Annual Survey Results

We've got about a month left to this CSA season!

Last month we conducted our annual survey of CSA members. And the results, drum roll please...

We had 9 surveys returned, not bad out of 13 members! Overall, most people very happy with the CSA. Many people want more fruit, which is understandable. Several people requested more “common” vegetables, like lettuce and carrots. Some of the responses, of course, are in conflict with each other, e.g. people requested both more and less greens and peppers. We will keep doing our best to adjust the CSA to meet the needs of more people. Here is a summary of the survey results:

Which kinds of produce would you like more of?

lettuce (x3), beets (x2), green beans (x2), broccoli (x2), fruit (x4), greens (x3), onions, potatoes (x2), carrots (x3), artichokes, herbs (x2), cauliflower, bell peppers, winter squash, parsnips, rutabagas, tomatoes (x2), okra, corn, “everything!”.

Which kinds of produce would you like less of? 

fava beans, greens, turnips, sunchokes, chives, peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, zucchini.

How was the quality and freshness of the produce? Excellent (89%), Good (11%)

How was the amount of produce? Too Much (12.5%), Just Right (87.5%)

How was the price? Fair Deal (66.7%), A Bargain (33.3%)

What was your top reason(s) for joining a CSA? Health (44.4%), Environmental sustainability (44.4%), Supporting local business (55.6%), Quality of produce (66.7%), Convenience (33.3%), Connection with my food producers and community (77.8%), Seasonal eating (55.6%), Curiosity, (22.2%), Other (33.3%)

How often do you read each of the following? Newsletter (100% very often), Blog postings (33.3% very often, 33.3% sometimes, 33.3% not very often), “What’s in the Bag?” list (44.4% very often, 22.2% sometimes, 33.3% not very often), Facebook postings (37.5% very often, 12.5% sometimes, 25% not very often, 25% never)

Do you plan to join our CSA again next year? Definitely (66.7%), Probably (33.3%)

And Then the Rains Came...

Our fall field yesterday -- Waah!! Today I'll be working on replanting the Brassicas that got washed away.

It's officially in the wet season now. According to our rain gauge, we had about 7 inches over the past week. The grand finale was yesterday; it was pouring all morning with strong winds. We had just decided to scrap our plans for the day and do some cozy indoor projects when I went out to check on the field and realized that parts of it were flooding! One thing I've learned about farming is that you just have to get out there and do your job, regardless of whether you'd rather be wrapped in a blanket reading a book on the couch. So, off we went to salvage what we could. I put up an extra tarp on the chicken coop to provide some more shelter for our wet birds, and we dug several extra drainage canals in an attempt to send the water away from the crops. Fortunately, Gal had the foresight when we first moved here to install a French drain system around our whole field and house. The system was working at full capacity yesterday, and we were able to connect the flooded areas to the French drain with a little extra digging. It seems to have worked well. Today is sunny, and the field doesn't have any pools of water left, just a lot of mud!

The work of the hydraulic engineer never ends.

Hunker down soggy chickens.

Our little creek got frighteningly close to the top of the banks, but today it's receded back to a trickle.

First Frost of the Season

Strawberries with a dusting of frost this morning.

This weekend we got our first two frosts. Our winter weather starts pretty late in this part of California, but eventually it does start. On Friday I did one final harvest of eggplants, peppers, and green tomatoes and with that we said farewell to summer. We've covered up many of our fall plants to protect them from the frost, and most of them are very cold hardy. The kale and broccoli did look sad early this morning under the frost, but a few hours later they have already recovered. Onward, to the fall veggies! We've got lots of cabbage, kale, beets, chard, broccoli, peas, and more.

Broccoli and kale weighed down with frost. Don't fret, they have already recovered.

Several awesome cabbages are ready for harvest!

Saving Tomato Seeds, part 2

Welcome back! Last week I began the process of saving tomato seeds (described in the "Saving Tomato Seeds, part 1" blog post). I left the seeds to ferment for about 3 days, and they developed a nice scummy surface indicating that they were ready.

Tomato seeds after 3 days of fermentation.

At this point, the seeds should have a somewhat stinky, fermented smell, but nothing too gross. The seeds were at the bottom, and the liquid on top, so I was able to carefully decant the liquid off. I then tapped the seeds into a strainer and rinsed them under fresh water. I use this handy little strainer that I bought years ago in Chinatown. I don't know what its original purpose was, but it's perfect for this. A tea strainer would work equally well.

Clean tomato seeds in a strainer.

Next I tapped the seeds out onto a piece of wax paper and labeled the paper with the variety of tomato.

Tomato seeds on wax paper ready to be dried.

