Heirloom Tomatoes from Fresh Earth Farms

Again, not a lot of time so here are the highlights!

It is tomato season.  The plants are producing madly.  But they are also being pursued by a disease called septoria leaf spot (SLS).  SLS causes the leaves to die from the bottom up.  We noticed it a few weeks ago on the New Girl tomatoes.  It has since spread to some of the other varieties nearby.  It mainly affects the leaves but can also affect the fruit, often without any noticeable symptoms until the fruit fully ripens.  We’ve found that a perfectly good looking tomato that has SLS will develop sunken spots as it ripens off the plant.  The spots grow until the tomato no longer looks appetizing.  If caught early the tomato is still edible.

SLS is transmitted during periods of wet weather.  We have seen it before when we put tomato transplants out in the spring to harden-off before we transplant them.  The wet spring weather creates a wonderful environment for it to thrive.  This season we’ve had so many weeks of wet weather that it is surprising that we have any tomato plants left at all.  But we do, and boy are they producing.  On Monday we harvested 475 pounds of tomatoes.  That was after we harvested 200+ pounds on the previous Friday.  Looking at the trellises sagging under the weight of unripe tomatoes I suspect this will continue for a couple more weeks then start tapering off as the days get shorter, the nights cooler and the SLS spreads to more plants.

This past week was the end of the sweet corn.  I was hoping to get two weeks of harvests out of the last planting but it just didn’t produce as well as the other varieties.  Not sure why.  Could be the knock down of the corn earlier in the season had a greater affect on this last planting than the others.  Or it could be something else.  That is the thing about farming. It’s like children.  You think you got them figured out then …

We still have a lot of potatoes.  I suspect we will have potatoes this week, skip a week, then potatoes until the end of the season.  Hope everyone likes potatoes.  This week’s variety is still mostly Nicola with Yellow Finn making its debut.  Yellow Finns are bumpier and feel more solid to me – quite dense.  They would be good in any dish where you want the potato to retain its shape (e.g. soup, potato salad, etc.)

Can’t be a newsletter without a bit of weather talk.  We have been in a bit of a rain slump as of late.  Most of the plants will do fine without irrigation for another week or so.  We have very moisture retentive soil.  However we have started irrigating the new transplants and newly seeded fall crops.  If we could get one nice gentle inch of rain we’d be set for a while.

So what is on tap this week?  Tomatoes, beans, tomatoes, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, tomatoes, tomatillos, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, and a few odds and ends.  And probably more tomatoes.  Make sure you try some of the heirloom tomatoes.  The flavors vary considerably and should not be missed.  Some of the tomatoes ripen to green – specifically Evergreen and Green Zebra (see the picture above).  Don’t wait for these to turn another color.  Eat them when they turn slightly soft.

One last thing: I canned 14 pints of heirloom salsa using the tomatoes in the picture above.  Unfortunately I forgot to taste it before canning it.  I hope it tastes is as good as it looks.

FruitShare
No FruitShare this week.  The next FruitShare will be Colorado peaches on Wednesday September 1^st. 

CheeseShare
Same as FruitShare though with cheese and not peaches.

MeatShare
Next MeatShare is Friday September 3^rd.

EggShare
There is always EggShare.

First, we’ve been digging garlic every chance we get.  We are about 2/3rds of the way done.  Hopefully we will finish by the end of this week. 

Second, we will be giving out garlic with this week’s share.  The first garlic will be Czechland Race.  It is a smaller garlic with a strong flavor and a bit of bite when eaten raw.  We grow it as an indicator as to when the garlic should be harvested.  It is the earliest garlic we grow so if it is ready, the rest of the varieties will be ready shortly.  You should notice when you try to peel it that it is more difficult than older garlic.  It also will have more oil.  This is because it is very fresh!

Third, we are switching to our last planting of sweet corn.  The Bodacious we have been eating lately was getting a bit long in the tooth.  It tasted good but by this past Monday it was losing its crunch.  The next variety is a super-duper sweet corn (I added the duper in there) called XtraTender 270 (or is it 275?).  It has smaller kernels that pop with flavor.  It also stores much better than the previous sweet corns, but don’t let that stop you from eating it the day you get it.

Fourth, we finally planted the fall broccoli and kohlrabi.  I hope we are not too late.  With the hot weather we’ve had for the last few weeks it was not conducive to planting cool season crops.  This brief cool spell has given us a chance.  We will be planting fall salad mix and maybe baby bok choi later this week.

