but still waiting in their trays) are looking spectacular. Hopefully they will hang on for another 2 weeks so we can plow the field they'll be going into. The winter rye we are plowing under is over two feet tall now, and needs a bit of time to decompose before we plant the crop. But it will enrich the soil by composting in place. When I go out to the field to check the soil moisture, each shovel-full turned over produces a few HUGE earthworms-- they are doing their job of improving soil structure.

May Day

2011-05-02T18:42:00.001-07:00

We finally got plants in the ground! A lot of them! Enjoy these photos:

Hard rain and hope

2011-04-26T18:05:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, on Earth Day, we finally got some plants in the ground! The season has officially begun. I'm sure they are happily drinking up all this rain right now, glad to put their roots down into real dirt and not be confined to their plastic greenhouse tray cells. Five beds of broccoli, three beds of cauliflower, and three beds of cabbage. All planted by hand, tenderly but efficiently. We put frost cloth over everything, to keep the flea beetles and cabbage moths off the plants, but also to give them some extra warmth on the colder nights. In a few weeks we'll take it off and cultivate the weeds out.

It was quite a haul to get all those plants in. Six of us working all day. As evening approached, my farmhands left, but I was still going. I knew the rain was coming again that night, and the forecast for the next week was more and more precipitation. So I fought off exhaustion and planted six beds of sugar snap peas. I tilled, marked beds, and pushed the seeder down the rows until it was too dark for me to see the lines anymore. The raindrops were already starting to fall. It was my first twelve hour day and I was beat!

But I'm glad we pushed a bit. We are still very behind, the greenhouse is overflowing with plants ready to go in the field, and we have missed several successions of spinach, greens, beets, and carrots. We need to plow half the farm. All this will happen as soon as we get a window of dry sunny weather! I am trying to conserve my energy, get spare projects done and rest up for the next big planting day. I am done being depressed about the rain. We will just have a late season, plant extra root storage crops to keep distribution going into November. We adapt, we order more potting soil to tide the plants over in the greenhouse.
We were in the greenhouse all day today potting up peppers. Thunder, lightning, torrential rain, hot humidity, we worked through it all. I looked out to see the big raindrops splashing in the mud puddles. The ground is so saturated it just can't take anymore water. Puddles and small lakes sit on the fields where I've never seen them before. Mud Creek is living up to its name, and flows with a strong current, the color of milk chocolate.

Tonight it was just about dusk and I walked outside and noticed how the setting sun was turning the storm clouds pink and orange. Then a large rainbow appeared, right in front of me. Maybe a sign of hope? It can't rain forever.

A mourning dove has built her nest amongst our cultivator parts on a shelf in the shed. This picture shows one egg, but now she has two. We're hoping to see the little ones hatch out... we are careful and quiet when we go near to grab a tool. She remains there motionless looking at you with her sleek body and beady black eyes, until, at the last minute she flutters up with a startling exclamation. But she always comes back to the nest later. Even after that huge windstorm yesterday, she's still there. Dedication.

Eggs and Baskets

2011-04-20T13:24:00.001-07:00

In the spirit of the holiday this weekend, I thought I'd share a funny story from the farm that sheds some light on the origins of some of our Easter practices. See, we have this chicken.

Her name is Henrietta. She was donated to the farm by a city dweller who happens to keep backyard hens, but this hen misbehaved. She started pecking other hens' eggs and eating them! Once they get this habit, they can't break it, and the other hens will learn how good eggs actually taste. But she wasn't pecking her own eggs. Apparently she would pace back and forth outside the nestboxes waiting for the other hens to lay their eggs.

But she is so cute! She is a Golden Polish Crested hen, and she wears an elegant (silly) hat. So we took her in, and she lives a free life at the farm, mostly spending her time eating beetles, worms, and grubs from under the leaves in the forest.
One day she was pacing around the shed looking up at the tables and tractors, and I suddenly knew what she was looking for. A nest to lay her eggs. I had figured she would just find a cozy place under a shrub or something, but apparently she wanted something more nest-like. So I grabbed an old wicker basket, and immediately she perked up and looked interested. We put some hay in the bottom of it so she would be more at home. We even put a golf ball in it, because if they see another hen's egg they figure the place is hen-approved.

The bottom was rounded, so the first time she hopped in there, she rolled right over! She was frightened off for a while, and kept trying to get up on the tractors we had parked in the shed. Then we realized that she wanted to be up high somewhere, away from predators perhaps. A good instinct. So the basket was placed on the seat of our Allis Chalmers G, with stones around the bottom to keep it from rolling.

She could wait no longer-- up into the basket she hopped, and spent half an hour making sure every piece of straw was in place, turning and moving it around with her beak into a comfortable nest.
When we returned an hour later, a clean bright white egg lay in the straw next to the golf ball. I felt a strong urge to get out the Easter egg dye. It seems that this holiday lines up pretty well to natural farm life... hens don't lay many eggs over the winter, but as soon as spring comes around they start to get the urge. The egg hunting tradition may have evolved out of a practical search to find the chosen nesting spots of free-range hens around the farmyard. And the basket? Complete with straw (not the pink cellophane kind though!)... who knew that was the preferred place for eggs? Well, ask any kid this weekend and they could tell you that. Foil-wrapped chocolate eggs especially. Enjoy!

Earth Day Celebrations

2011-04-19T07:57:00.000-07:00

Some fun "green" events coming up (Mud Creek will be there!):

Sierra Club's 13th Annual Environmental Forum - Thursday, April 21st

Earth Day Expo - Saturday, April 30th

And I thought we all needed a reminder of sunny things...

Winter's finale

2011-04-17T13:48:00.000-07:00

I am watching through the window as large lazy snowflakes fall outside. They seem to be floating confusedly towards the ground, looking around at the green grass and the daffodils, and agreeing with me-- what the heck are they doing there? The fifty-mile-an-hour wind gusts we had earlier today have a different personality-- something like "get out of my way!" I guess spring brings surprises.

Today we worked in the greenhouse all day, trying to find extra square feet to cram trays of plants in, that were destined to get planted out into the field last week. The roots of the poor little guys are starting to curl around their pots, seeking more of that promised nourishment. We gave the hungriest of them more space (larger-celled trays) and more soil, spending the day that we would otherwise have spent putting them in the ground.

But the ground, alas, is not ready for them still! I did get about an acre plowed last Tuesday, and now we just wait for it to dry again so we can till and plant. As soon as that window comes, I will need all hands on deck to help me plant. We transplant all by hand (it's more fun and social that way) so if anyone would like to help, give me a holler! Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, swiss chard, kale, onions, kohlrabi, and more...

In the meantime, check out this documentary film showing Wednesday night at the Victor Library:

Wednesday, April 20, 7 PM Victor Free Library, 15 West Main Street, Victor, 14564
(behind Canandaigua National Bank)

GASLAND
"The largest domestic natural gas drilling boom in history has swept across the United States. The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of "fracking" or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a "Saudia Arabia of natural gas" just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown."

Almost spring

2011-04-10T18:50:00.001-07:00

Today's high temperature was over seventy degrees. I saw the first mosquito, a robin gathering dry grass for a nest, five deer, three woodchucks, four woodpeckers, one rabbit, I wore a T-shirt at 7pm, and we tuned up the plow. My neighbor Jack has generously let us borrow it for the third year, and has coached me through the ins and outs of coulter repair, field adjustment, and soil moisture.
We hooked up the old plow and drove out to the fields to try it out. I went about twenty feet into the field and stopped, got off the tractor, and dug my hands into the soil. Still a bit too wet. It was truth that I didn't want to hear or believe. More plowing could wreck the soil. I thought about all the CSA members expecting their spring vegetables May 30th... argh, these decisions! I stood there pressing clumps of soil into balls, and felt defeated. You just can't negotiate with the ground-- it determines the whole game. So we stopped.

The heat tomorrow will build more, and then thunderstorms are forecast for all day tomorrow. Hopefully we won't be under a heavy cloud and they'll just blow over us... then in a few days I can get back out there on the tractor and try plowing again. Meanwhile the greenhouse is almost overflowing, and there are hundreds of chard, kale, and lettuce plants ready to go in the ground. If only the ground were ready for them! We will probably have to pot up some of these plants, to give them bigger space to grow in, until the field is ready. The time is soon, no doubt. The spring peepers are singing at the top of their lungs.

Slow thaw

2011-04-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

We took a walk through the fields on a very balmy afternoon a few days ago. There was a very distinct spring-y smell in the air-- the ground warming up, the earthworms wriggling around, the natural processes of decomposition beginning again, and all the life of the soil waking up. I dug into the field with a shovel, and felt the moisture level with my hands... getting drier. (How exciting to smell this soil and remember last summer!) The sun and the wind have been doing their best to prepare the fields for cultivation. Driving a tractor into a field before it's ready (dry enough) you can do serious permanent damage to the soil structure, compacting it and making it inhabitable for our tender, particular vegetables. So while every ounce of my anxious-for-spring intentions say "plow! plow!", again my schedule defaults to the whims of the weather and the dirt.

After my walk it rained almost two inches again, and the fields puddled up again with the great mud. Robins hop around pulling earthworms, my boots make squishing sounds walking around, and the grey clouds force us to burn more propane to keep our greenhouse warm. It will probably be another week or so before we can even think about entering the field with a plow. This pushes back my pre-planned schedule a ways. We are 2 or 3 weeks behind. Peas should be going in the ground... yesterday! Everything depends now on the sun and the rain and the temperatures-- but it looks like the first harvest might not be until June. If we push back the pick-up days a week or two we will extend the distributions into November, to make sure we give out 22 weeks of produce.

Meanwhile, I've been in the greenhouse a lot lately, planting thousands of seeds in trays, making room for more trays... we're close to maximum capacity! We've had some super helpful volunteers who've come out to help with all this seeding -- thank you so much. If you're interested in getting your hands dirty a bit, email me to get on the volunteer list. There's lots to do.

And hopefully it will stop precipitating soon so we can get this season started!

Free carrot tastings at the Mud Creek table!

2011-03-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

Check us out at the first Rochester CSA Fair this Saturday

April is right around the corner

2011-03-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

And the onions are off to a solid start! They love the sunny weather we've been getting, growing sometimes a half-inch a day.
We had a really fun planting day last Friday, and got a whole bunch of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower seeds planted in the greenhouse.
We also worked on getting a new hoophouse frame up, which will be our new tractor-parking shed. Someday when we own our own land we'll have a real barn, but until then these temporary structures will have to do. They work quite well with used billboards on top-- we buy them from the billboard company, Lamar, and they are sturdier than any tarp you can get at the hardware store.

First seeds planted!!!