I left the seeds to dry for about 3-4 days away from the light. Then I carefully peeled them up off the wax paper and put them in envelopes to store until spring. See you next year, tomatoes!

Saving Tomato Seeds, part 1

One of my favorite farming activities is saving seeds. I love seeing the full cycle of the seasons from seed to seed; I love the independence of not having to buy seed every year, and I love learning about the various mechanisms plants have developed for continuing themselves. Fall is a good time for saving the seeds of summer plants, and anyone growing heirloom tomatoes will probably want to save seeds from their favorites. An heirloom plant will make seeds that are genetically similar to the parent plant, unlike hybrids which make seeds that can have the traits of any of the ancestor plants. Tomato seed saving is a little more complex than other saving other seeds because it involves a brief fermentation process. The fermentation step helps kill any plant diseases.

There are great directions for saving tomato seed on gardenweb.com I thought it would be nice to have photo illustrations too, so here are the steps (This is the first part. Part 2 will be posted soon):

1.  Choose a slightly overripe tomato from your healthiest tomato plant(s). We grew 16 varieties of tomatoes this year, and I am saving seeds from many of them.

 

Several varieties of heirloom tomatoes ready to have their seeds saved.

2. Slice the tomato horizontally, across its "equator."

3. Squeeze the seeds, including their gel goo, out into a clean jar or other container. Add a couple tablespoons of water.

Tomato seeds in a clean, reused container with water.

 4. Cover the container with a lid or a piece of cellophane, and poke a few holes in it for ventilation. Label with the variety if you are saving more than one kind. Place in a warm, dark place for 2-3 days.

My full menagerie of tomato seeds in various reused containers.

Part 2 is coming soon! Stay tuned.

End-of-Summer Canning

Pickles, plums, tomato sauce, strawberry jam, and blackberry preserves

When we moved to Morgan Hill a few years ago, my parents gave me a canning kit as a gift to help us realize our homesteading dreams. Preserving food was all new to me. Both of my grandmothers were modern career women who were somewhat appalled when I took up knitting, so you can imagine that I don't have a lineage of home-ec types to draw upon in my canning endeavors. Fortunately we have the internet and some books to help us. I tend to rely on the Ball "Blue Book" and "Keeping the Harvest" by Chioffi and Mead. It's definitely been a messy learning process, but in my third season I'm finally getting the hang of it.

A bit of the summer bounty. Getting ready for the CSA members.

Whether you have a farm, a garden, or just an interest in eating locally, preserving food makes a lot of sense. By late summer we are giving our CSA members large amounts of tomatoes; we eat tomatoes with almost every meal, and we still have more than we can possibly use. By November, though, the tomato plants will be dead, and we won't have any more until next July. So, we do what we can to preserve some of the tomatoes for the cold months. I've been canning tomato sauce and making sun-dried tomatoes, and I'll probably freeze some too. It takes some extra effort, but I'm sure it'll pay off later. Even in California, where we have a year-round growing season, the cold months of only eating greens can get a bit tiresome. So, here's to one more step toward self-sufficiency, keeping it local, and infusing every meal with delicious home-grown produce!

The most satisfying moment, a full cabinet of goodies for the winter months.

New Chickens are Laying!

On Sunday we found our first egg from the new chickens. The chickens are just reaching their 5-month birthdays, and when I saw one of them in the nest box looking all uncomfortable I had a feeling today would be the day. This group of chickens are Barred Rocks, and their pretty dark brown eggs will add a nice color to our cartons which already have white, blue/green, and light brown eggs from our older hens (respectively: Andalusian, Arucana, and Naked Neck). The first eggs are tiny, about two-thirds the size of regular eggs, but they should grow to normal size over the course of the next month. It's good timing too, since our older hens have been laying less over the past month, probably due to either the very hot weather we had or to moulting.

Barred Rock hens munching on a row of old chard. We let the chickens graze on areas that are done for the season, which makes them happy, gives them extra nutrients, adds fertilizer, and supposedly reduces insect populations.

Harvesting Dried Hutterite Beans

One thing we've been interested in lately is whether we can grow a larger portion of our calories here on the farm by growing more things like grains and legumes. These also have the added benefit that they last a long time in storage, so we can eat them and give them to our CSA members over the winter when there are less veggies growing. Last year we grew a small plot of Hutterite beans, which are a white soup bean, somewhat like navy beans. They tasted fantastic and were easy to grow, so this year we planted a lot more.