Fifth, here is my best guess as to what we will be harvesting this cycle: Tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, garlic, sweet corn, carrots, fennel and basil.  There should also be a few beets, some leftover potatoes, maybe eggplants – though they seem to be forgetting to set flowers, and maybe squash – though they seem to be pretty well done.  Oh, and we will check the melons to see if they are ready.

FruitShare
There is FruitShare this week.  Colorado peaches.  Be sure to pick-up your fruit at your usual pick-up place.

CheeseShare
There is cheese this week.  I believe we have cheese curds, churned butter, bromfield cheddar and tomato/basil gouda.  As in the past, we may not have the cheese here by the time we fill the boxes but we will get your cheese to you at the next delivery.

EggShare
There is always EggShare.

MeatShare
No MeatShare this week.

I think that pretty much covers it.  If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.

Ok, one more thing.  Last week I roasted garlic on the grill.  It was fabulous.  To roast garlic first clean the bulb.  Next cut off any roots.  Cut the top off the bulb so that each clove top is exposed.  Pour a little olive oil over the garlic.  Place the bulb on the grill upright.  Grill until the bulb is soft.  Remove from the grill, squeeze out the soft garlic onto bread, spread and eat.

For the eighth week of the season we are almost completely out of the cool season crops.  Included this week are tomatoes, potatoes, sweet corn (Bodacious), peppers, broccoli, red cabbage, cherry tomatoes, summer squash, onions and basil.  On farm we also had access to tomatillos, eggplants, cucumbers, kohlrabi, cauliflower, broccoli and kale.

Here come the tomatoes!  The first to arrive are the cherry tomatoes. In addition to cherry tomatoes we have tomatillos, sweet corn, onions, kohlrabi, cucumbers, summer squash, peppers, yellow beans and kale.  We also had a few cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli here on the farm.

Our biggest project right now is digging the garlic.  We have a lot of garlic to dig and a short time to dig it.  We want the garlic to be mature and as large as possible but if it is left in the ground too long it starts to separate.  Once it separates it allows pathogens to enter the bulb which shortens its ability to store.  So we have to get it all in as soon as possible.

We stated the project last week and got two beds out of thirteen done.  Yesterday we brought in one more bed after we finished the harvest for the day.  Today we are focused on getting as much as possible in, but it is starting to rain so time to write the newsletter.

The attached picture is what garlic looks like when it is planted upside-down.  The clove that was planted knew which way was up but the person who planted it didn’t.  I’d like to say something like, “How does it feel to be dumber than a garlic clove?” but since the people who helped were volunteers I will just say, “Good thing garlic cloves are smart!”  Actually there are very few of these so our helpers are smarter than 99.9% of the garlic cloves.

Once we harvest the garlic we hang it in the garlic curing chamber for the appropriate amount of time to “cure”.  That is why it is called a garlic “curing” chamber.  Most people who see the garlic curing chamber comment on how closely it resembles a detached garage.  This is just clever camouflage to protect the garlic from unscrupulous garlic wranglers.  You can never be too careful.

Once the garlic is cured we cut off the tops and roots and start handing it out.  Hey wait a minute Chris.  Why does garlic have to cure?  Great question.  The best answer in my opinion is that uncured garlic is hard to peel.  Another really good answer is if you cut the tops off before it is cured it exposes the bulb to pathogens that could cause it to rot.  So you could dig the garlic, cut off the tops and use the garlic right away — after struggling to peel it — but we don’t want our members to struggle, so we cure it as a benefit to you.

We grow eight or so varieties of garlic, three of which seem to do better than the others.  Our most productive garlic is Chesnok Red.  We call it Cheshok Red because when I first bought it I misread the handwritten “n” as an “h”.  I think this is how most new garlic varieties are created.  Another variety worth mentioning is Music.  It has the biggest bulbs and cloves.  Frequently there are less than five cloves per bulb – five big cloves per bulb.  It is a challenge to increase the planting stock of Music. Since a new bulb is created by planting a clove from the old bulb, and Music usually only has four cloves, we usually only get four new bulbs, if all works perfectly, from each old bulb.  So trying to increase the planting stock is a long term project.

I would expect we’d start handing out garlic sometime in the month of August, probably in two weeks or so. 