2011-03-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

Amidst all this snow and ice, the greenhouse is a protected bubble of warmth. The first seeds were started in the greenhouse yesterday: 30,000 onions! We built special trays for them, which were simply cardboard (with drainage holes drilled in) fitted into bread trays. We then put about 3 1/2" of nice organic potting soil (from Lighthouse Gardens in Honeoye Falls) in, and broadcast our seeds. We will start up our heater soon to keep the seeds warm and toasty (55 degrees at night) so they can grow into healthy starts. We'll transplant these into the field around mid-April. It sure feels good to get my hands in dirt again.
If anyone would like to stop by and lend a hand, we'll be planting the whole month of March in the greenhouse, and also doing outside projects on nice days. Get on our volunteer list for updates.

Green Guide

2011-02-26T20:34:00.001-08:00

Sustainability made simple! is a handy guide to being "green". From the California Academy of Sciences, a really great museum you should visit next time you decide to take the train across the country to San Francisco. Photos below are our train ride:

This last photo is a bit disturbing: mountains covered in forests of brown, dead pine trees in an area of Colorado. Apparently a small beetle is the cause of the devastation. Climate change will affect us all more severely than we expect, as these bugs move in to new areas and their populations explode. Another reason to read the Green Guide and start doing things to fight global warming. Brighton is doing something about it, is your town?

Keep our water organic!

2011-02-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

Local showings of the documentary GASLAND-- learn about what Hydrofracking is, and why we don't want it in the Finger Lakes region. Large gas and oil companies are scrambling to get the last bit of fossil fuels out of the ground, even if they have to hydraulically fracture the bedrock and risk polluting our watershed with dangerous chemicals. Let's move toward sustainable, renewable energy instead!

Following are dates and times of upcoming showings of the film GASLAND. The film is 105 minutes long and there will be some time for discussion afterward. Each showing is free and open to the public.

Tuesday, 2/15/11, 7 PM
Temple B'rth Kodesh
2131 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester 14618

Sunday, 2/27/11, 2-4:15 PM
Henrietta Public Library
455 Calkins Road, Henrietta 14467

Tuesday, 3/1/11, 7 PM
First Unitarian Church of Rochester
220 Winton Road South, Rochester 14610

Winter is for visiting California farms!

2011-02-02T15:41:00.000-08:00

With all the stories of snowstorms and below zero temps happening in the northeast, I thought I'd take the time to boast about our California vacation, and share some photos from farms Luke and I have been visiting on the west coast. Farming is a very different game out here, but we're learning a few new things we can take back with us.
We visited Full Belly Farm, the CSA I used to be an intern at, where I first got to experience the full-time farming life. They just keep expanding. Over 1200 CSA members, they sell to every local gourmet restaurant in the Bay Area, grow fruits, nuts, sheep, chickens, dry beans, mill their own corn and wheat flour, and the second generation is starting a catering business.We liked hanging out with their animals. We want to do hens like this-- happy hens that run around eating bugs and green grass. This makes the yolks so orange! And the jersey cows, we want one of those too. (Eventually)
We visited friends in Los Angeles for a few days, and got a glimpse at the glamorous farmers markets in Santa Monica and Hollywood. Things cost a bit more, and there are avocado, citrus fruit, and olive oil vendors, but things are about the same. Except they have this really cool cafe right next to the Hollywood Farmers Market, called the Farmers Kitchen. They use surplus produce from farmers, host classes for the community, and make jams and sauces. Part of the same non-profit that runs the markets. Nice!
And of course, we did some barn dancin'... this at Pie Ranch, near Santa Cruz. I can't wait until we get a barn someday and we can have a string band play for a bunch of smiling people twirling around.
Now on to the urban farms of San Francisco. We had heard much good press about a few projects in particular. Hayes Valley Farm is one amazing place, set on an empty lot (a whole block actually) owned by the city, that used to be a freeway ramp before the '89 earthquake. It had lain vacant since then, becoming a forest of ivy and trash. Some inspired folks turned it into a center for educating urban dwellers about growing food.
Because they only intend on occupying the space temporarily (the lot will no doubt get developed soon-- it is San Francisco after all), they decided to leave the asphalt and concrete in place, and simply build soil on top of it, that they can then move to other gardens when the bulldozers come. What a creative concept! They throw down layers of cardboard 5 feet thick, then a bunch of horse manure, then wood chips-- all of which they can get delivered for almost nothing, and which biodegrade into a rich soil.
They plant lots of leguminous plants to enrich the soil with more nitrogen, and when we visited, they were harvesting swiss chard, collards, broccoli, lettuce, arugula, and more.
Their big mission seems to be community education and empowerment-- we participated in a thorough tour of the place, guided by a volunteer, with 30 other folks. It's a hot spot. People from the neighborhood were weeding, pruning, and harvesting, and learning about beneficial insects and companion plants.
They even had this solar-charging station, where you could sit at a table and plug in your laptop, phone, moped, etc.
Another cool garden project in the city was the "Free Farm" located on a vacant lot where a church had burned down, right downtown. They had beehives, fruit trees, and beautiful crops of fava beans and kale.

We took some time to see a beach or two.
The Ferry Plaza Farmers Market is one of the biggest and fanciest around. The historic Ferry Building was renovated to be a permanent indoor market, with local vendors set up to sell things like wild mushrooms, organic beef jerky, and fresh oysters.
One of the largest "stores" in this foodie shopping mall was Capay Farms - the largest CSA in the country. They deliver CSA boxes all over the west coast.
A bit less flashy, but just as noble, is Alemany Farm, located on a piece of unwanted ground in San Francisco-- right next to the freeway, housing projects, and on a steep slope.

But it was inspiring to see how many volunteers came out for the work day. We helped them weed, mulch, and fertilize their apple trees. We had fava greens and kale for dinner.
Another inspiring story is Little City Gardens, a one-acre lot crammed in between rows and rows of houses, hosting two young entrepreneurs who want to see if they can make money farming in the city. An ambitious goal indeed.
They just got started, and plan on selling their crops to restaurants, mostly focusing on salad mixes. Land tenure was the main issue-- with the land valued at two million dollars it would be impossible to buy. Another issue that came up unexpectedly was the fact that it is illegal to sell crops grown in San Francisco! They are working on changing this outdated law, so they can continue on with their business plan.
Me and Brooke in her cabbage and kale rows...
Luke and I attended the Eco-Farm Conference, the biggest organic farming conference on the west coast. We learned LOTS and met a bunch of great people. Here are some photos from a bus tour of farms in the Salinas Valley we went on!

This greenhouse is filled with basil. It smelled great, as you can imagine, and was about 95 degrees. This contraption below is a "Bug-Vac"... organic farmers have to be creative, you know.
You may have seen herbs from this farm in your supermarket-- look for "Jacob's Farm" or "Del Cabo", in little plastic clamshells. Although I applaud them for practicing chemical-free growing, I still question the need for a million square feet of greenhouses and excess consumer packaging for a crop that everyone could grow easily on their back porch (or U-Pick at their local CSA farm!)
They did have some handsome cover crops in some of their greenhouses that I was impressed with-- grown just to restore the soil diversity and organic matter.
On the bus ride through the valley we passed a lot of fields that looked like this:
Any guess what is growing there?
Strawberries. Yep, almost all the strawberries in the country come from this place. That's right, those Driscoll Berries you bought at Wegman's last week, they were grown in these fields of plastic. The black plastic mulch keeps the weeds down, and warms the soil. You can use straw to keep the weeds down too (that's probably how strawberries got their name). But no one uses straw here, not even the organic growers. Everything is streamlined, and operations are often thousands of acres. And don't even get me started about Methyl Iodide, used for soil fumigation. The land is so expensive, due to amazing soils and nearby development pressure, that farmers can't afford to rest the land in cover crops, or sometimes even plant anything but strawberries. So they have a lot of diseases from growing strawberries after strawberries for years in the same ground. So they sterilize the ground with some pretty nasty chemicals. Below you can see the hedgerow of native plants (on the right) planted by the organic farmer we were visiting-- a stark contrast. A pocket of diversity and verdant life in a sea of sterility. After seeing those expanses of plasticized fields I think differently when I see a strawberry now. Hopefully we can grow some soon!
On our way back to the conference, we stopped by an organic sheep dairy and tasted some delicious cheese. It was run by two young women farmers, and they were just starting out. There is an amazing number of dedicated young people who are getting into the organic farming movement, and it is inspiring to see. I look forward to getting back to the east coast, though, where water is plentiful and land is more affordable.
Oh, and did we mention that we took the train out here? Amtrak, all the way -- New York to California in three days. Can't wait for the ride back.

Farmer Erin Presents...

2010-12-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

Sign-ups have started for 2011 CSA memberships! We are actively looking for new folks to join in the bounty.
One thing I have done a lot of in the last few years is give powerpoint presentations about the farm, the CSA model, and the importance of buying local & organic. I've talked to church groups, rotary clubs, business group luncheons, college classrooms, country clubs, and more.

I'm looking to set up a few presentations for this February, March, or April. Do you know of a group that would be interested in hearing more about the farm and our mission to bring healthy organic food to the community? Give me an email to set something up!

Recipes for Feasting

2010-11-19T17:39:00.000-08:00

Here are some farmer-approved recipe ideas for your winter veggie cooking adventures- enjoy:

Roasted Vegetables (from MarthaStewart.com)

Instead of plain-old white mashed potatoes, get your holiday starch from beta-carotene-rich vegetables such as butternut squash and carrots.

*Farmer Erin's Note: You can use almost any vegetable in this roast. Any winter squash, celeriac, turnips, radishes (they're delicious cooked!), fennel, potatoes, cabbage, onions, garlic, etc. We like throwing in some apple chunks too. Also you can use other herbs like sage, parsley, thyme, etc.

Ingredients

Serves 8

1 small butternut squash (1 1/2 pounds), pared, halved, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
1 pound carrots, cut into 2-inch lengths
1 pound parsnips, cut into 2-inch lengths
1 small rutabaga (1 pound), pared, halved, and cut into 1/2-inch wedges
1 pound shallots, peeled, halved if large
3 rosemary sprigs
3 tablespoons olive oil
Coarse salt and ground pepper

Directions

1. Combine the vegetables and rosemary on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper; toss to combine. Cover with foil.

2. Place the vegetables on the second rack in the oven. Roast 1 1/2 hours, uncover, and roast 30 minutes longer, tossing occasionally until vegetables are tender and golden brown.