Since we have very dry summers here, we just leave the plants in the ground until the bean pods are dry and rattle when shaken. Then we pull up the plants and begin the process of shelling the beans. This is where things become difficult. We don't have a machine for this, so we've come up with two old-fashioned methods:
1. Shelling (shucking) the beans one by one, splitting the pods open and dropping the beans into a bowl. It takes forever, but the beans come out nice and clean, and we can work on it while watching movies.
2. Threshing and winnowing (don't you just love the old-timey sound of it?)-- We put the bean plants in a box or bag and step on them until the pods open and release the beans (that's threshing). That's the easy part. Then we have to winnow them, which means separate the beans from the chaff, i.e. all the stuff, like dried leaves and broken pods, that is now mixed up with them. We accomplish this by pouring the beans from one box to into another on a windy day, so that the wind blows the chaff away, and the beans fall into the box. Someday we might modernize and buy an electric fan to help us along.

The harvest isn't done yet, but I think we'll end up with about 15 lbs. of beans from our 60 ft. row.

Eggplants of our Dreams

We love eggplants, and this is our first season that we are really having a successful crop of them. The process of getting this to happen has been a long one, but now as the harvest begins, it seems all worth it. The eggplants were seeded indoors on a heat mat back in January and February. Then they grew in the greenhouse until May when we transplanted them outside. We tried to really baby these plants, knowing how susceptible they are to both cold and flea beetle damage. So we planted them in black ground cloth (landscaping fabric), cutting a hole for each plant to grow through. Then we carefully covered the whole row with a sheet of floating row cover and weighed down the edges to keep out pests.

The plants are strong and much bigger than any we've grown before, about 3 ft. tall. Now, 8 months from planting those seeds, we are starting to get a huge amount of eggplants. They are mostly Asian long eggplants, and we also have some Italian-style called Rosa Bianca and some small round ones called Chu.

We started the season off with grilled eggplant and pepper sandwiches with tahini garlic sauce. Yum!

Oriental Fruit Flies

If you live in our area, you may have heard in the news recently about the Oriental Fruit Flies that have been found in Morgan Hill. The Oriental Fruit Fly is an invasive species of insect that destroys many kinds of crops, including tree fruit, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. As of today, four of these flies have been found near Monterey Rd. between Dunne and Tennant. This is frightfully close to our farm and could easily affect our farm and our CSA this year, especially if the county calls for a quarantine of produce. 

We want to make sure to share with you (especially our CSA members) what we know about the Oriental Fruit Fly and what our plans are now that it is here. We hope you will read the following Q&A, and contact us if you have additional questions or concerns.

1. Is the Oriental Fruit Fly dangerous to humans? 
No, the fruit fly is not dangerous to humans, just to produce, which its larvae basically destroy from the inside.

2. What is a produce quarantine? If the county calls for a quarantine, it means that none of the host crops can leave local farms unless they have been treated to eradicate the Oriental Fruit Fly. On our farm, this would affect tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers for about 1 month. The purpose of the quarantine is to keep the pests from spreading throughout our area, which could have a devastating effect on agriculture here.

3. Are we under quarantine yet? No, our area is not currently under quarantine, but several Oriental Fruit Flies have been found, and if they find more we will be quarantined.

4. What is being done about the fruit flies? The county is proactively treating for these pests. The treatment involves (excuse the technical language here) shooting gobs of goo high into trees and onto utility poles. The goo contains a pheromone that attracts male fruit flies. They then get stuck in the goo, and a low-level pesticide ensures that they die there. No males = no more fruit flies within one life-cycle.

5. How will you treat for the fruit flies at One Acre Farm?  Fortunately, there is an organic-certified pesticide available for this treatment. It's called Spinosad, and it is derived from naturally-occurring bacteria through fermentation. We did some of our own research into this product, and it appears to be very safe to use.

6. What happens to our CSA if the area is quarantined? That will depend in part on the type of quarantine. Some options would be to have smaller CSA bags for a while (without tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers.... sad, I know). We might be able to supplement more with produce from farms outside the quarantine. We would also offer a refund to those who want one.

Right now, everything is business as usual. Stay tuned, and we'll update you as we learn more. As always, thank you so much for supporting local farms!

Update: As of August 14th, no new fruit flies have been found. This means that we have so far avoided a quarantine. We'll have to keep our fingers crossed for another month though. Meantime, we haven't sprayed the Spinosad because we found out it's quite expensive, about $175/gal. 

Hand-Pollinating Corn

Signs of summer are popping out all over! One of these signs is that the corn is shooting up and making tassels and silks. Tassels are the part at the top of the plant where the pollen comes from (male), and silks are the things that stick out of an ear of corn (female). Corn is fertilized when the pollen falls from the tassel to the silk. Each strand of silk that gets pollinated makes a corn kernel. If only some get pollinated, you get a partly empty ear of corn --how sad--. In big fields of corn there's plenty of pollen to go around, but in a small corn patch like ours (700 square feet), it's not a sure bet.

