Crossroads

For reasons I can't fully explain publicly, Old Webster Farm has come to a bit of a crossroads within the past two days. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it could affect the future of the farm. It could affect whether or not we continue to farm, at least for the foreseeable future.

It's up to us, really. Whether we choose to keep going, or choose to do make a bit of a return to our former life.

I don't want to leave the farm. I don't want to give up on the farm. But farming over the past three years has given me a perspective that I didn't have three years ago. A feeling that I know I can pretty much do anything I decide to do...whether that's true or not, I'm sure I'll find out before long.

Well, enough of the cryptic writings. I'm just a little confused right now and felt I needed to share (as little information as possible, but still).

I'll keep you posted. Whoever you are.

A Million Miles Away From the Farm

Tomorrow the Beautiful Old House will see visits from a plumber, a carpenter and an electrician.

Better sell LOTS of tomatoes next year...

The Farm is Napping

Everything is snoozing away under a blanket of snow and ice right now at the old farm.

I was initially busy with a kitchen rehab in our Beautiful Old House. But when we discovered rotting floor boards under our downstairs bathroom a week ago, we decided to redo that first. Hopefully, we can do a better job of making the bathroom look less like 1987 left a lingering stench in there and help it coordinate more with the 19-teens decor of the rest of the place. Hex tiles, wainscoting, pedestal sink, etc.

In farm-related news, though, I do have a line on an interesting and relatively rare variety of turnip from Germany. Hopefully I'll be able to make that available this upcoming season.

Happy Thanksgiving

Just over an hour until the Packers play, so I'll make this quick.

I've been pretty busy lately with a lot of things, and few of them connected to the farm.

We live in an beautiful old house about 3 miles from the farm. As is the case with most beautiful old houses, ours is in a state of (relatively slight) disrepair. My project for the winter will be to rehab our kitchen, and hopefully one of the bathrooms. The years 1960 through 1979 were very unkind to beautiful old houses. So, my life has been all countertops and islands and cabinet refacing.

Well it hasn't been ALL those things, actually. The past month has also been all about planning and organizing the harvest feast for Reghan's school. Last year, I ran my mouth a little and got myself nominated to head up this year's feast. So, being a small farm farmer, I turned the whole thing local. We held it at a local restaurant -- Jake's Northwoods in Sparta -- and I sourced at least 90% (maybe more) of the food from our farm and other farms in the area. Organic Valley donated a ton of milk and butter, John and Jill from Acorn Creek farm in Tomah donated lots of squash, Chad from Footjoy Farm in Cataract donated about 100 lb. of potatoes, Jillian from Small Family CSA Farm in Avalanche donated all the itty bitty punkins for the centerpieces, and Jason, the chef/owner of Jake's donated way more time and kitchen expertise than any of us expected. It was awesome and I've heard nothing but rave reviews...so hopefully we'll be able to do it again in the future. Next year, even.

Lots of good things to be thankful for.

The Garlic is In!

Much later than I would prefer, but it is in the ground, waiting for the wind to die down so it can be mulched.

1/4 acre. 12 varieties. 15 beds. 10,000 cloves in all. Give or take a thousand or two.

I'd post pictures, but I'm having some trouble getting any to upload. And I haven't had time to try and figure out what's wrong.

Well, back to the farm to put everything to bed.

Did I Really Say That?

I probably did.

Garlic Planting Time

Well, now's the time to beat cheeks and get the garlic in before it gets too cold for the little buggers to sprout. We've had some delays to work around -- our renter not getting his corn picked until yesterday, tractor issues and, um...farmer issues (lazi- er, procrastinatory practices).

Should be a pretty good week to do it. Only a little rain in the forecast, and if we can get the beds prepped before then, we (me) can certainly plant garlic in the rain.

Oh yeah, and don't forget to remind me. I need to buy straw this year. Tks.

I am the News

"I", meaning the farm. Yesterday I was interviewed via telephonic speaking device by a reporter from The Capital Times (Madison). We talked about the farm and why I'm so cool ("I" again meaning the farm) and selling in Madison and this upcoming farmer-chef dealy I'm attending that's conducted by REAP.

Anyway, it forced me to recall this other interview I did with a reporter from The Country Today, which is a regional (WI/MN) ag newspaper. I happened to find it on a website that I wouldn't normally imagine anything having to do with me would ever appear. And you can read all about it here.

Something.

I had to post SOMETHING, just so any of you out there (SFX: CRICKETS) who may actually check in from time to time to read this blog will keep coming back.

Soon you will see pictures of my new (really old) Farmall Cub cultivating tractor. Hoorah!

Busy with things unrelated to the farm lately. Too boring to write about. More farm info soon. Promise. F'real, yo.