Carrots & Rutabaga Mash

Ingredients

1 pound peeled and chopped carrots
1 pound peeled and chopped rutabaga
1/2 stick, 4 tablespoons, butter
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly chopped Italian flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Directions

Boil carrots and rutabaga together until just soft. Drain and add butter. Smash together using either a potato masher or food processor until it looks like a puree. Season with lots of pepper and a little salt. Transfer to a serving dish and garnish with fresh parsley

Garlicky Kale Crostini (MarthaStewart.com)

Ingredients

Serves 4

1 small baguette, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch-thick slices
4 large cloves garlic
1 large head kale, stems removed, leaves torn or coarsely chopped
Extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse salt
Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
Splash of red-wine vinegar
Freshly ground pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place bread on a large baking sheet. Transfer to oven until lightly toasted, about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and rub cut sides of bread with 1 clove garlic; set aside.

3. Chop remaining 3 cloves garlic; set aside. Wash and drain kale; do not dry. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add kale and cook, stirring to coat with oil; season with salt. Cover and reduce heat to medium, cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 4 to 5 minutes. If leaves begin to scorch, add a splash of water to skillet.

4. Transfer kale to one side of skillet and add 1 tablespoon olive oil to bare side of skillet; add reserved chopped garlic and the red pepper flakes. When garlic is fragrant, stir to combine with kale.

5. Remove skillet from heat and add vinegar; stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper; serve on toasted bread slices warm or at room temperature.

Kale Chips

Serves 12 to 15

1 pound kale (1 to 2 bunches), thick stems removed and leaves sliced crosswise into 2-inch ribbons
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Finely grated zest of 1 lemon
Flaked sea salt or coarse salt, for sprinkling

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toss kale with oil, and spread in a single layer on each of 2 rimmed baking sheets. Bake, tossing kale and rotating sheets halfway through, until crisp, about 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets. Sprinkle with lemon zest and salt, and toss to coat.

Kale Slaw with Peanut Dressing (from MarthaStewart.com)

Ingredients

Serves 8

2 large bunches curly kale, center ribs discarded, very thinly sliced crosswise (about 10 cups)
1 yellow, orange, or red bell pepper
2 carrots, thinly sliced crosswise
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup salted peanuts
2 tablespoons packed light-brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
1/4 cup salted peanuts

Directions

1. Toss 2 large bunches curly kale, center ribs discarded, very thinly sliced crosswise (about 10 cups); 1 yellow, orange, or red bell pepper, ribs and seeds removed, halved crosswise and thinly sliced lengthwise; and 2 carrots, thinly sliced crosswise, in a large bowl.

2. Puree 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1/4 cup cider vinegar, 1/4 cup salted peanuts, 2 tablespoons packed light-brown sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt in a blender until smooth.

3. Pour dressing over vegetables just before serving. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup salted peanuts, coarsely chopped.

4	heaping cups coarsely diced kuri squash seeds and skin removed (buy a 2 -3 pound kuri squash)
1	quart vegetable stock
3	tablespoons olive oil
1	medium yellow onion, sliced
1	sweet apple, cored and sliced
1	teaspoon ground cinnamon
–	Pinch of cayenne pepper
1-2	teaspoons salt
½	teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Creamy Red Kuri Squash Soup with Cinnamon

Louisa Shafia’s new cookbook Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco -Conscious Life

(can substitute any kind of winter squash)

Serves

4-6

Directions

Place the squash in a soup pot with the stock and a dash of salt and bring to a boil on medium high heat. Simmer, covered, until tender, about 15 minutes.

Drain the squash, reserving all the stock.

Using the same pot, over high heat add 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add onion and saute until it begins to brown, about 10-15 minutes.

Add the apple, cinnamon, cayenne, and a dash of salt and saute until the apples are soft and lightly browned, about 5-8 minutes.

In batches, if necessary, combine the squash, onion, apple, and stock in a blender. Puree until smooth, adding the remaining tablespoon of olive oil as it blends. Add a little extra stock or water if the soup is too thick.

Taste and season with salt. Serve hot with a few grinds of black pepper.

Parsnip-Apple Mash

item-saved-on:

Earthy parsnips are sweetened with apples and blended into a delightfully silky puree.

Ingredients

Serves 10 to 12

3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2 pounds parsnips, peeled and sliced into 1/2-inch-thick rounds
1 pound tart apples (about 3), such as Granny Smith, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 1/2 cups water
Coarse salt

Directions

1. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Cook parsnips in a single layer until just golden on bottoms, about 10 minutes. Flip, and add apples, water, and 1 1/4 teaspoons salt. Raise heat to medium-high, and simmer, covered, until parsnips and apples are very soft, about 20 minutes.

2. Remove from heat, and let stand, covered to retain moisture, until slightly cooled, about 5 minutes. Puree mixture in a blender until smooth. With machine running, add remaining tablespoon butter.

Celery Root & Potato Puree

This easy side dish is an impressively tasteful (and uncomplicated) addition to any holiday meal.

Ingredients

Serves 8

4 pounds celery root (about 2 large), peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
1/2 pound new potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup half-and-half
4 tablespoons butter
Coarse salt

Directions

1. Set a steamer basket in a large pot. Fill with enough water to come just below basket; bring to a boil. Add celery root and potatoes; reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook until tender, 15 to 20 minutes.

2. Working in batches, transfer celery root, potatoes, half-and-half, and butter to a food processor; puree until smooth. Season with salt. (To store, refrigerate, up to 1 day. Reheat in a heatproof bowl set over, not in, a pan of simmering water.)

Celery Root and Apple Slaw

Celery root, also called celeriac, has a crunchy texture and a mild celery taste that pair well with tart green apple and a savory-sweet dressing. Allow enough time to let the slaw stand so that the flavors have a chance to mingle.

Ingredients

Serves 4

1 small celery root (about 12 ounces), trimmed, peeled, and cut into matchsticks (2 cups)
1 apple, cut into matchsticks (2 cups)
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon fresh cider
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl, and toss. Let stand for 30 minutes before serving.

Creamy Celeriac Soup

www.seriouseats.com

I've been meaning to pick up some celeriac for awhile now, just because it may be the ugliest vegetable in the grocery store. People are always passing it by, poor thing. On the outside it's a tangled mess of dirty, fuzzy roots and knobs, but once peeled it has the faint aroma of celery, a pale color, and a smooth texture. While I always thought it was simply the root of a celery plant it's actually a related, but separate, species. Above ground it grows a few stalks and leaves, but the majority of the growth happens underground in the root. This preparation, which I found on the River Cottage website, is a very classic French approach to the vegetable, pureed in a soup.

- makes 4 servings –

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter
1-2 celeriac (about 2 pounds), peeled and roughly chopped
1 large leek, sliced (about 3/4 pound)
1 smallish potato, diced (about 1/4 pound)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
3 cups chicken or vegetable stock
7 tablespoons (3.5 ounces) heavy cream
Salt and pepper
3 slices good thick bacon, cut into 1/2 inch strips

Procedure

1. In a heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Add the celeriac, potato, garlic, and onion, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cook the vegetables gentle until they soften, about 10 minutes.

2. Add the stock, bring to a boil, then simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes until the celeriac is completely tender.

3. Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a skillet until just crispy, then drain on paper towels.

4. Transfer to a blender and puree until smooth (or use an immersion blender). Return to medium heat, and season to taste. Whisk in the cream and serve immediately, topped with the bacon.

Still digging roots!

2010-11-16T06:07:00.000-08:00

Final distribution week!

2010-10-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

We've been super busy lately just getting in the rest of the harvest from these very muddy fields. Beautiful, sunny autumn weather has alternated with cold & rainy miserable days. This week is our final CSA distribution! I am pretty darn tired. After the pressure of harvest is over, there's still lots to do wrapping up the farm, but I get to sleep in a bit hopefully. It is kind of sad, of course. But plans for next year!!! Enjoy these squash recipes, and pics from the farm:

101 Ways to Cook a Pumpkin

Kuri Squash Pudding

Things to do with Green Tomatoes

2010-10-01T08:42:00.000-07:00

http://tipnut.com/green-tomato-recipes/

Sugar Babies

2010-09-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

We've really been enjoying the watermelons this year. 'Sugar Baby' is the little dark-green-skinned one, but a sweeter surprise was 'New Orchid', a yellow-fleshed variety. We'll grow more of those next year, and maybe try a few different ones too.

And if you haven't noticed, Beth is really pregnant!

December 3rd she will reap the ultimate harvest for what she's been growing all these months. It takes a whole lot of work to be a full-time farmer, but to do it while pregnant on top of it all...! She has been a wonderful apprentice, always going the extra mile to make sure things are done right, and keeping a positive attitude about everything while we're in the field in all weather- heat, rain, cold. Congratulate her next time you see her around pick-up for being the hardest-working pregnant lady around!

Fuzzy Photos from my Cellphone

2010-09-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Beth driving cabbages in from the field this spring...
Sunflower, amaranth, and broom corn bouquets adorn a table at Mark & Courtney's wedding (CSA members)!
A great summer distribution scene with tomatoes, flowers, and Luke scooping out watermelon with a spoon.
An epic melon harvest with Colleen & Christin!
Plowing across the street on Jack's huge tractor...
Glowing beautiful tomatoes. Jewels of summer. Late blight has finally arrived... on time this season! What a real scorcher we had, from April to September. Almost makes up for last year.
Hot pepper harvest... this photo is from Suzy's phone!

Cover crops

2010-09-21T05:52:00.000-07:00

If you look closely at the open fields of brown mud this week, you'll see tiny little grass stems poking up everywhere-- our winter cover crops. Cover crops do more than just "cover" the bare soil-- they add organic matter, prevent erosion, out-compete weeds, even contribute nitrogen (reducing the amount of fertilizer we need to use). Basically, we grow them & then till them right back into the soil, trying to give back what we have taken. We have, in fact, taken thousands of pounds of produce from the ground this summer & put it on all our tables to be eaten up!

For winter cover crops we use regular grains that you might usually find in bread (but we don't let them make their seedheads): rye and oats. Then we mix in some legumes (bean family) like clover & vetch because this family fixes nitrogen. We have to inoculate the legumes with a bacteria that lives on the roots of the plants & takes some sugars that the plant produces in return for helping the plant pull nitrogen from the air and put it right into the soil so it can be available to the plant roots. It's a wonderful mutually-beneficial relationship. And of course we benefit when we plant our vegetable crops right after this miracle...

I am really excited about learning more about all the possibilities cover crops offer. In the summer we used a lot of buckwheat (like the pancakes) to fight weeds & bring "good bugs" onto the farm. We also tried sorghum-sudangrass (looks like corn) to break up compaction and add lots of mulch to the soil. There are some organic farms that don't have to use any fertilizer at all because they've got their rotation down so well. The farm stays lush and green while it's replenishing the soil, fighting bugs, disease, & weeds.

