Expired Twinkies and Muddy Farm 2011

A couple female farmers I've know have made the analogy that starting a new season is like giving birth--if you remembered how painful the experience was, you'd never do it again.  They have kids, so I take their word for it.  I think I'd get my ass kicked for saying that, so I'm just quoting here.  However, it does take some intense mental trickery to commit nearly every waking hour and a whole lot of start-up money to another season.  I am already enthusiastic about 2011, though.  It is the goals I have set for myself that are the inspiration.  My main goal is to make this blog the number one page that comes up anytime someone does an internet search for "Expired Twinkies."  While I don't know how this fame is going to help sales of my organic (Certified Naturally Grown) veggies or free range eggs, it is the wind beneath my wings.

In addition to wanting those in search of expired Twinkies to find themselves at the Muddy Farm blog, I also have some exciting vegetable growing ideas for 2011.  One of them is that I want to grow carrots.  In previous seasons, carrots would have been a disaster on this property.  I know because I tried a number of times.  The weed situation I inherited was atrocious.  Carrots take about three weeks to germinate, and once they come up, they grow very slowly.  Most of the weeds on this land take about half a week to sprout and they grow aggressively.  In previous seasons, they smothered the carrots before they even came up out of the ground, but I have finally gotten the weed situation more under control.  Also, this place was water-logged and the soil was very heavy.  Carrots like fairly loose soil.  Because I am using the raised bed system that I mentioned in other posts, I believe they will now work well.  This is exciting because I love to try new crops on this land.  Also I don't believe there were a lot (if any) carrots at my market this season.  I don't leave the stand much to scout out what other people have, but customers requested them and said they weren't at the market.  I have been looking through seed catalogs and circling all the varieties I will grow next year.

While I am out in the field this late Fall, I have been thinking full time about next season.  These are just two of many ideas, which hopefully you'll see at the stand.  Uh...it is unlikely you will see expired Twinkies there, though.  To my knowledge, that would break several regulations.  I have, once in my life, seen a Twinkie (hopefully) well past its prime.  I used to walk my dog in these woods in Sullivan County where there were old glass bottles buried.  I think it was a garbage dump for a summer camp that was there in the 40's and 50's.  You could kind of feel  something weird beneath your feet when you'd walk by and sometimes I would dig around, with a stick, beneath decades of composted leaves, to find antique glass bottles.  I gave them to someone I knew who collected them.  Well, one time, I swear I dug up--with a twig mind you--what looked like a Twinkie from the 50's, still in its wrapper.  The Twinkie looked perfect, but I'd like to think the flavor suffered a little over the decades.  Either way, the experience seems to have marked me.  I promise I didn't eat, open or keep the product.  I actually have no idea what I did with it.  Probably it's still there in the woods beneath more layers of leaves, unlikely to ever make its way to my farm stand.

WHAT I'LL HAVE THIS SATURDAY NOV. 13

This week, for the first time since May, I won't have bunched kales or Swiss chard.  They are still out in the field, but there is not much right now, and I figured I should save them for the following Saturday, which is the last market before Thanksgiving.  So, I will have lacinato, curly and red Russian kale, as well as Swiss chard, in two Saturdays, but not this Saturday.  Also, there's a very good chance I won't have sunflower greens this week.  I'll check at 2 am on Saturday to see if they miraculously get ready just in time.  It could happen because they like the sun and it's supposed to be sunny the next couple days, but I wouldn't count on it.  I will have a ton of sunflower greens for the market before Thanksgiving, barring weather or greenhouse related disaster.  See you in a couple days!

GREENS

Baby Loose Leaf Lettuce
Salad Mix
Arugula
Pea Shoots
Baby Purple Mustard
Green Mustard

ROOTS
Red Potatoes (Chieftain)
Blue Potatoes (Adirondack Blue)
Watermelon Radish (Misato Rose)
Hakurei Turnips (if you haven't tried those, please try them. They're amazing and you can eat the greens, too).
Purple Top Turnips
Beets

HERBS
Oregano
Thyme
Lemon Thyme
Curly Leaf Parsley
Flat Leaf Parsley
Rosemary
Sage
Mint

OTHER STUFF
Eggs
Spaghetti Squash
Butternut Squash

Next Season's Potatoes

The challenge is, from early April until November, things are a whirlwind.  I always say to myself, "Remember this for the winter.  This'll make a great story."   When I relay the events of the day to friends, the response I consistently get is, "Man, I wish a film crew could just follow you around all day." Then, it's winter and I've forgotten it all.  I do remember being hot this summer, which I much preferred over the cold and wet of 2009.  I think I already mentioned that, though.