What is on tap for this week?  Hmmm, not completely sure yet.  For the most part the brassicas are gone.  We tried to nurture the broccoli along but we never got a break in the heat so it never really got very big before it started separating.  Last season was a lot cooler so we had good broccoli until late in August, then we had more late broccoli in September.  This year we are waiting until we get a cool break in the weather to get the fall broccoli in.  Hopefully it will come soon or there will be no fall broccoli.  Thus is the nature of farming.

But back to the question.  We will definitely have tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, summer squash, onions (maybe the cippolini onions) and cabbage (though this is about done as well).  We should have peppers, eggplants and a few cucumbers.  The original cuke plants seem to have given up on producing new fruits and the second planting haven’t grown sufficiently to produce fruits yet so therefore the “few” in the above sentence.  Hopefully the new cukes will start coming on in a few weeks.  We should be getting beans from the second planting.  We will probably dig another bed or two of carrots.  I think there will be fennel and Daikon radishes, but no guarantees.  I’d go out and take a look but it is raining right now.  Oh, and we should dig up a few more of the beets and maybe basil and maybe cilantro if it is big enough.  Wow, that is more stuff than I originally thought!  Wait, there is plenty of sweet corn as well!

EggShare
There is always EggShare.

FruitShare
No FruitShare this week.  We will be getting wonderful Colorado peaches next week.  You can order them a la carte.  $39 for a single layer box (about 9#) and $63 for a two layer box (about 20#).  Let me know by Monday if you would like to order them.  They are certified organic and delicious!

MeatShare
Pick-up your MeatShare from last Friday if you haven’t already.

CheeseShare
Pick-up your CheeseShare from last Wednesday if you haven’t already.

That is all for now.  Send in your questions, recipes, brain teasers, etc.

This week we will have tomatoes, tomatillos, cherry tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, sweet peppers, eggplants, cucumbers, summer squash, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, basil, onions and sweet corn. 

The potatoes are a great tasting variety called Nicola.  They are a yellow potato with a thin skin.  Great for roasting on the grill.  If you put the potatoes in a sealed aluminum foil bag on the grill the potatoes will steam.  If you put them on the grill in an open aluminum container they will roast.  Two different tastes and textures.  Try them both!

We are moving into the second planting of corn.  This variety is call Bodacious.  It is quite sweet and tasty. 

We are picking several varieties of tomatoes including New Girl (standard red hybrid), Cherokee Purple (dark red/purple flesh with green sholders), Hungariam Heart (larger pink tomatoe frequently heart-shaped), San Marzano (roma type tomato) and Big Beef (a red beefsteak tomato).  Be aware that many of the tomatoes we grow are heirlooms that are not necessarily red and not necessarily round.  It is best to determine when they are ripe by feel.  They should give a little to pressure (though please don’t squeeze the tomatoes when you are selecting them here on the farm — they bruse easily).  In the near future we will be giving out Evergreen tomatoes.  They stay green when ripe.  We harvest tomatoes a bit under ripe so they can last a few days on your counter.  Dead ripe tomatoes would need to be eaten immediately.

Speaking of tomatoes, we grow four different varieties of cherry tomatoes: Sun Gold, Purple Cherry, Sweet Olive and Sun Sweet.  The Sun Golds are ripe when they are gold.  Cherry tomatoes sometimes crack.  They still taste good if they are cracked but should be eaten soon after discovering the crack.

The hot weather is not favorable to growing any of the brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.) however we should have a few more weeks of these.

The first planting of beans are done.  We may have a brief gap before the second planting starts producing.  Then again maybe we won’t.

FruitShare
We have a mixed box of fruit this week plus there are pluots to replace the peaches from two deliveries ago.  For drop site members the pluots will be in your veggie box.  On-farm pick-up members can grab some when they get their fruit.

Speaking of peaches: the next delivery of fruit (in two weeks) will be Colorado peaches.  These are some of the best peaches I have ever tasted.  If you like peaches I would highly recommed getting a box or two.  A single layer box (16-24 peaches, approximately 9 lbs) is $39.  A double layer box (the number of peaches and weight is left as an exersize for the consumer) is $63.  Let me know if you would like to order some.

CheeseShare
There is cheese this week.  Is arrived Wednesday evening.

MeatShare
MeatShare arrives this Friday.  Plan to pick-up at the farm during our normal business hours or email to schedule an alternative time.

EggShare
There is always EggShare.

I think that is all for now.  If I think of anything else I will let you know!