Sometimes folks ask me "what do I do about pests?" ... the answer, I believe, is prevention. Healthy plants can fight pests themselves. I don't spray a thing, not even "organically certified" pesticides (of which there are a lot), it's just another chore I don't have time for! Last year I tried a few things on the late blight, but the organic sprays are very expensive, and I didn't do nearly enough applications to be effective. So this year the backpack sprayer is getting really dusty, and I plan on letting it stay that way.

Well, back to the farm to seed some more greens before the rain tomorrow. Lots more to talk about though... winter squash harvest coming up soon, garlic planting party in a few weeks, happy Fall Equinox!

Remember when you come to pick up your veggies to bring plastic bags! Big zip-lock bags are great for re-using, as they are sturdy & you can wash them out & dry them & bring them back to the farm next week.

Now it's fall, definitely.

2010-09-08T19:16:00.000-07:00

I've been relishing the moments... early evening sunlight peaking underneath clouds to spreads its golden rays through the falling yellow cottonwood leaves... the crisp mornings and putting on the warm hat, the flannel, the fleece... the pumpkins turning oranger every day ... gold finches fluttering away from the sunflowers as I walk close by... V's of geese squawking overhead.

Fall is my favorite season.

For some really great photos of the farm right now, check out this series done by City Newspaper (www.rochestercitynewspaper.com).

Crop reports:

Melons have had a really great season-- the sunshine & heat contributed to their sweetness!

I miss cucumbers too! We got attacked by "downy mildew" early again this year... it pretty much wipes out the plants before they get the strength to make cukes. I don't spray anything, so I'm not sure how to protect them. I'll try a resistant variety next year, or otherwise we'll just plant lots of early cucumbers & make pickles!

Peppers are all turning red! We still harvest some green peppers, and of course hot peppers now too.

Onions are cured, dry, and ready for storing on your counters for quite a while. I have experienced a small amount of rot inside some, I'll have to research some more about what causes that.

Potatoes are popping out of the ground! Actually, we use this really old potato digger. It's fun to watch. If you live close by & have a flexible schedule (we never really know when it will fit into the schedule), you should come by sometime and see us harvest potatoes, it's great.

Eggplants and squash are still going strong. If you're sick of eating them, just stick them on the grill with some olive oil brushed on, and freeze them for later. Peppers are great on the grill too.

Sweet corn is about done. I have one more late planting that might mature next week... we'll see how it goes.

Beets are almost ready! And fennel bulbs!!! These are really great roasted (together or separate) in the oven with lots of olive oil & a bit of salt. Add some carrots & potatoes & onions. Yum.

The mixed greens are back! We will soon be swimming in arugula, mizuna, tat soi, golden frill, & red mustard. An easy delicious salad dressing I've been making is: miso paste, peanut butter, honey, water.

There are STILL pick-your-own green beans if you haven't gotten a chance to put some in the freezer. A new row. Hardly anyone has scratched the surface of it yet, I think folks may be sick of beans. But all you have to do is throw them in boiling water for a few minutes, then into ice water, then into baggies & into the freezer. Nutritious food from the farm in February!

Cherry tomatoes are peaking. 4 quarts a week limit! You could probably freeze these too...

Other things to look forward to soon:
Hakurei Turnips
Radishes
Red Onions

And summer again!

2010-09-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

Now after that really great cool-weather tease, we've had a week straight of 90's heat, with unwavering sunshine & humidity! At the end of the day, I can trace the lines of salt where my sweat has migrated all over my shirt. Tomatoes & eggplants are loving it, all the peppers are turning red at once, and the watermelons & canteloupes are ready to harvest! Summer's finale maybe?

I'm doing my best to keep the fall greens irrigated-- this is not spinach's favorite weather. We may have a delay in some of those crops, as I will have to plant all over again when these greens decide to "bolt"... but cold weather will come!

Autumn at our doorstep...

2010-08-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I want everything to go according to my plans, and sometimes mother nature shows me that is impossible. But it's okay, sometimes it's even better.

I was all set on harvesting the first melons this week, but the sun refused to come out at all for our two harvesting days. Sunday was a drencher- we got an inch and a half of rain. The fields were mucky & we could hardly enter them. Monday was just overcast. We try not to harvest certain crops when the foliage is wet-- tomatoes, squash, peppers, eggplants, melons. What happens is you spread disease-- fungal & bacterial diseases of those plant families, which travel easily in the moist environment. On a sunny afternoon (the dew burns off around 11am), the UV light kills a lot of plant pathogens. That's when we harvest those crops. So we waited for the sun. And waited, and waited.

Until it was 2 hours before distribution, and the plants still had droplets of rain on them! So I made a quick change of plans, and thankfully we had a lot of hands to help us in this last-minute harvesting. We dug up an entire 200' row of potatoes, and pulled & cleaned up 200 leeks. Enjoy some potato-leek soup tonight! Perfect for the cooler weather.

http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/potato_leek_soup/

Summer crops not done yet, but fall definitely seems right around the corner.
Another tip on good recipes: Marthastewart.com
Enter a vegetable into the recipe search & get a bunch of really great ideas. A quick look & I found recipes for Swiss Chard Pie, Zucchini Lasagna, & Green Bean Salad. Happy eating!

Vegetable orchestra

2010-08-22T18:38:00.000-07:00

Nice rain we got this morning! Fall is definitely in the air... my favorite time of year. We will see what's ripe in the melon patch tomorrow, so hopefully we'll have some more summery weather to enjoy watermelons and cantelopes for another week or two! Then on to the potatoes. Yum. What good food we get to eat. My favorite thing to do recently: make your own mayonnaise (see link below)! Then smear it on some fresh-baked local organic bread (Small World Bakery of course-- available at Brighton & South Wedge farmer's markets), put a few leaves of basil on there & a big slice of a super-ripe heirloom tomato. Easy snack, delicious & nutritious.

http://homecooking.about.com/od/saladrecipes/r/blcon64.htm

Then sit back to watch the amazing video of this Austrian band who uses instruments made entirely out of vegetables.

http://www.gemueseorchester.org/

2010-08-16T19:36:00.000-07:00

The farm has just gotten a lot bigger. We've signed a 2-year lease for the 14 acres across the street (also owned by Bob-- our total leased land is now 28 acres!) ... and spent the last few days plowing up the soil. Take a look, it's beautiful. Next year we will be growing all our onion-family crops there, to avoid the nematode infestation we got on our garlic this year (which stays in the soil for a while)... and we'll also probably put our potatoes there, and maybe tomatoes and a few other things too. One challenge we'll have is trying to irrigate, as there is no well, city hookup, or creek to tap from. Victor town laws don't allow us to use either of the two hydrants which are right next to the field. Another challenge we'll have is deer. Luke said that 3 deer watched him plow for an hour, standing not 100 feet from the edge of the field, just grazing calmly. I asked if they were holding up signs that said "Soybeans"... hopefully we won't plant anything they're interested in. Otherwise we'll need some fencing (better than our existing kind)!

Shares are at their hugest summer bounty. Tomatoes are ripening fast and the heirloom varieties are bursting. Watermelons are sweet on the horizon (next week?), and the corn is delicious. The onions are curing in the greenhouse-- the garlic is cured & we're starting to give it out. Carrots! And next up, potatoes (just as the weather starts to get a bit cooler).
Don't miss the pick-your own cherry tomatoes-- orange, red, & purple varieties. 2 quarts per share each week! Green beans overflowing (no limit!) -- easy to blanch & freeze for winter's use. Make pesto, or dry herbs by hanging bunches out of the sun until they're crisp.

Here's a few pictures from Luke's brother's wedding. This is the three-tiered carrot cake (Mud Creek carrots) that Luke made, with cream cheese frosting & edible flowers from the pick-your-own garden (pansies & borage). It was delicious.Each table at the reception had mason jars filled with Mud Creek flowers, sprigs of dill and purple basil, and even small swiss chard leaves! The favors were tiny bags of granola... Maple Cashew of course.

Celebration all around. In two weeks we harvest 100 sunflowers for another wedding, Mark & Courtney's (2nd year CSA members!) It's kind of fun. Let me know if you have a special event you need flowers for, and we can grow them for you next year. People don't think of flowers as being organic, but they are actually one of the more pesticide-intensive crops, because florists want them "perfect". But it's amazing what good soil & a diverse ecosystem will do for most blossoms. I don't grow roses, lilies, or orchids, however, so don't ask!

Sharing good food

2010-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Take part in the "Locavore Challenge"...

Potluck across New York!

August offerings...

2010-08-07T07:48:00.000-07:00

Many things are in full bloom at the farm these days-- sunflowers are the most spectacular right now! Unlimited pick-your-own items include green beans, all types of flowers, basil, dill, cilantro, thyme, parsley, oregano, sage, savory, marjorum, bronze fennel, garlic chives, & more! Cherry tomatoes are about to roll in by the hundreds-- next week unlimited picking probably. Also pick-your-own scallions now!
New items in the share this week include fresh onions, the first of the red peppers, and sweet corn! The onions will all come out of the ground this week, and we will "cure" them in the greenhouse to get those papery skins that help the onions store well on the counter for a long time. Take a peek in the greenhouse next time you're at the farm!

Did you know that all peppers start green and then turn other colors (like red, yellow, and purple)?

We also gave out amaranth greens this week-- a very nutritious but little-known green that cooks up similar to spinach (but loves this hot weather, unlike spinach!) Check out this blog entry for some ideas: http://kitchen-parade-veggieventure.blogspot.com/2006/07/amaranth-greens.html ...or google it to find out how important of a food amaranth was to the ancient Aztecs. Let me know how you like it, and I can grow more next year as a summer spinach-replacement (although chard is pretty good too).

Our garlic is just about cured in our neighbor's barn & we'll start handing it out soon. Yum! Please be careful with your garlic scraps though, as we don't want to spread the nematode (garlic disease) around to your gardens or to other parts of the farm. We are trying to quarantine it in the new compost pile. Strange how something so beautiful as a big bulb of glowing white garlic could harbor a tiny little invader that could destroy fields of crops. Nature is miraculous in her craftiness.

Next week, look out for purple and yellow carrots!
Here's a picture from the potluck picnic we had a few weeks ago:
Pictures from Luke's brother's wedding coming soon! The flowers looked magnificent and the carrot cake was delicious.

Squash for dessert!

2010-07-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

A winner dessert recipe from last night's farm potluck:

Yellow Squash and Apple Compote
(serves 4)
4 small summer squash (about 1/4 lb each), peeled and diced fine
3 cups of sugar
1 1/2 cups water
Juice and grated rind of 2 lemons
2 whole cloves
1 tart apple, peeled and diced fine
Boil sugar and water together until syrup forms. Add lemon rind and
cloves. Add diced squash and apple and cook until squash becomes
clear. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Let chill and serve
cold. (I also pureed it.)

