Week 4 News

Touring the orchard Thursday night

We had a good time with everyone at our tour Thursday night! Unfortunately the mosquitoes cut things a little short! I know I warned about mosquitoes but that was by far the worst I've ever experienced with them at the farm!!! I think it's just going to be that kind of summer with them. Hopefully no one went home with too many bites!

What's in the box:
Baby arugula
Lettuce - 2 beautiful heirloom varieties this week
Tatsoi - Will need washing, it's the last thing we pick as it perishes quickly. Excellent added to stir fries, sauteed until and drizzled with sesame oil, or mixed into salads.
Sweet cherries
Green onions
Dill - sprinkly on potatoes, mix into summer salads (chicken, tuna), use on fish, salad dressings
Radishes - Purple plum heirloom variety
Pint Blueberries or our strawberries - very likely
Potatoes?
Peas or brocoli?

Strawberries: Versluis orchards are on the end of their strawberries and we are beginning to get more and more from our greenhouse and field grown berries. We will begin rotating who gets them each week.

Snow Peas (Flat pod): These are getting close and are one of our favorites! We just started getting some and had a handful dipped in hummus this afternoon! Great raw, steamed, or sauted (see recipe idea for snow peas with ginger). They are coming!!!

Coming soon:
more varieties of peas and potatoes
onions
tart cherries NEXT WEEK - the PIE CHERRY, they are also great for making cherry topping for cheesecake, ice cream, etc.. (If you would prefer extra blueberries - let me know)
blueberries, blueberries, blueberries
Peaches - two weeks or so...


Farmer's Markets:
Thursday: Spring Lake from 9 until 1:00 at least (we've been selling out early!)
Saturday: Grand Haven Farmers Market from 7:30 - 12:00

* Sweetwater market is going to Rothbury for the music festival this week and we decided it was a little too far!

Cookbooks ordered: Asparagus to Zucchini, A guide to cooking farm-fresh seasonal produce - This is the most helpful cookbook and produce guide I have found thus far. You can look up just about any vegetable and herb listed alphabetically to find storage information, usage ideas, recipes, and MUCH more.

I ordered quite a few and will have my copy at the markets for you to check out if interested. Retail $20 / your price $17.

Week 3

I just returned from our first day as a vendor at Sweetwater Market. I absolutely LOVED it! They are so welcoming and helpful to new vendors. Very different from our other market firsts we've had.

This week marked the beginning of an epic battle with the birds. We forgot how brutal they can be to cherry trees as ours froze off last season. A few greenhouse shade tarps used as netting are slowing them down for now. You should have seen my father in-law lift my dad up in the loader bucket to put the nets up as Russ and I ran around tying streamers to trees.

We hope to see you at the farm this Thursday night. We will be there by 7:45 and hope to start right at 8:00. Please let me know if you can make it so we can plan for parking. We will likely add one more tour on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in a couple of weeks as a few of you are requesting. I will send out directions soon after I talk to Russ about parking, etc.. He is busy with beneficial nematodes right now - will explain later :)

Thanks for returning your jars last week! We also love to recycle clam-shells and the other cartons. No need to clean the jars or clam-shells as we will clean them again anyways!

We will be at the Spring Lake Market this Thursday from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00, though last week we were out of everything pretty early. If you are a market pick-up it would be helpful to arrive by 1:00 if possible this week - even though we're planning to bring more produce. I suppose it would be good for your goodies to get to the fridge a little earlier (lettuce is always kept in a cooler until you arrive).

What's in the Box This Week:

- Sweet cherries
- Strawberries
- Snap peas
- Red skin potatoes
- Bunch of cilantro - see killer burger recipe
- Lettuce mix
- Bunch Tatsoi - Dark asian green similar to to bok choy and spinach that is best used within 2-3 days. I posted a super simple and delicious recipe for sauted tatsoi that we just tested.

-Green onions? Great sprinkled on cooked baby potatoes!
- Arugula? (likely one more week)


* Broccoli Raab - Let me know if you want to try some, especially if you have had it before. It started growing too quickly a week ago when it was really hot so we cut off the first batch (the heads weren't developing correctly). Looks like the cooler weather is helping the second batch.
If you get some this week you will want to use it up in 2-3 days as it will loose its crispiness.

For more on broccoli raab check out: http://whatscookingamerica.net/Vegetables/BroccoliRaab.htm



Coming soon:
Heirloom lettuce varieties
blueberries 1-2 weeks
tart cherries 1-2 weeks
snow peas
more arugula and baby bok choy


I borrowed a digi cam for a few pics. One of these days I will have time to shop for a replacement.







Our little bosc pears look so cute on the trees right now!

Our hideous attempt at keeping the birds out of a couple of our cherry trees.

Greenhouse strawberries are coming along! Not all huge berries but very sweet tasting variety!

Our first baby red skins are here!

These taters were grown from our own seed potatoes from last seasons crop!

CSA News Week 2

It sure has been a season of re-planting!!! First following the late-May frosts and now after heavy rains. Especially our beets, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and swiss chard! Though we are very lucky only some of our smaller, newly planted crops, some greens, and radishes were affected by the rain. Many neighboring farms are still partially underwater and a CSA farm in Holland located near the Macattawa River was completely flooded last weekend.

Farm tour date set for Thursday, June 26th at 8:00p.m.
I would expect it to take 45 minutes to an hour. You will want to wear the grubbiest shoes you can find and some bug repellent. I will send out directions soon. Please let me know if you plan on attending!

Remember to trade in your crate this week with the mason jar if you received your sprouts in one. Leave it out by your cooler if you won’t be home or bring it along to trade if you are picking up at the market.