There was one 100 degree day, probably in July, when I was grateful that I had something to do that involved sitting on a tractor rather than actually moving with my own legs in the field.  I was mowing down some weeds that were taller than me, trying to kill them before they went to seed.  The seeds of lamb's quarter, ragweed and pigweed, which is what I was cutting, can stay dormant in soil over 50 years, just waiting for the right conditions to germinate.  And each plant produces so many seeds that once you let it get out of hand, you have a long term battle.  I was mowing in an area of the farm I had never planted, but is now tilled and cover cropped and awaiting next season, when I will plant potatoes there.  Anyhow, apparently among those weeds wasn't just a hornets nest, but a whole colony of them.  I was looking behind me, carefully watching the mower, when I saw them flying all around.  I didn't think much of it because bees abound around here.  Then I got stung, which still didn't alarm me, until I took a closer look at my tractor and then my body.  I was covered in hornets.  As I was trying to calmly assess the situation, while still mowing, I got stung several more times and decided to test my tractor's safety shut off system by jumping off while it was still mowing.  It may not have looked like the decision of a calm and competent person to the neighbors, who I am convinced see everything.  It may not have sounded like that either, what with the shouting at the top of my lungs, but I assure you, I was completely in control of the situation.  In fact, all tractor safety systems functioned perfectly.  However, while fleeing, I was still getting stung.  At some point, I actually really did turn around to admire how well the tractor responded when I ejected, and at that moment I realized there were hornets perched on the rims of my glasses, so I threw them as far as I could.  I think I also might have screamed like a girl.  Of course, I hurled them in the direction of the tractor, which was still swarming with hornets.  So, now I'm covered in sweat and stung all over, but at least I'm a safe distance from the stinging creatures.  I can't see, though, and I have a lot still to do, so I immediately walked back to the angry bugs to find my spectacles in the mud.  I then did the next logical thing: picked up where I left off and finished mowing.  I think the potatoes will grow great there.

What I'll Have This Saturday (Nov. 6).

From now on, I'm going to post what I'll have each week, so you can plan ahead.  Also, there will be some weeks I won't show up this winter, so this way you don't have to trudge out on a -20 degree day for some sunflower greens, only to find I'm not there and become convinced I've moved to the Galapagos Islands.  That would never happen.  I prefer Wisconsin.

By the way, I'm working on the formatting of the blog, so it'll start to look better one of these days.  Here goes:

GREENS
Lettuce
Salad Mix
Arugula
Pea Shoots
Sunflower Greens
Baby Purple Mustard
Swiss Chard (not a lot)
Lacinato (Dinosaur) Kale
Red Russian Kale
Curly Kale
Green Mustard
ROOTS
Red Potatoes (Chieftain)
Blue Potatoes (Adirondack Blue)
Watermelon Radish (Misato Rose)
Hakurei Turnips (if you haven't tried those, please try them.  They're amazing and you can eat the greens, too).
Purple Top Turnips
Beets
HERBS
Oregano
Thyme
Lemon Thyme
Curly Leaf Parsley
Flat Leaf Parsley
Rosemary
Sage
Mint
Chives
Garlic Chives
OTHER STUFF
Eggs
Acorn Squash
Butternut Squash

Dead Tomatoes

This is what the frost'll do to tomatoes.  These were Matt's wild cherry. 