Enjoy!
Lauren Moscoe

This week's share...

2010-07-25T19:51:00.001-07:00

... will probably include:

Carrots
Beets
Lettuce
Leeks
Summer Squash
Cucumbers
Green Peppers
Eggplants
Tomatoes
Fennel

PICK-YOUR-OWN GREEN BEANS

Sunflowers too!

A good thing to do with eggplants...

2010-07-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Baba Ganouj (“Ga-noosh”)

Ingredients for single eggplant or for a crowd

• 1 medium eggplant (7-inch) or 9 1/2 lb Eggplants for a crowd

• ¼ c Fresh lemon juice or 2 c for a crowd

• ¼ c Sesame Tahini or 2c for a crowd

• 2-3 md Garlic cloves; minced, or 12 cloves for a crowd

• ¼ c Fresh parsley; finely chopped or 1 c for a crowd (optional)

• 1 tb Salt optional)

To Serve:

• Leaf lettuce, 12 Pita bread rounds; lightly, or 3 lb Feta cheese; crumbled for a crowd

Instructions
1. Pierce the skins of the eggplants several times and place them on a baking sheet. Bake at 400F for 40 minutes to 1 hour, or until the outsides crinkle and the insides become very soft. If the BBQ grill happens to be part of a meal, it's a great opportunity to grill the eggplant...cut in half & brushed with a little olive oil then skin side down for about 30-45 minutes. No piercing needed. I scrape off the charred surface before scooping out the inside.

2. When the eggplants are cool enough to handle, scoop out the insides.

3. Using a food processor (or just a fork if you like it chunky) puree the pulp with the lemon juice, tahini, garlic, parsley, and salt until smooth. Cool to room temperature.

4. Line a warmed pita pocket with leaf lettuce, spoon in the baby and serve as is, or, if desired, top with a sprinkling of feta cheese.

Meal Planning: *preparation Time: 15 minutes; Baking Time: 40 minutes. Serve with soup or salad. *Smoky eggplant flavor and creamy texture of tahini with lemon also makes a good dip with crudites. Prepare as a side dish for a Middle Eastern Combo Plate with Hummus (79) or White Bean Dip (87) and Carrot Salad (p321) *For a nondairy alternative, top with chopped fresh tomatoes, chopped black olives, and alfalfa sprouts. Per 6-oz serving with pita: 247 cals, 11.3 g fat, 496 mg sodium.

Recipe From: Moosewood Restaurant Cooks for a Crowd: Recipes with a Vegetarian Emphasis for 24 or More, by The Moosewood Collective

Water and things that grow from it

2010-07-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Well, we finally got some decent rain. The fields were getting really thirsty & we were ready to start pumping from the creek again, after a few weeks of having city water on 24-7, switching valves to make sure everything got a drink... and feeling like we could hardly keep up with the sun's evaporating rays. More on this later.

We had probably the best share yet this week! The tomatoes have started ripening, much to my amazement (I'm still in emotional shock from last year's blight experience)-- the eggplants are huge, the cucumbers and squash are prolific, and we have carrots, beets, scallions, and beans out our ears now. And speaking of ears, the corn is growing them-- and melons are secretly rounding out under the dense tangle of vines. We are pulling weeds like madmen.

I turned 30 years old yesterday, and what a better gift than to have the heavens open up and drench us with solid bucketfuls of "natural irrigation." This means I get to have a nice day off, sleep in, and not worry about watering.

But we've had a crazy summer so far in that realm, reminding me of farming in California, where the very existence of vegetables in summer means hooking them up to life-support. So far we had gotten by on just irrigating with the landowner's household spigot-- we can do this because in upstate New York it usually rains regularly all summer! But this spring we had to hook up a really old antique pump to 1,000 feet of tubing to get everything watered.

Why 1,000 feet you say, when Mud Creek is right behind your fields? Well, because we are just downstream from a wastewater treatment plant. And although they just got an $18 million upgrade, I trust my nose more than government-accepted levels of "safe". And it's not poop that I'm worried about. It's everything else that people flush down toilets, use in the shower, and spread on their bodies. The smell I get when I go down to the creek to dip my feet is one of a chemical shampoo cocktail.

The guys at the wastewater treatment plant were really nice, letting us use their access road to move the pump to a new location, upstream of their effluent release in Mud Creek. The site we had irrigated in the spring from was Fish Creek, a tributary across a stretch of floodplain, but the neighbors had a really hard time listening to it. Gas-powered pumps just make a lot of noise. And they wouldn't have it. So we hauled everything over, all 1,000 feet of line. We're hoping the new location won't bother anyone. Farming in the suburbs.

We were told at the plant that the water they release is cleaner than the water in the creek. They add chlorine to sterilize it, but all the chlorine is off-gassed before it is released. The new thing that they've had to start adding was alum, which removes phosphates. I don't know much about this, but I do know that phosphates have something to do with why the pond at the corner of McMahon Road and Plaster Mill is completely covered with a sheet of algae-- I'm guessing the fertilizer used on the golf course has something to do with it. Poor blue heron stands there looking for fish all day, but the fish are probably dying due to lack of oxygen from that algae growth. So we can golf on green.

Anyway, I wasn't taking any chances with irrigating from our treated wastewater. Even with no phosphates or chlorine, who knows what other kinds of elixers are created when you mix Drano with Purell, or Herbal Essence with Off!. In my daily life I try to use only biodegradable products. Everything gets recycled in the great compost dance of growth and decay. And we could have healthy streams & rivers that we could still play in and water our food with.

We went to the nearby neighbor's house to let them know we'd be running a loud pump occasionally. Wes was his name, and he'd lived there 60 years. Gave us the historical tour-- right behind his house is the old stone mill, that used to grind grain using the power of Mud Creek. Then it was an ice-house -- a field was flooded in the winter, and then cut & stacked inside the super-thick stone walls, to keep food fresh all summer until it melted! He spoke of mill races, and how all the neighborhood kids would skate down the creek all the way to Macedon. Back then, he said, if you were thirsty, you'd just stick your skate blade through the ice, and take a drink. Not now, though. The creek doesn't even freeze now, with the warm water release from the plants.

My other neighbor spoke of catching tons of huge, delicious fish, and a swimming hole that the locals used to call "Bare-Ass Beach" ... I still found the giant tree that created a dam across the creek to make that nice, deep, cool water. But no one swims there now. You can see the shampoo-esque bubbles floating slowly through the place.

What happened to us, that we turned our back on our creeks like this? I know we didn't do it on purpose. Everyone wants a clear running natural water source, that our kids can skate on or wade in. Maybe we wanted other things more. Like chemically-created products to serve our every need or whim. And an easy *flush* to carry them away when we are done with them.

But, gosh it is hot working long days in the fields, and I sure could use a swimming hole. And ultimately all of our nourishment relies on the pureness of the water we use to keep our vegetables alive.

Spring cabbage haul

2010-07-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

2010-07-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

BITTER GREENS WITH SWEET ONIONS AND DRIED SOUR CHERRIES

1-2 cups dried sour cherries, soaked in hot water for about 15 minutes

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

3 cups sliced sweet onion (Vidalia, Maui, or the like)

1 1/4 tsp. salt

3 large bunches fresh greens (e.g., kale, collards, red mustard, arugula, alone or in combination), stemmed, if necessary, and coarsely chopped (about 12 cups)

Heat the oil in a large, deep skillet or Dutch oven. Add the onion and 1/2 tsp. salt and saute over high heat for about 5 minutes. Turn heat to medium, cover pan, and let the onion cook until very tender (about 10 more minutes).

Begin adding the greens in batches (as much as will fit), sprinkling each addition with about 1/4 tsp. salt. Stir and cover between additions, letting the greens cook down for about 5 minutes each time, to make room for the next batch.

When all greens are added and have wilted, stir in the cherries and cook for just about 5 minutes longer. Include some of the cooking juices with each serving.

Yield: 4-6 servings

(Adapted from recipe in Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven)

Recipes and stuff

2010-07-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

It's been hot! Plus no substantial rain in weeks--- this usually means I spend my day off laying out irrigation lines and turning valves on & off. And it is really really hot. In California the farmers would joke about how it feels like you're farming in hell. But they didn't have the humidity.
The spring cabbages are rolling in--- they are 3 to 4 pounds each! Peppers have started. Zucchinis are going crazy. The heat is putting all the spring crops out of commission-- say goodbye to broccoli until the fall.
But one thing that the heat is good for is tomatoes. There are lots of green fruits on the vines, and just a hint of color starting on our greenhouse tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes may be kicking in over the next few weeks. We are spending extra time pruning the tomato vines to encourage faster ripening & air circulation.
Late blight has been discovered in Suffolk Co. NY, as well as Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Ontario. It is only a matter of time before it gets here too. We hope to get a few weeks of fruit before it hits here, and we'll probably have to till in our plants again. Get your friend green tomato recipes out!
The garlic harvest went kind of grimly-- a fungus called Fusarium that attacks garlic bulbs & rots them from below spread quickly in the heat, and we lost about 50% of the crop. Some we were able to save & eat fresh, but they will not store well. Roast up that garlic on the grill in tin foil! Or freeze it. The better bulbs we have hung up in our neighbors barn to "cure" for a few weeks-- this we are hoping to store for you & give you a few more bulbs of garlic throughout the season.
Eggplants are just flowering now, as well as cucumbers & melons.
Visit the flower garden for colorful zinnias & snapdragons, which are just starting!
Also, Buster the rooster needs a hen companion. If you know of anyone who is selling a hen, let us know.

---------

Erin's favorite way to eat cabbage:

Fry up a lot of garlic & crumble a dried chile pepper in olive oil in a big skillet. Optional: Minced ginger! Throw in a bunch of shredded cabbage, with optional carrot slices. Key moment: add a dash of toasted sesame oil. Stir & cover, & cook until just slightly wilted. Cabbage should be tender. Stir in some soy sauce or tamari while still hot. Enjoy!

----------

A great sauerkraut recipe here

----------

Enchilada Filling (Could also be fajitas, tacos, etc...)

Ingredients:
2 Tbs. olive oil
2 medium-sized cloves of garlic
1 cup minced onion
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup minced green bell peppers
2 1/2 cups diced zucchini
1/2 tsp each: cumin, oregano,basil
cayenne and black pepper to taste

In a large heavy skillet, saute the garlic and onion in olive oil with salt. When onions are soft (about 5 min), add the peppers, zucchini and herbs. Stir and continue to cook over medium heat another 5-8 minutes or until the zucchini is just barely cooked. Serve wam or room temperature.

Summer Farm Potluck Coming Up!

2010-07-01T18:25:00.001-07:00

Celebrate summer's bountiful harvest & our 2010 CSA community!

Tuesday, July 27th 5-7pm at the farm.

