Quick logistical note first: Please return you egg cartons! Travis at Heritage Farm would love to have them back to be reused.
Tomato season has begun! The trifecta of tastiness - tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers - is now completely in season. And it's not even July. Way to grow, tomatoes, and a big shout out to the farm team here at Great Oak for their hard work keeping these plants pruned up and tidy for optimal production! These will be some of the earliest tomatoes we've ever harvested - we used to be happy with the first tomatoes by the 4th of July.
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This week was another whopper of a week. Starting off with an inch of gentle rain this past Sunday was a great way to get the week going (the proof is in the rain gauge, with some freshly cultivated beds of green beans coming up in the background.) The soil was so dry that by Monday afternoon it was dry enough to keep cultivating with the tractor again, but hey, we'll take what we can get. Then we were lucky enough to get another .4" of rain on Wednesday night. It was a good week to be a plant.
Last weekend before the rain I seeded our fourth and final succession seeding of sweet corn (we hope to harvest corn all the way till the end of September if all goes well) and our fourth succession seeding of green beans as well. We still have 2-3 more weeks seedings of green beans to go, and with any luck we'll be picking from the first seeding in 2 more weeks.
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Last week, our rear sweep cultivator brackets broke on the little Farmall Cub that we have been finger weeding with. They were probably the original brackets from 1947 when that tractor came off the line. Over 60 years of some pretty serious wear and tear.
Back then, a lot of parts were made of cast iron. It was relatively cheap to mass produce, but more brittle than ideal, which can lead to cracks. Cast iron is difficult to weld and repair, so thankfully our farmer friend Tom of Maple Hill Farm welded us up some new and improved brackets and we were back in business. I think these brackets will last at least long as the previous ones - they are farmer built for sturdiness. Check out that shiny red paint back there! Grateful to be a part of this community of farmers (and welders!)
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Meanwhile, we spent some days using our "other" finger weeders (aka our hands) and some good old fashioned hoes cleaning up the onions this week. It would be nice if our "other" finger weeders could be made to work mounted under a tractor... ;)
Hoeing is work to be sure, but we make the most of it - brainstorming ideas for farm improvements or alternative cropping systems, and catching up on interesting podcasts while we work. Farmer Alex and I spent 2 days on the tractors this week finger weeding the weeds IN the beds on the Cub and cleaning up the weeds in the tire tracks BETWEEN beds of crops (including these onions) with the big field tractor, and I am happy to report that we're as caught up on cultivation as we could ever hope to be this early in the season.
It won't be long until the next round of weed seedlings begins to emerge, and we're back at it all again, but the field crops are looking great right now. Here's a shot of the second seeding of 8 beds of sweet corn, off to a great start. It's been all tractor cultivated, no hand weeding or hoeing!
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In the picture above, to the left are 8 more beds of corn (the third seeding, only about 3 inches tall but recently tractor cultivated as well) and to the right are our soon-to-be-hand weeded carrots. Our next big project will be hand weeding that first seeding of carrots, which will be likely ready for harvest sometime in the second half of July.
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This week, we found numerous examples of ecologically beneficial predator insects here on the farm. We've been seeing lady bugs here and there, and this past week I stumbled upon a ladybug larvae running across a swiss chard leaf. They are tiny, voracious hunters - running around like little alligators of the bug world - preying on insects that can be damaging to our crops.
We also found several lacewing egg deposits on both collard greens (inside a hoophouse on the far West side of the farm) and on scallions growing in a field separated from the hoophouses by 7 acres of woods. Having multiple, distinctly separated populations of lacewings thriving here on the farm is pretty exciting. Full disclosure: I tried taking a picture, but it didn't come out well. This one's from the internet, but I wanted to show you what these delicate lacewing eggs look like - they are so cool! Perhaps you have seen them in your flowers or garden at home? Knowing which bugs are beneficial is important, so keep your eye out for them.
Some farms actually purchase these beneficial insects in the form of larvae and eggs to release, hoping that they will grow and help control pest insects, but over time we've managed to naturally cultivate healthy populations of great bugs like these.
As an organic farmer, that's a big deal. Seeing results like these (not even considering the many species of pollinators that live on our farm) helps reinforce the importance of sustainable, ecological stewardship of our fields. There's so much more to farming than just food production, and we're proud to be taking a holistic, regenerative approach to managing our farm.
Good food is good for the people who eat it, good for the people who grow it, and good for the land as well. Good food is food you can feel good about eating!
Lastly, here's a tasty recipe idea (using locally harvested whitefish and hazelnuts that you can add to your CSA boxes of course!) from Farmer Brian of Northcroft Farm, who has been growing all of the delicious salad mix and most of the heads of lettuce in your boxes each week and knocking it out of the park! This last week, he was up until 11:30 pm washing-washing-washing all that great salad the night before we packed up your CSA boxes.
Herbed Hazelnut Whitefish
2 cleaned, fresh whitefish fillets
2 table spoons butter
2 tbsp. chopped sage
¼ cup toasted and lightly chopped hazelnuts
Salt and pepper
Fresh lemon squeeze
Preheat the oven to 375F. If necessary, rinse the fish in ice-cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. Lay the fish on the cookie sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake the fish about 10-15 minutes or until the flesh is opaque and tender.
Meanwhile, melt the butter. Just before the fish is done baking, add the sage to the butter, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Spoon the butter and sage over the fish and sprinkle hazelnuts on top.
To toast hazelnuts roughly chop, place on baking sheet for 10 minutes in the over at 175 degrees.
That's it for this week - thanks so very much for eating the Good Stuff. We're honored to be your farmers!
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
PS - The snap peas are starting to bloom! That means about 10 days till the first picking. Yum!
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