The Complete History of Fresh Earth Farms 

Our story starts around 300,000,000 years ago when we were covered by a shallow sea.  Farming was, to say the least, quite challenging.  Getting plants to germinate was difficult enough, but trying to get them all the way to the end product was impossible.  Plus, we had all these sea creatures to help themselves to the plants.  You think spraying on a windy day is tough, try spraying underwater, with a current.  Now that takes some good tractor driving.  Plus all these creatures had hard shells that pesticides didn’t penetrate.  Getting rid of squash bugs is tough, getting rid of swarms of trilobites is pretty much impossible!

However the organic pesticides were far more effective back then.  You see all those menacing sea creatures died and formed a thick layer of sandstone bedrock.  Far fewer sea creatures but still farming was pretty difficult so we toyed with the idea of opening a dive shop – the earth had other ideas.  It started to cool and the sea receded, leaving nothing but a deep layer of sea creature detritus.  

Over the next couple 100 million years other things happened which are of no consequence.  But then we had an ice age and all the stuff that would have been of consequence ended up in Iowa somewhere.  If any of you live in Iowa or know someone who lives there could you ask them to look for my stuff and if they find it send it back?  Anyway, as the ice retreated it left behind some gigantic boulders from farther up north, somewhere around Duluth.  If any of you are from Duluth or know someone from Duluth who is missing a few boulders could you have them come pick them up?    

The next two ice ages stopped short of us by a few miles.  Good for us, bad for our neighbors a few miles to the north.  Farming in ice is not easy; farming in ice organically is even more difficult.  But we didn’t have to worry about that.  While all these Woodbury farmers were freezing their butts off, we were accumulating soil through wind erosion.  We were stockpiling it knowing that someday it will be a valuable commodity.  Plus we thought it was easier to bury the boulders than try to move them. 

We continued to add soil to our farm for the next several 10’s of thousands of years.  You need patience to be a good farmer and steward of the land.  We accumulated an average of six feet of good top soil above all those dead sea creatures from millions of years ago.  (That’s dead sea creatures not Dead Sea creatures who are still alive and living in the Dead Sea).  This layer of top soil hid most of the boulders left behind from the ice age glaciers, except for the one in the corn, the one in the peas and the one in the cucumbers – plus there are a couple more slowly rising to the surface over by the carrots and back where the peppers were last year, oh and the one under the irrigation pipe on the south east side.  But for the most part the boulders are hidden. 

There were a couple other things that have happened lately but they are really of little consequence compared to the prior 300 million years.

I suppose you are wondering how I know all this.  Well, we had about 40 geologists, soil scientists and septic system designers descend on our farm on Friday to dig a few holes and see what is underneath.  Based on what they saw and what they knew of the history of the area they clued me in on how we got to where we are today.  About six feet below the surface we have a layer of white sandstone.  It is pretty crumbly, at least near the transition between the top soil and the sandstone; it gets harder as you go deeper.  This sandstone is all the dead sea creatures.  Unfortunately these dead creatures didn’t produce diamonds, just sand, and I know of no one who wants a sand engagement ring.  

Above the dead sea creatures is a few feet of brownish soil consisting of mostly silty clay. Brownish means there is some organic matter in it but not a lot of organic matter.  It also means there are microbes, which is what the septic guys need to get their systems to work right.  Then above the brownish layer is the darker top soil that again is silty clay but with a lot more organic matter and microbes.  This organic matter is what makes it look black.  The soil scientists said this was great soil to use for farming.  It holds water well yet drains well (I could have told them that).  

So anyway, that pretty much sums up the history of Fresh Earth Farms.  I hope you found this educational and informative.  Let me know if you think there are any details I’ve left out.

This week I will focus on pests.  This year we are inundated with pests.  Absolutely overrun.  Completely saturated.  Just like last year and the year before that and every previous year.  There are a lot of pests every year.  The way we farm we do not try to eliminate every pest, though that would be a wonderful thing.  It is difficult to kill many pests organically. Instead we try to take measure to reduce the damage to the plant so that it is still able to produce the vegetable.  I think this is better than constantly spraying insecticide – whether organic or not.  Even organic pesticides kill unintended bugs like honey bees.

Let’s look at a couple of the more recent pests. 

The first one to mention is the Corn Earworm.  Why are we mentioning this first?  Because we found some on the corn we harvested last week.  This is worth mentioning for two reasons.  One, you might get some in your corn.  Two, we’ve never seen corn earworms this early in the season.  We generally see them in mid-August.  One method for reducing the impact of corn earworms is to have all the corn harvested before they arrive.  We frequently harvest the first and sometimes second planting before we see them.  Not this year.  We planted the corn weeks earlier to try to have our fill of sweet corn before the earworm moths arrived.  But it was not to be.  Last year we started harvesting corn on August 4^th.  This year we were about two weeks earlier.  But the earworms are about four weeks earlier.  

