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.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
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…
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…
Sunday, June 1, 2008
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.
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