Potluck-- bring a favorite dish to share

Kids welcome, dogs on leashes, friends always invited!

Bring folding chairs if you got 'em.

See ya there!

Kale chips & more

2010-06-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

Summer crops are on the verge of harvest...
in the meantime, enjoy these recipes below for the hearty remainders of spring:
Shares this week will probably include:
--------------------------------------------------
Scallions
Chinese Cabbage (Napa Cabbage)
Kale
Kohlrabi
Last of the broccoli
First of the summer squash
Lettuce
Pick-your-own Peas (sugar snap & snow)
---------------------------------------------------

KALE CHIPS!
http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Kale-Chips-110071
Farmer Erin's tips:
Try sprinkling soy sauce or tamari instead of salt, or try with garlic powder, curry, hot sauce, etc.
Check the oven often- they cook quickly & can burn easily!

CHINESE CABBAGE SALAD

Dressing:

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Salad:

1 head Bok Choy or Napa cabbage, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1 pkg ramen noodles
4 oz slivered or sliced almonds
1 tablespoon butter

Mix dressing ingredients. (Speed mixer will thicken dressing.) Set aside.

Chop cabbage and green onions.

Crush ramen noodles. Discard flavor packet. Mix with almonds and butter and brown in skillet. Use as garnish on top of salad.

Mix as needed then serve.

*This salad should be made and served immediately as it will get soggy if stored after mixing.

SCALLION PANCAKES!

This Korean scallion pancake recipe is easy to make and is always a big crowd-pleaser. It works as a hearty snack, an appetizer, or a side dish to a Korean or Asian meal. As with most Korean recipes and dishes, you can tweak it to your own tastes. If I have time, I like to add sliced red chili peppers and white onions. Carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, and kimchi are also popular

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 eggs, beaten
1.5 cups water
1 bunch of scallions, halved and cut into 2-3 inch lengths
1 tsp salt
Oil for cooking

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients together and let sit for about 10 minutes. Check consistency before cooking – batter should be a little bit runnier than American pancake batter, so that the Pa Jun cooks quickly and evenly.
Heat a saute pan over medium heat and coat with a thin layer of oil.
Pour batter to fill pan in a thin layer (about 1/3 of your batter should fill a regular saute pan).
Cook for 3-4 minutes until set and golden brown on bottom.
Turn over with help of spatula or plate (or flip it in the air if you are good at that) and finish by cooking 1-2 more minutes, adding more oil if necessary.
Serve with soy or spicy dipping sauce:

1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1 Tbsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp chili pepper flakes
1 Tbsp scallions, thinly sliced
1 tsp finely chopped garlic

Happy solstice!

2010-06-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

more things to do with bok choi besides stir-fry!

2010-06-18T10:17:00.001-07:00

*Bok choy veggie dish*_*
*
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Bok-Choy-Carrots-and-Green-Beans/Detail.aspx

_*Gingered Fish Soup*

_2T veg oil
1 1" piece fresh ginger, julienne-sliced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 bunch green onion
3 cans chicken broth
1 lb white fish (such as tilapia)
4 cups bok choy, chopped 1/4", leaves and ribs

Heat oil and add garlic and ginger and green onions. Add broth and boil. Simmer and add fish and bok choy-simmer 5-10 min. Add pepper to taste.

_*Bok Choy and Shrimp*

_1T veg oil 1 T sesame oil

Sauce:
1/4 cup water
1 tsp ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T oyster sauce
1 T light soy sauce
1 T brown sugar
1/8 tsp. crushed pepper

1 large head bok choy, trimmed, separating whites and greens
3/4 lb shrimp

Heat oils in skillet. Add bok choy stems when turn pale add grens til wilted, 1-2 min. Remove bok choy and pour sauce in wok. Add shrimp and cook til pink. Add bok choy, stir til heated through. Serve over rice or noodles.

Share this week...

2010-06-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of what we're expecting to harvest for this week:

Bok Choi
Broccoli (just a taste of our early varieties)
Basil (just starting-- small amount)
Spicy Mustard Greens
Lettuce
Hakurei & Scarlet Queen Turnips
Kale or Swiss Chard
Chinese Cabbage (maybe--- just starting!)
Garlic Scapes

Photos from the past few weeks...

2010-06-09T17:52:00.001-07:00

Fields of plenty!

2010-06-05T16:27:00.000-07:00

Upcoming Food Preservation Workshop: get ready for abundance!

2010-06-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

* What Can I Do with All These Tomatoes (or peppers or strawberries or ... )?

Food Preservation Workshop, Tuesday June 29th, 6pm - 9pm @ Artisan Church*
Cost $12.00

Judy Price, Cornell Cooperative Extension Food Preservation Expert,
will introduce you to preservation techniques to help you have the highest
quality, safest and most nutritious preserved food!

You will:

- Learn about how the science of food preservation works to keep food from
spoiling or becoming dangerous.
- See the different types of canning, freezing, drying equipment and how to best
use them with your produce.
- Receive preservation resources & links to additional food preservation
information.
- Have a chance to ask questions that you've always had about food preservation.

* Register Online Here: http://food101.eventbrite.com/
(Registration Deadline is June 22nd & Seating is limited)

Invite a Friend!

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Best,

Del Ippolito
delippolito@yahoo.com

* Artisan Church
1235 S. Clinton Ave
Rochester, NY 14620

almost!

2010-05-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Crazy times in vegetable land!

As the first harvest approaches here at the end of May, most of the spring veggies I've planned for our menu are a bit confused. Peas, spinach, radishes, arugula, and bok choi are all looking at eachother perplexed, saying "why is it so HOT?" Some of them are starting to "bolt"-- this means they want to flower instead of make leaves. We've already lost 600 bok choi. The spinach is getting pointy leaves, and the peas are tall & lanky. Flowering is what summer crops do best-- like peppers, squash, eggplants, tomatoes-- these fruits all come from flowers, we don't eat those leaves. But the timing is all off this year. These plants are just barely coming out of the greenhouse at this time. ( They're growing great though!) But I'm afraid we won't have as many greens this spring. And the mustard greens will be spicier!

Also, it hasn't rained for several weeks.
Beth & I have been irrigating around the clock. Many a "day off" has been spent pulling drip lines down rows, patching leaks, and turning on & off valves.
We've decided to try irrigating from the creek as an emergency measure. We bought a gas pump & over 1000 feet of 2" tubing, enough to take us upstream of the wastewater treatment plant to a clean tributary. We hope that it won't dry up on us soon. Luke & I dragged the line through shoulder-tall thickets of burdock, stinging nettle, wild raspberry vines, and across the creek to the fields, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes the whole way. I bought a good filter & pressure regulators to hook everything up right. Tomorrow we'll see if the old antique pump we got from a fellow farmer in Bristol will actually stay running enough to deliver much-needed moisture to our vegetables.

Well, it has been a pretty eventful spring, with cold snaps & this long hot spell-- and I hope to have plenty to distribute in the first few weeks of the CSA. Climate change sure makes things interesting. I haven't had more than 2 days off in the last month. If I wasn't absolutely passionate about what I'm doing, I'd say this job wasn't worth all the work it takes. But people need to eat. And vegetables need to be taken care of. And we need to learn & adapt as quickly as we can to these new challenges.

See you at distribution! Thanks to all the volunteers who've come out to help plant this month... we appreciate your help soooo much. Thank you thank you thank you.

Summer?

2010-05-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

More plants go in the ground! All the onions of the season, plus scallions, leeks, spinach, broccoli, kohlrabi, cabbage, spinach, lettuce, more mixed greens, carrots, beets, wow! Now it can rain.Lots of helpers came out for the latest planting party-- thank you thank you thank you!
Beth learned to cultivate with our little Cub tractor-- cultivation is a special word for "weeding" but you usually use bigger equipment than a hoe. In this case, 4 "hoes" (sweeps) are mounted underneath the tractor, and Beth drives right over the cabbage row, scraping out all the weeds in between. She's a natural, and had less cabbage fatalities than my first attempt cultivating!
May 2nd, and we've hit mid-80's two days in a row. I've been sweating almost continually for the past 3 days. Dirt, diesel, and sweat-- the kind of mix that makes you embarrassed to check out at the grocery store at 9:30pm after a long day (buying ice cream!).
But of course the onion plants don't care what I smell like! And the tiny mustard seeds, settling themselves into the earth, waiting for this promised rain.

Snow!

2010-04-29T19:39:00.001-07:00

A few days ago there was this beautiful blizzard in the morning. Big wintry snowflakes. You can see our garlic here is quite tall already. Tomorrow it might get close to 80 degrees again. Weird spring... who knows what the summer will be like!

Planting success!

2010-04-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

Wednesday we planted hundreds of spring greens, broccoli, cabbages, and more. We had over 20 people come out & help throughout the day! We got 13 beds planted-- nearly 1/2 an acre!
Thanks to all who came out to lend a hand-- we really, really appreciated it, and your efforts will be rewarded in a month or so when we get to come back & harvest the abundant crop of veggies! Right now, though, the baby plants need all the love they can get.
We gave them all a big drink with our lines of drip irrigation.
Then we covered everything up with row cover-- it might frost the next two nights, and this blanket will keep them warm, as well as keep the flea beetles off them (they eat little holes in the leaves). "Rockbags" hold down the row cover.
Our rolling greenhouse tables are a big hit-- when plants in the greenhouse get ready to go out in the field, we put them on these tables which "harden them off" during the day, and we roll the tables back in at night.
Here's our onion plants, which just went in the ground yesterday!
Thanks to the crew of dedicated folks who came out on Sunday to put these onions in the ground, along with leeks, & scallions! The rain is watering them in nicely.

planting time!

2010-04-12T17:37:00.001-07:00

The soil is just about ready for some planting-- and we're trying to hustle before the rain comes (Thursday?)...
If anyone is available to come out & help in the next 2 days, we'd love an extra hand or two! Not too much transplanting yet, but there are still a few prep jobs.
There will be future opportunities that are more planned-out, like the onion-transplanting party-- I'll try to get dry soil & sun for a weekend :)
Potentially next weekend, the 24th/25th... or if we don't get much rain, it could be this weekend! I'll keep you posted.

Dirt! The Movie

2010-04-11T08:27:00.000-07:00

Just saw a great new film: "Dirt! The Movie" ... I highly suggest checking it out.