Earworms are hard to control.  They are the larvae of moths who lay eggs on the silks of corn ears.  When the eggs hatch the larva crawl into the ear and start eatin’, with no evidence outside the husk until they’ve made a complete mess of the place.  Spraying insecticide on the corn does no good since the earworm is protected by the husk.  The worms are susceptible to a type of bacteria that is commercially available but it is difficult to get the bacteria to where the larva are partying, inside the husk.  So we put up with a little earworm damage.  For on-farm pick-up, if you are squeamish about bugs we will gladly open up the husk for you to ensure there are no earworms.  We generally check the corn going into the boxes but sometimes a few slip past. 

The second pest to mention is an old pest but new to a particular crop.  The pest is deer.  We’ve been fortunate in deer not consuming many of our vegetables over the years.  The one exception up to this year was the artichokes.  You may notice we do not grow artichokes anymore.  That is due to deer and their insatiable appetite for artichokes.  This year we have at least one deer that has developed a taste for beet greens.  Talk about frustration.  The deer grabs the beet greens and pulls up.  If the beet comes up with it the deer just leaves it on the ground and goes on to another bunch of beets.  We find beet roots scattered among the beets whose tops are missing.  

One control for deer is the neighbors across the street who hunt each fall.  Even if they reach their quota I don’t think it would keep up with the new ones born each year.  Our second method of control is speeding cars down Oakgreen.  This has taken care of some of the problem but does not provide complete control.  Anyway, the purpose of mentioning this is that you may get beets without tops.  But the tops didn’t go to waste.  

Another pest to mention of late is the cabbage looper.  If I were a pest I’d want to be known as a looper.  What a great name.  Anyway, the cabbage looper is the larvae of a moth (moths are the mosquitoes of the farm pest world).  It lays its eggs on the brassica family of vegetable plants – cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli are its culinary favorites.  Being the larva of a moth it is susceptible to BT, the bacteria mentioned earlier.  On the positive side brassicas do not come with husks to hide under.  On the negative side the loopers like to hang out on the underside of the plant so spraying from above can miss some of the targeted loopers.  But since the insecticide works if it is ingested the looper only has to eat through a leaf to get BT in its gut.  So spraying can be effective, except for years where it rains a lot and often.  Since it has rained a lot and often you may stumble across a looper or two in your broccoli or cauliflower.  Soaking the vegetable for an hour or so generally kills the loopers and they fall to the bottom of the bowl. 

Let’s see, I already mentioned Colorado Potato Beetles and Flea Beetles in earlier posts so we can skip these.  Oh, and I mentioned the raccoons propensity for sweet corn last week (hope you like to share your corn!)  

Another pest we have is a mysterious creature that eats our tomatoes.  It must not be very tall since it eats only low hanging tomatoes but it must not be colorblind since it only eats red tomatoes.  We may have to set-up a motion detecting camera to capture the beasts. 

I think we mentioned the squash bugs and cucumber beetles in an earlier posting.  I didn’t mention the cabbage worms since they are pretty much equivalent to (but not the same as) cabbage loopers and looper is a much more fun word to say than worm.  However they are the offspring of the cabbage butterfly (the ubiquitous white and yellow butterflies).

Speaking of butterflies, one pest we try to encourage is the larva of the Yellow and Black Swallowtail butterfly.  It likes to eat plants in the Umbelliferae family (carrots, fennel, dill, parsley, etc.)  Since the butterflies are pretty cool we figure we should try to help them out instead of kill them.  So if we find them we pick them off and put them in a jar with plant material from the umbelliferae family.  In the future if you are lucky enough to find one of these on your fennel feel free to do the same.  In a few weeks it will turn into a cocoon and a few weeks later it will emerge as a beautiful butterfly. 

There are plenty more pests we could discuss – leaf hoppers for instance – but that’s enough pest talk for now.

So what are we expecting to harvest this cycle?  Well, we should have beans, corn, broccoli, cabbage, kohlrabi, some cauliflower, peppers, some eggplant, some tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, summer squash, and cucumbers.  These are mostly warm season crops, go figure. 

There are Eggs and Flowers this week.  No cheese, no fruit and no meat.