Unfinished Business

Well, now it's fall and the season is winding down around here. That fall lettuce and all of those successions of baby leeks and scallions never had a chance to find their way into the ground with all of the crappy weather around here. So I'm left with some tiny amounts of baby fennel, baby leeks and a 50 foot bed of purple scallions. Well, and a couple hundred (or more) lb. of garlic left to clean and most of my onions yet to sell.

So, ok, plenty of work yet to do.

Plus, I've got a line on a cultivating tractor...might be picking it up next week. And I need to buy that hoop house to get my tomatoes in the ground earlier. And the chicken coop still needs finishing.

On second thought, nothing is winding down anywhere. Hopefully I can get all of this done before next season.

Heirloom Tomatoes, R.I.P. 2007-2007

Sigh.

Today marks the end of my favorite time of year. Tomato season.

It seems like barely a month and a week ago I was all atwitter over the first salable fruits of the season. And now they're all gone. Well, no, that would be kind of creepy...if after a hard frost they all just disappeared. They're actually still there...they've just become saggy, baggy, gooshy sacs of seeds and glop.

The funny part is, although I probably sold in the neighborhood of 1,500 pounds of tomatoes this year, I hardly had a chance to eat any myself. I bet I had maybe 3 or 4 BLTs all summer. But that's what I get for refusing to look for a hired hand last spring. 16 hour harvest days and no time to eat anything but cold toaster waffles for supper.

Oh well, luckily I stashed a few of the last remaining ripening Carbons, Sara Blacks and Gold Medals. Maybe I'll make one of my favorite BBTs.

And next year's tomato season might come about a month earlier. We're getting a big ole hoop house.

So anyway...who's for garlic?

Flood Relief for Wisconsin/Minnesota Farmers

This is a short video detailing some the destruction done to several small organic farms in our area during recent heavy rains and flooding. Please scratch out a check, type in your CC number or just pass this video along to as many people as you can.

Thanks
Pat



http://www.sowtheseedsfund.org/

Rain.

"Hey man, take a look out the window 'n' see what's happ'nin'
Hey man, it's rainin'"
-Jimi Hendrix, "Rainy Day, Dream Away"

I hate to complain about the rain (that falls mainly on the plain). Seeing as I find myself complaining about the general lack of rain often enough. But I find I'm quite adept at complaining about pretty much anything.

I would prefer it to be a bit drier now that it's tomato season. This rainy business creates a breeding ground for blight and fungi (which I like to refer to as "blungi"). And, long story short, that ain't no good for the tomatoes.

Yeah sure, it helps them grow and whatever. But it doesn't exactly help their flavor. It kinda makes them taste a bit watered down. So, in an attempt to remedy that, I've been harvesting them at their first blush of color and letting them ripen on a newspaper-covered table. Seems to help. And they're still better than Red Round Hybrid #370XX4Z. In my relatively biased opinion.

Per usual, I'm already thinking ahead to next season, when I will grow a small percentage of my tomatoes in a hoop house. This will help me get ripe tomatoes earlier, offer tomatoes later and allow me to control the weather conditions a little better.

Everyone has heirlooms in mid-August. Only a few people have them in late-July. Almost nobody has them in mid-July.

And I want to be one of those almost-nobodies.

Oh Yeah, That Blog.

Everywhere I go, people ask me: Where has the blog gone?

Well, it's been a busy week around here this week. Little Conlan fell (jumped?) off of the hay wagon last Sunday morning and broke his leg. He's fine, or at least as fine as one can be with a broken leg, but he's required a lot more attention. This is also his first prolonged exposure to television. Sigh. I guess I knew I couldn't keep him away from it forever...

The tomatoes are really starting to pop. I expect to have at least 50 lb. of first-quality available for Tuesday (hopefully more), and perhaps as many as 30-40 lb. of seconds available as well. I expect to have close to 200 lb. available per week when they really start hitting.

The Leg Incident has really cut into my garlic cleaning time, but I'll clean it to order if nothing else. Right now, it's still rocamboles (Killarney, Korean, Chesnok), but I'll start in on the porcelains next week.

Finally.

Okay, everyone stop panicking. I harvested a few tomatoes today. Soon, the floodgates will...drop? What do floodgates do, do they drop?

Anyway, soon there will be a lot of tomatoes. The ever reliable and delicious Black Prince provided me with not one, but two beauties. One promptly became the T in BBT. (Basil instead of lettuce...arugula works well, too. That's a BAT.) I also found one of my new varieties, Purple Price, a couple Tigerellas and a few different cherries.

I've made my peace with the tomatoes. We're cool now.

Mad at My Tomatoes

Usually mad ABOUT my tomatoes. (80-some varieties, yadda yadda yadda) But not this time.

I'm a bit...disappointed in them right now. I feel they aren't quite living up to their potential. Today was the day. The day they were going to be ready to ship. But outside of maybe 2 dozen Black Cherries and one nearly-ripened Black Prince, I got squat.