It will be aired on WXXI-TV at 10pm, April 20th.

http://www.dirtthemovie.org/

Maybe someday we can made "Mud! the Movie" :)

weird weather & other exciting events

2010-04-09T15:24:00.001-07:00

First it was the abrupt change from muck boots & flannels, to crocs & tank tops-- now it's snowing again! Just yesterday, Beth & I were sweating as we hauled buckets of gravel, the humidity at that just-before-a-storm point, sweltering August-like heat. For the past week or so, I had been watering the greenhouse several times a day just to keep the temperature down for the germinating seedlings. Lettuce seeds don't germinate over 75 degrees. Today, the wind blew at 15-20 miles an hour, and we took refuge in the greenhouse to eat our lunch. The poor pepper plants that we just potted up (over 1,000 of them!) are looking forward to those 80 degree days again!
Beth & I have been working a lot on our washing station-- digging trenches & filling them in with gravel to help drain off the excess spray water when we clean vegetables. Kind of boring farmwork if you ask me, but important for our operation, if we want nice clean beautiful produce!
Sunflower stalks from last year still surviving... a reminder in the field of the magnificent potential of summer.
We tilled the first acre, before the last rains came.
And plowed up a second acre...
Luke & I plowed on Easter Sunday, running off mid-day to put on dress clothes for our family dinner.
The rye & triticale that I planted last fall as a cover crop for fields we're not using this spring are greening up really fast! Makes me think about mowing soon...
One of the challenges we face on this land is the really tough grasses that exist here, in this field that hasn't been cultivated for over 10 years. Canary Reed Grass, Quackgrass, and a few other vicious rhizome-forming creatures are what we're battling. Just plowing doesn't kill them. Many old farmers told me that the only way to kill the grass is to spray herbicide.
Because that's not an option for us, we have to be creative-- using the tools available to us-- tiller, disc-harrow, spring-tooth harrow, etc. And timing things right.

We have put off planting for a week or two to see if we could try to get rid of the grass a bit more. Planting into a field you know will grow right back into grass is a pretty foolish thing-- we'll be hand weeding that grass out for hours! Because of this cold, wet weather, we may not have much of a chance of killing the grass before planting. So we'll be faced with the challenges spring throws us-- and make do with it. All this said, we'll be planting soon!

Peas, carrots, spinach, onions, cabbages, and more.

These brave plants, leaving the protected greenhouse environment, will throw down their roots into uninsured territory. I put my faith (& my entire livelihood) into their resilience against the whims of climate change... helping them along with my hands, my back, my brain, & my heart.

April First Photos...

2010-04-01T17:24:00.000-07:00

The greenhouse is my morning & evening chore, every day the sun comes out-- I have to open up the doors & vents, check the trays of plants to see if they need watering, and then close up at night before it gets cold.
It's a satisfying thing to see the tiny seedlings hold themselves proudly up, just a week ago they were still seeds. Now they're on a journey...
We put buckets of water in the sun to soak up the day's heat-- at night they radiate out that heat to warm the plants, so we need to use our propane heater less.
Celeriac seedlings... these little ones have almost the longest lifespan on the farm-- we won't pull them out of the field until October! And they are one of the first to get seeded in the greenhouse.
The cotyledons (first 2 seed leaves) of the brassica family always look like little butterflies to me. Brassicas include cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, bok choi, and many others.
These are the artichokes, already they have several "true leaves"... they are in fact thistles, so they kind of grow like weeds.
Yum, Red Russian kale!
Onions growing inches every day!
Colorful Swiss Chard:
Here's the greenhouse with the curtain down for the night-- we heat only 1/3 of the space right now. Soon though, we'll be moving the curtain to include more tables!
I've been doing lots of organizing of tools & supplies-- here's some of our hoes:
The walk-in cooler not only has a new shed around it (with a used billboard for a tarp on top), but now has the potential for hanging tools off it.
The fields still have stalks from last fall-- I left sunflower stalks for a windbreak & bird perch... soon though, I will till them under & plant a spring cover crop on this ground.
The garlic has come up really well! (Weeds too!)
I covered it up when it got down to 17 degrees... but now it should be in the clear.
It's refreshing to see dew in the morning instead of frost.
Lots of projects...
The spring peepers are making noise in the pond up front. The blackbirds are squawking, the hawks are circling, the bees are exploring, the whole world seems to be awakening.

Warm spring = busy spring for farmers!

2010-03-21T16:51:00.000-07:00

A nice rosy sunburn on your face is not something you expect in the middle of a Rochester march. But we are managing to get lots done in this amazing weather.

I started tilling today. The first few rows, for peas, carrots, spinach. I'm glad I got it in before the rain starts & it turns cold again.

In the last few days we've done a general farm clean-up, moving sandbags & fenceposts, checking the fields for dropped irrigation parts, etc.
We put up a deer fence around 10 acres, turned it on, and baited it with peanut butter. The fields are dimpled with so many hoofprints that it looks like a herd of moose trampled through. They fertilized for us, it was actually pretty convenient. They enjoyed grazing on our lush winter rye. Now they will learn to respect our boundaries (hopefully)! They could absolutely jump over our one-strand line, but the tactic is pychological.
New farm-hand Don helped show us how you can put fence posts in with the front loader of the tractor-- we got the job done a lot easier than pounding them in by hand with a post-pounder!

We also met a new friend who has horses & needs a place to get rid of their manure--- we were more than willing to take it, especially if she drops it off! It will need a few years to decompose before we use it probably, and we will turn it with the loader to make a rich black compost. I may decide to spread it on fields that we won't be growing in this year... that way it will compost right in the field, building organic matter as we let the fields rest & recoup with a cover crop.A new member of the Mud Creek family was just purchased at an auction in Canandaigua. An Allis Chalmers "G"... one of the few tractors with the engine mounted behind the seat. This makes it an excellent tractor for cultivating rows of vegetables-- you can see everything in front of you & below you, as you scrape the weeds out but leave the broccoli! It's a late 1940's model, but it starts up fine, steers okay, and has 3 gears + reverse, and working hydraulics!
Luke & I have been toying with the idea of converting it to electric--- this has been done on the "G" model tractors by many small vegetable farmers. (www.flyingbeet.com/electricg/)
For now though, since it runs, we will probably use it as-is. I'm trying to decide whether I will buy a set of basket-weeder cultivators to go underneath it. They cost more than the tractor... (and it cost $2000!) Jack says that our other 1940's tractor, Princess Rose III (a Farmall Cub), will be fixed up & ready to cultivate by mid-April. A name for this one? Maybe something with "snail" in it... any suggestions?

Spring is here!

2010-03-13T19:19:00.000-08:00

On this cold, windy, rainy day, we started up the greenhouse heater & pressed thousands of seeds into the soil. We turned on the hose & watered them in. We brought the onion plants from my parent's house (where they've been growing for 2 weeks near a sunny window), and the artichoke seedlings we transplanted up into 4" pots. Beth here is checking on the trays that we set on a germination mat at 80 degrees. The air in the greenhouse is set to about 55 degrees.
There is nothing like that shade of green in the spring, after months of seeing gray.
Luke helped me pull a giant durable tarp over our new shed we built over the walk-in cooler. It's actually a used billboard we got from the local billboard company!

The fields are indeed muddy. Mud Creek is flowing fast & high, and is living up to its name. The fields have a few soggy spots. I remember this from last year. As soon as the soil below thaws out, it should drain away soon. The patch by the garlic concerns me a bit, but the garlic is starting to push through the soil & grow now, so I think it should have enough strength to survive. I just hope the rain stops soon & we get more sun like last week! We'll need to plow soon...
Here's a few pictures from constructing the shed:

And from up in the greenhouse peak, working on plasticking the vents.
It's a great time to be out at the farm-- every day more and more bird songs can be heard, and all sorts of insects & critters are crawling out of their hiding places. The mud makes a slurping sound when you pull your boots out of it. The air is crisp & new. Hello spring!

Project: COMPOST

2010-03-06T16:57:00.001-08:00

Compost is kind of my religion.

Everything that is alive composts eventually. It's how nature recycles. And the end product after decomposition is ultimately nourishment for another generation of living things. Organic farmers who are growing & harvesting vegetables rely heavily on compost to replenish their soil.

Compost is that step that brings dead things back to life. It's pretty miraculous actually.

This year I'd like to invite all our CSA members to be a part of the whole cycle-- by saving any kitchen scraps, etc. (see list below) and dropping them off at the farm when you pick up your veggie share every week. This keeps a lot of precious "waste" from going to the landfill, and it helps grow your vegetables too!

The best way is to collect scraps in a 5-gallon bucket, with a lid on it. You can keep it outside, in the garage, under the sink, by the trash can, etc. -- just make sure it's tight so that critters can't get in. You can get free buckets from the bakery & deli sections of grocery stores-- just ask them next time you're doing your grocery shopping. If you get a few, share with a friend. Keep asking-- we can always use more on the farm too, so start collecting!

We have a chef in the city (Natural Oasis Restaurant) who collects all his food scraps for us & sometimes even personally delivers them to the farm! He usually has about 10 buckets worth a week. If anyone knows other sources such as this that might be interested, let me know.

Here's a list of compostable items:
-all food scraps (peels, cores, tops, old moldy stuff from the fridge, meat & dairy ok too)
-coffee grounds, tea bags
-eggshells
-paper bags, black&white newspaper

Sound good? Once you get in the habit of it, it's kind of fun. You'll never go back.

A chance to be a part of growing new food by recycling old food. So go get a bucket & start!

Greenhouse almost ready for planting!

2010-03-05T18:26:00.001-08:00

The last four days we've been out at the farm taking advantage of the gorgeous spring weather-- and after many frozen fingers & muddy knees, we've finally finished putting all the new plastic up & it's just about ready to go. First we had a little excavating job to dig out the sides of the greenhouse...
Then we pulled the 2 layers of plastic sheeting over the top of the greenhouse (by 3 ropes attached to the plastic around snowballs!)... securing it on all sides with a metal-rod system & bolts. This system is outdated & extremely time-consuming & frustrating. Next time we do this, we're updating to the "wiggle-wire" method. Boy, what a headache. Thankfully a few farmer friends came out to give helpful advice (they have more experience with greenhouses themselves). Then we stapled smaller pieces of plastic to the endwalls... on the north wall I was able to use the old plastic from last year, since we don't care too much about light penetrating through this side.As the sun set this evening, the greenhouse glowed as I walked back out to my car.
All day big "V"s of geese were squawking overhead... I like to say "welcome back" to them in the spring, even though I know that lots of them overwinter here probably!
Spring feels like it has arrived. The ground was thawing & the mud was making its presence known-- on our boots, gloves, pants, & everything. Glorious, glorious mud.

Thank you to all the enthusiastic volunteers who came out to help with breaking in the farm for the 2010 season!

I'm excited to get to know everyone-- all the new CSA members who'll be joining us this season -- as well as seeing old friends who are back for a second summer. Happy spring!

Muddy times...

2010-03-02T16:44:00.000-08:00

An inspiring article... about communities supporting agriculture in a slightly different way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28food-t-000.html

First seeds of 2010 started!