What’s in the Box:

Strawberries
Large bag of lettuce mix
Romaine heads
Sprouts
Baby red skinned potatoes or asparagus
Sweet cherries?
Broccoli Raab?
Snap peas?

THINK SALADS! We give your lettuce a good rinse and spin but always clean again as you use it, especially if we’ve had recent hard rain as it splatters more dirt around.

Coming Soon:
Blueberries - 1 to 2 weeks
Sweet cherries
Tatsoi and more arugula
Potatoes
Cilantro
Peas

We will be at the Spring Lake Market this week on Thursday from 9:00-2:00p.m.
We’ll have ever-bearing strawberry hanging baskets we’ve been growing in the greenhouse and 2 year old Brigitta blueberry plants we propagated (the variety that produces the monster berries you all love). We will also have strawberries and some additional produce – probably lettuce. You always receive 10% off anything from our market stand.

A few notes from last weeks delivery:
We had to dig the radishes a couple days early as they were beginning to crack from all the rain. We cleaned and stored them in water in the refrigerator to keep them fresh which is why they came with water. If you received rhubarb and haven’t used it yet – just chop into 1 inch pieces or so and put in the freezer. You can make blueberry rhubarb crisp in a couple weeks J

Loss of a farming legend – by Russ

The last couple weeks have been trying to say the least. It seems that I could go on and on about the trials and tribulations about organic farming in the Midwest, like late may frosts that destroy transplants and cut cherry production by 2/3 or torrential rains that destroyed any crop in a low spot, but it all seems irrelevant compared to what happened on Sunday morning. To say the least, life has been put into perspective for me and my family.

Sometime Sunday morning after the rain John Pekich, our neighbor farmer, passed away. John was taking out boards in the Worley Dam to help pull water out of neighboring farms and it is unclear if he fell in and drown or had a heart attack. It is hard to describe this loss to the farming community. John, 76, was the last of a breed. He had farmed his entire life and showed no sign of stopping anytime soon; he was even leasing some of my parent’s property, where he had planted corn a few days earlier. The only way I can give you all an idea of the perseverance of this legendary local farmer is the fact that he farmed or the last three years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. It didn’t slow him down one bit; he still farmed 300 acres by himself growing hay, corn, soybeans, and oats. He will be greatly missed.

Week 1

Hi everyone,

The season has begun! Your first delivery will arrive this week with a bundle of greens! I am writing this just after finishing a giant spinach and arugula salad. I always like to test everything before sending it out, especially new vegetable varieties.

Remember to leave a good sized cooler out if you will be away during the delivery window as the tender greens will need to stay cool and HOT weather is expected all week. As I wrote earlier, we planted a few rows of asparagus to be ready next season but decided it would be nice to locate some for the first delivery or two. We ordered a bunch of certified organic asparagus through Hackert Orchards in Ludington. They are picking it fresh just for us early Monday morning and again Wednesday night.

We won’t be attending any markets this week as we don't anticipate enough to bring after CSA delivering and a local café is interested in any extras. I will let you know as soon as we begin marketing. We are delivering to our Spring Lake market pick-ups on Thursday between 10:00 and 12:00.

I have started a recipe section on our web page and added a few recipes to go with this weeks produce at: grandsonsgardens.googlepages.com/recipes

In the box this week:

-Large bag of mixed greens
-Bag of arugula – Great for salad and pesto!
-Asparagus
-Baby bok choy and/or bag spinach
-Radishes ?
-Salad sprouts – we love to load them on salads, omelets, sandwiches.

- We have some rhubarb available if anyone is interested! Email me:)
- Please return mason jar with your box the following week.

Baby Bok Choy: is classified as a cabbage but resembles and grows like a lettuce. Try it in a salad or add chopped bok choy to a stir fry the last few minutes of cooking. See the bok choy salad recipe I added to the website.

Coming soon: strawberries, brocoli Raab, baby red skin potatoes, and scallions



Field notes from Russ:
My love for surfing is finally beating me up a bit. I think it has been a few years since I wished it would just be calm for a week, but as all farmers know, “you can’t control the weather.” Luckily we had a couple of calm days to get most of the transplants in, now there are only 400 to go. As always we are trying to go above and beyond, planting four times what we need of the summer favorites to deliver mid-summer baskets that are overflowing with beans, tomatoes, sugar peas, peppers, and obviously fruit fruit fruit.

Our newly planted transplants have been handling the weather extremes well. With the exception of a few hundred pepper plants that were stunted by the dry cold winds we had for a week in May. We are attempting to nurse those plants back to health, but just in case we planted a few hundred more and also started more in the greenhouse.

The orchard has been a drain on my time lately, luckily my beautiful wife picked up some planting slack in the garden. We are using only organically approved treatments in the orchard, making controlling certain pests a bit challenging. The great thing about researching organic fruit farming methods is the history I am learning. I think that the common misconception is that farmers 40+ years ago don’t understand what we consider organic farming today. Over the last six months I have been learning about effective organic treatments that work and have found most of my answers in the least expected places. Through my father, multiple other old-timers, and a handful of experienced organic orchard farmers, I have put together a list of treatments that are not only organic, but that have been proven effective and safe for many years.

Our apples right now look excellent, it seems the frost in mid My has not affected them. Our peaches and cherries got hit, but hopefully since we have less fruit on the trees the fruit will be larger. Blueberries this year look to have an unreal fruit set, we will know for sure in a few weeks…

We're getting closer!!!

After planting seeds and transplants all morning in the east garden next to the orchard, Russ and I rode our bikes back out to the farm Saturday night to close some of the greenhouse doors and took a few minutes look over the west garden and our fast-maturing greenhouse strawberries. The blossoms are falling fast - leaving behind thimble-sized berries.