Chickens and Herbs

The photo on the bottom is of my new hens. They were born mid-August and will start laying sometime in March. The golden ones are buff orpingtons; the white are ameraucanas, which lay blue eggs; the gray and black striped ones are barred rocks and the black ones are black australorps. They are foraging on what was once collard greens and radishes.  You can kind of see the raised beds and footpaths, though all the chicken foraging has squished the beds a bit.  The photo on top is a Rhode Island red standing on a matt of cut pea shoots. I grow pea shoots and sunflower greens in trays in the greenhouse, and after I cut them, I feed the leftover stems and roots and leaves to the hens. This allows them to eat a lot of greens all year. Of course, they also wander around outside eating whatever they want. You can see a little bit of the white fencing in the corner of the first picture. It is electric fencing that is made to take down and set back up in a short amount of time. This allows me to move the hens around so that they always have greens and other things to forage.  Two weeks ago this area was covered in grasses and some beets and turnips that didn't
grow large enough to harvest.  In about a week I will be moving their fence.

The photo on top is thyme and the other is sage. In my herb plot, I also have chives, oregano, rosemary, parsley, garlic chives and lemon thyme. Last week I was harvesting chives when the guy who sold me my pellet stove came by. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that this is where I grow all of my herbs. He became very interested and looked at me suspiciously. In addition to selling heaters, he is also some sort of law enforcement guy--I think a probation officer. Also, there's a big Carl Paladino sign next to his store.  I guess I'll meet his colleagues when the swat team arrives for their oregano samples.  I'll let you know how it goes.  The pellet stove is great, though.

A Recap of the Past 730 Days

I’m writing this on Nov. 2, the day after the first frost this season and the day of the second frost this season. That’s probably not a coincidence. Most of my entries came before I really started the farm and this entry is coming in my third season, on the day everything officially slows down a bit. The truth is, I did write two or three entries last year—2009. I could find them in the black, marbleized composition book I write drafts of everything in, but 2009 was awful and all I remember was scrawling profanities about the rain, which I will spare you. I will just say that it rained, on average, every other day from mid-May until mid-August and the nights were usually in the low fifties. Those weather conditions are ideal conditions to incubate more fungal diseases than I ever knew existed. Since my soil is wet to begin with, I found myself trying to grow vegetables in a bog and I was not happy. Fortunately, my hens laid a lot of eggs and I grew a lot of greens in the greenhouse, and I bought an ipod and listened to podcasts to distract myself from the rain.  Yes, I put the ipod in a ziploc plastic bag.  Yes.  The ipod still drowned and I bought another one because I became addicted to Rachel Maddow and the Slate Political Podcast and TBTL and plenty of others.

My response to the conditions of 2009 was to buy a BCS walk behind tractor (and a third ipod when the second one broke) and a rotary plow attachment which makes raised beds. This season, I raised the rows I plant in 8 to 12 inches above the footpaths. Anytime it rained this year, the excess water flowed down the footpaths to the lower part of the farm, where nothing is planted. It worked perfectly and it was an awesome season.

Despite 2009’s underwater fiasco, my customer’s loyalty was the bright spot. I am not exaggerating to say that Muddy Farm would not exist or would barely exist if not for the people who live around Abingdon Square Park in Manhattan buying whatever I brought to market with a smile and compliment, even if half of my stand was taken up with four different kinds of mint. In 2009, they bought the mint (which doesn’t mind being under water). So, I am incredibly grateful to them and to the High Falls Food Co-op, which goes way out of its way to support local farms and to the Greenwood Heights and Bay Ridge CSA’s that buy my eggs. Honest, everyone that supported Muddy Farm in ’09, you are tolerant and kind people and you are the only reason I was able to have a very successful 2010. I am now done pretending like I am accepting an Oscar. No, not yet. My family. They live in Chicago. I think I called them everyday it rained, which was nearly everyday and shouted, “OH MY GOD IT’S RAINING AGAIN. HOW CAN IT BE RAINING AGAIN? IT’S JULY AND IT WAS 48 DEGREES LAST NIGHT!” There was nothing they could do about the Pondy Farm situation, but they did offer, many times, to leave their busy lives 800 miles away to help harvest baby purple mustard and Swiss chard with me while ankle deep in water, which, seriously, is pretty incredible. And completely nuts, but who am I to judge.

This year, of course, the pond dried in August, but I’d take that anytime over 2009.

I just took a bunch of pictures of my chickens, my movable electric fences to keep the chickens safe, and my mobile chicken coop. I can’t figure out how to get the pictures from the camera to the computer to the blog, but I will and you will see it all very soon.