2010-02-22T15:38:00.000-08:00

The first seeds of the season have been sown. Onions! 5 trays of potting soil, sprinkled with tiny seeds-- we will keep them in a warm part of the basement for a week until they pop up out of the soil, then put them in a sunny window until the greenhouse gets heated. (Which hopefully will happen before March 7th, when a lot more gets planted!)

We expect to harvest over 10,000 onions this year.

CSA memberships still available!

2010-01-26T15:37:00.000-08:00

Lots of folks have been calling & emailing lately, inquiring about the CSA & how it works. That's so great! I can't wait to meet all these new additions to the farm "family".
We still have quite a few openings for 2010 membership, so start asking your friends & neighbors if they'd like to join up with us this year! If you want to post fliers up at your office, yoga studio, library, favorite restaurant, etc., let me know!

Seed order update: all seeds have been ordered and are in the mail! I was happy to buy most of them from High Mowing Seeds this year, which sells 100% organic, and is located in Vermont not far from where Luke grew up. If you're interested in buying some seeds for your home garden, I highly suggest them, but also Fedco Seeds has some really interesting varieties too. Johnny's Seeds is the standard for vegetable growers all over the country, and they have an extensive collection of garden tools too, including these awesome lightweight hoes that I'm ordering more of!

Right now Luke & I are designing a more efficient way to heat the greenhouse tables in the spring-- studying solar greenhouse design & radiant heat systems. Can't wait to get everything started.

2010 begins!

2010-01-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

Well, the farm is fast asleep these days, under blankets of snow. The meadow voles have cozied up in their burrows with abundant stashes of beets, carrots, cabbage leaves & other field residues. I've been in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont for the holidays. No, I don't ski, but I do enjoy snowshoeing. Even more enjoyable is pawing through seed catalogs selecting next year's varieties of vegetables we'll grow! I can't wait to fire up that greenhouse... just 9 more weeks before it starts all over again. Happy new year.

Mud Creek Farm CSA Info Meeting this Sunday!

2009-12-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

This Sunday, December 6th, 12pm - 1:30pm
@ the Artisan Church, 1235 S. Clinton Ave, Rochester, 14620

Mud Creek Farm CSA Informational Meeting

Come enjoy a potluck lunch, then hear Farmer Erin explain the benefits, costs, and rewards of personal involvement in locally grown organic produce.

This is a basic introduction to the CSA: new members & interested folks are encouraged to come, as well as returning members (although you are all experts in CSA involvement by now!) There will be a slide show with photos from 2009, and an introduction on organic food by Kristina Keefe-Perry, Food Justice Coordinator for NOFA (Northeast Organic Farming Association).

Tell your friends! This is a great way to get to know more about how Mud Creek Farm CSA works, ask questions, meet the farmer, etc.

See you there.
Erin

December... still going!

2009-12-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

Still some green left on the farm... we've been taking advantage of the nice days. Rolling up drip tape to reuse it next year...

Honestly I thought I'd be done by now, farm all wrapped up for the winter, me taking naps & dreaming of florida... But I'm still out there working! We are ALMOST done with everything-- just took the last crops from the field, really late stuff that took its time maturing & is finally ready. We are bringing them to the Brighton market (which is indoors, thank goodness!). Cabbage heads which were really wimpy back in October are almost perfect now-- Luke & I made over 200 lbs of sauerkraut & kim chi yesterday. We will ferment these over the winter & sell them at spring markets. We are selling some of our earlier fall ferments already.

We got a nice blurb in the D&C on Tuesday for our hot sauce line-- "Local Collaboration", it read. Indeed, when farmers & bakers get together, good things happen.

Next week: crop planning for next year!

Photos from the last few weeks of harvest...

2009-11-23T10:01:00.000-08:00

Gathering the last leaves of swiss chard...
Farmer workshop about winter root vegetables, at Bejo Seeds in Geneva:
Mowing the field across the street, front loader held high out of the way of the 9 foot tall weeds:
Final broccoli harvest... going to market:
Oats & peas are our winter cover crop for the spring fields... these will be killed by a hard frost & provide a mulch to prevent soil erosion. Then we will till under & plant our spring greens here!
Driving Princess Rose III to Jack's barn, 3 miles down the road. He will do repairs on it this winter.
Luke and a whole bunch of muddy parsnips!
A broom that someone made out of our broom corn:
Lisa picking "dino" kale:
Angie & I picking kale on a glorious fall day.
A glowing distribution scene:

Post-Season Thoughts & Happenings

2009-11-16T16:22:00.000-08:00

CSA distribution ended 2 and 1/2 weeks ago.

And while I probably should be lying on the couch watching movies & drinking tea, I'm actually still working almost every day! There's clean-up: both the shed & greenhouse need to be de-plasticked (for the snow load & we need to replace the old plastic anyway), so everything has to come out & be put in storage. I have to put all the equipment away, and store the tractors in my neighbor's barn. Then there's all the irrigation & row cover left in the field that needs to be rolled up... I built this pretty fun roller-thing that easily winds up the material onto spools for storing & using next year. If we left the drip tape in the field the mice & voles would chew it to pieces.

I mowed across the street, since landowner Bob was concerned about the small trees growing up in it. It hasn't been worked up in a while, there's blackberry brambles & twig dogwoods & cottonwoods. We probably won't need to farm there next year, as I have plenty of land on the other side, next to our fields from this year. The land is nice, though, with a 3-acre chunk next to McMahon Road, and a pie-shaped several-acre piece in the back, bordering the railroad tracks & the glaring white fence of the housing development. I'm sure the developers would love to get their hands on this parcel... you could make a lot of money building houses on that field. Right now there are thousands of rabbits, mice, voles, hawks, snakes, toads, groundhogs, and deer living rent-free on the lot. If only they could come up with the cash.

I wonder sometimes about how many acres one person requires to eat from. For vegetables on Mud Creek Farm, I calculate that each person needs about 700 square feet, or a 25'x25' box for their "season allotment" of all the veggies they can eat. If we include planting for the other half of the year (winter storage crops: roots, squash, hardy greens, etc.) lets double that to 1400 square feet, or 38'x38'. And no one can eat only vegetables: we need to include grain, meat, dairy, oil, fruit, etc. The land required is a lot less for vegetarians. I'm not sure what those calculations would work out to be, but I'm sure there's been studies. In any case, when new housing developments go up, I look at all those houses & think about where those people are going to get their food. If we cover all the fertile fields around us with roads, driveways, mansions, apartment buildings, parking lots, shopping centers, & drive-through fast food outlets, we'll have to continue to go further out into the country to get our nourishment.

It's true that there is a lot of land in upstate New York. But fuel prices will make it more expensive to transport that food into cities. And a lot of the land in New York state is forested, providing habitat for many critters-- including the endandered Eastern Cougar, and others (http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/263.html) that I believe have every right to inhabit, & eat from, this land too. So let's keep agriculture close to home, and leave the land too far away to the bears & the bobcats.

A good way to do this is to make sure that your diet includes as many local products as you can manage. Besides vegetables from Mud Creek Farm, you could buy flour & bread made from wheat grown in Palmyra. You could buy bacon & eggs from Branchport, honey from Bloomfield, fruit from Barker, black beans from Ithaca, chicken from Livonia, cheese from Aurora, sausage from Avon. And you can't buy these things in the grocery store.

All these vendors will be at the new winter farmer's market in Brighton:

Tuesdays, 4-7 pm

1900 Westfall Road, Rochester 14618

Atonement Lutheran Church

I'll be there selling what's left of the vegetable harvest & helping Luke out at the Small World Bakery stand. Come sample our 13 varieties of hot sauce! Buy some granola, brownies, or date bars.
See you there!

Surveys!

2009-10-28T07:22:00.000-07:00

Surveys are now up on the website (www.mudcreekfarm.com) for 2009 CSA members. Tell us what you liked and didn't like about the CSA this year-- knowing your favorite vegetables will help us grow more of them next year! Thanks,
Farmer Erin

FarmerErin

I give presentations!

Tues. Feb 21st, 11am @ Perinton Presbyterian Church, 6511 Palmyra Rd.Sun. Mar 4th, 11:45am @ Artisan Church, 1235 Clinton Ave S, Roch.Tues. Mar 6th, 7pm @ Victor Library, 15 W Main St, Victor

Feel free to print out a flier & hang up in the office, cafe, or local yoga studio! Pdf's are at www.mudcreekfarm.com, click on "Meeting in Rochester" or "Meeting in Victor" Thanks!

Rootstravaganza!!!

Go see some free movies in Brighton!

Sign up now for 2012!

Season Totals

Some reading material while you digest...

Saying goodbye to another season...

A nice video about factory farming and our "return" to what's good...

Farmer Erin's CSA 101 presentation next Thursday! Invite your friends!

Photos from a beautiful fall harvest!

Looking for brave souls...

Rethinking the american dream

Guest posting: Intern Margaret!

Oats are up!

Dust, Mud, and Labor

Midsummer crop report!

Summertime

Garlic Harvest!

Mud Creek Farm's very own grain!

Guest posting: Intern Kim!

Battles

First two weeks of distribution

First harvest 2011

The To-Do List

Heat and what it means to vegetables

The 2011 farm crew!

Rain and rest

Sun! Busy times!

May Day

Hard rain and hope

Eggs and Baskets

Earth Day Celebrations

Winter's finale

Almost spring

Slow thaw

Free carrot tastings at the Mud Creek table!

April is right around the corner

First seeds planted!!!

Green Guide

Keep our water organic!

Winter is for visiting California farms!

Farmer Erin Presents...

Recipes for Feasting

Still digging roots!

Final distribution week!

Things to do with Green Tomatoes

Sugar Babies

Fuzzy Photos from my Cellphone

Cover crops

Now it's fall, definitely.

And summer again!

Autumn at our doorstep...

Vegetable orchestra

Sharing good food

August offerings...

Squash for dessert!

This week's share...

A good thing to do with eggplants...

Water and things that grow from it

Spring cabbage haul

Recipes and stuff

Summer Farm Potluck Coming Up!

Kale chips & more

Ingredients:

Preparation:

Happy solstice!

more things to do with bok choi besides stir-fry!

Share this week...

Photos from the past few weeks...

Fields of plenty!

Upcoming Food Preservation Workshop: get ready for abundance!

almost!

Summer?

Snow!

Planting success!

planting time!

Dirt! The Movie

Tues. Feb 21st, 11am @ Perinton Presbyterian Church, 6511 Palmyra Rd.
Sun. Mar 4th, 11:45am @ Artisan Church, 1235 Clinton Ave S, Roch.
Tues. Mar 6th, 7pm @ Victor Library, 15 W Main St, Victor