I know by next Monday I'll have 20 or 30 lb. ready to ship. And by next Thursday I'll have hundreds of pounds of every imaginable color, shape, size and flavor of tomato ripe and ready to eat.

But I wanted them now.

Oh well, that Black Prince has already been earmarked for a bacon, basil and tomato sammy for Friday's lunch. That'll make me feel better.

2/3 of Our Kids

Here's another post that's only nebulously farm related.

This is Reghan, on her fifth birthday (7/19/07), with 2 year old Conlan. Standing on the coffee table. Reg's sporting her new Ramones (she says "Ree-mones") t-shirt. And sort of looking a lot like Johnny.

Zach + Kanye

This just needed to be posted. It's sort of farm-related and it features a friend of ours. Cover your ears for the profane parts, if that sort of thing bothers you.

Garlic Harvest...A Retrospective

I spent a lot of time last winter wondering to myself how on earth I was going to get a full quarter-acre of garlic out of the ground this season. Certainly, I wasn't going to be pulling it by hand, the way I did the eighth-acre last year and the 150 bulbs the previous year.

A grower I know in Iowa, Larry Cleverley, he unearths his garlic with an old Ford-Ferguson potato plow. I could try that. No luck finding one, however.

A grower I know in Fond du Lac, Bruce Braun, harvests his with a subsoiler. I found lots of those. Looked at them several times at a few local implements. Never bought one, though.

So there I was, staring at a quarter acre of a dozen varieties of garlic the day my garlic needed to come out of the ground. Holding a spading fork. It worked OK. Next year, though...a plow or something will make it that much easier. My back was killing me. Remind me to buy one before garlic harvest time in '08, n'kay?

Most of the garlic I grew this season was hardneck. 99.993%. Someday, I hope to have maybe 3 hardnecks and at least one softneck that I stick to each year. Enough of this dozen varieties nonsense.


Among the hardnecks, I grew more Killarney Red than anything else. It's a flavorful rocambole. Not mild by any means, but not strong. Textbook garlic flavor, I'd say. Another rocambole I grew a lot of was Chesnok Red. A real beauty, and a little stronger in flavor than Killarney. But again, not overpowering. My third rocambole was Korean Red. This one was interesting, because for some reason, a good percentage of my Korean Red crop this season exhibited softneck traits -- most notably, no topset and a SOFT neck. Weird. Still, this variety is excellent, though a bit on the hot side. But not so hot that you'd think you were eating crappy supermarket garlic or anything like that.


The other hardencks I grew were procelains. Music, which is an Italian heirloom as I understand it, has 4 to 6 large and very easy-to-peel cloves that taste exactly how you'd expect really good garlic to taste. Sort of mild, incredibly flavorful garlic. I think my favorite garlic is German Extra Hardy. It's slightly stronger than Music, and it's also really easy to peel and work with. Giant Siberian is my other porcelain. That one is a tad hot and generally pretty huge.

Some of the others I'm growing out to trial are Spanish Roja, a very popular rocambole; Georgian Fire and Georgian Crystal, one is hot and one is not; Romanian Red, which was quite a tall plant; a Mystery Cultivar, that probably just turned out to be German Extra Hardy; and two softnecks -- Inchelium Red and Tochliavri.

All in all, the harvest took 3 days with me finally forgoing the fork altogether and just pulling the damn things out of the ground, and my dad doing the bunching, tying and labeling. I hung 'em.

In a few weeks (or less), we begin the process of cleaning them for sale. I actually get kind of anal retentive (or perhaps it's OCD) and break out a few toothbrushes to get each bulb nearly sparkly clean.

Back when I still did farmers markets, I had a customer stop by my stand, pick up a bulb of garlic and tell me that it looked too pretty to eat. She thought I'd perhaps gotten it too clean. I told her "but it's food, it's supposed to be clean."

She looked at me as though she'd never thought of garlic that way before. Then proceeded to buy about a dozen heads.

It Begins.

Tomato Season. Today. July 24, the year of the lawdy lawd 2007.

This time of year is the reason I started a farm. Sure, I like growing baby leeks and onions and garlic and all that other stuff. But tomatoes. Heirloom tomatoes. This is what I really love.

The tomato you see in the photo above is a Black Cherry. This season I planted over 200 plants of that variety, primarily to grow them out for seed for a company in Maine called Fedco. But I suspect they will make appearances in mix quart cases and on their own in some respects. Especially once I am assured I have at least 1 pound of seed saved from them. Which will take a lot of tomatoes...tiny seeds in those buggers.

They are among my favorites, and not just in comparison to other cherries. However, I would take a single Black Cherry over a case of SunGolds any day.

So anyway. This day officially begins Tomato Season 2007.

Tomato Ordering Season 2007 can't be far behind.