I tried to help nature a bit today by gathering the pollen from the tassels and sprinkling it on the silks. I thought this would be a major pain, but it was actually quite easy and kind of fun.

Shaking some corn pollen into a paper bag.

Sprinkling corn pollen onto the silks of a new ear.

Cucumbers a Go-Go

Cucumbers (left-right): Wautoma Pickling, Beit Alpha, Baggese's Sicilian, and Armenian.

Crunchy, sweet, beautiful cucumbers are ready! The row covers seem to have worked their magic once again, and we have our best-tasting crop of cukes ever. CSA members will get to try all four of the varieties above, and hopefully we'll have enough to spare for some serious pickling.

Armenian Cucumber, birth to harvest

Green Beans and Cucumber Beetles

Awww....so cute. Baby green beans.

The green beans are growing rapidly now and making lots of flowers where we will soon have lots of green beans. This is always a happy time, since green beans are one of our favorite veggies. I love seeing the tiny beans forming-- they look so cute. Is it possible for vegetables to be cute? Well, I think so.

Spotted Cucumber Beetle, kind of pretty, but super-destructive.

Every year, along with the green beans come the Spotted Cucumber Beetles. I'm not sure why they didn't call them Spotted Green Bean Beetles. They eat many plants, but green beans sure seem to be their favorite. We have tons of these pests, and they arrived the very first time we planted a garden here, as if they had been waiting patiently for decades for someone to grow green beans. The best organic method I've found to get rid of them is the old pick-and-squish. I do this at least once a day for about a month, and it seems to sufficiently reduce their population to where the green beans can still make a decent crop. It is a lot of work, but I've become quite efficient at it. One of the benefits of having only one acre of farm is that manual techniques like this are possible.

The Birth of an Egg- Video!

Well, kids, this is where eggs come from. I hope this isn't too gross, but I think it's pretty darn cool! The little miracle was captured by my dear friend, Jen, who was visiting our farm over the past week. She was checking for eggs at just the right time and was ready with smartphone in hand to capture the moment. The details are especially visible because this egg was laid by a chicken that doesn't have a lot of feathers around its nether-regions. Enjoy!

Herb Beds-- Our new addition

This was our latest project on the farm, a series of raised beds for perennial herbs. We constructed the beds out of salvaged wood from an old gazebo that was on our property. They are actually in our backyard, rather than out in the field, a bit of edible landscaping that will hopefully regrow from year to year and keep our CSA members stocked in fresh and dried herbs. So far we have planted oregano, thyme, rosemary, tarragon, lavender, sage, lemon grass, chamomile, and dill. We've left some space to add other herbs, so let us know if you have any suggestions.

Row Covers, We Love You

A forest of green peas.

The spring veggies are off the hook! It's looking like it will shape up to be a big summer season too, though it's still a little too early to tell. We're attributing a lot of our veggies' success this year to the use of row covers. We have three kinds of row covers we use at various times, plastic, floating row cover (aka remay), and shade cloth. In the winter the covers keep the plants and the soil a little warmer, and in the summer the shade cloth keeps things a little cooler. In all seasons, they help keep the bugs off and protect the plants from wind and birds. This year our produce is ready earlier than last. It has less bug damage and is more succulent. It doesn't come without extra work, though. Row covers were especially difficult during windy days when they kept blowing away, and those windy days often coincided with some of our coldest nights of early spring (i.e. when we most needed the covers). We spent a lot of energy weighing down the covers in various ways so they wouldn't blow away. Right now, though it all seems worth it.

It's looking to be a big year for zucchini.

We have about 150 tomato plants in. We just switched out their row covers for trellising last week.

Spring Chickens

Hello, spring chickens!

We just got 8 Barred Rock chicks, that are happily peeping in a box in the living room. Pretty cute. With any luck, most of them will turn out to be hens, and we'll have lots more brown eggs coming about 6 months from now.

We've also been selling tomato seedlings at People and Planet in Morgan Hill. The varieties are Stupice, Amish Paste, and Red Velvet Cherry Tomato. We're planting about 150 tomato plants on our farm (about double last year), but we've still got plenty of seedlings to spare. This year we're growing about 15 heirloom varieties, including the favorites from last summer.

Springtime on the Farm

The CSA has been on winter break for the past couple months, but we have been quite busy around the farm getting ready for spring and summer. It's been an unusually dry winter, which has allowed us to till and plant a bit earlier than last year. We have doubled the size of our asparagus and strawberry patches, tilled and planted a large area of spring crops, pruned our fruit trees, filled up our new greenhouse with summer seedlings, and much more. If all goes well, we'll be re-starting our CSA in about a month.

Some pictures of the spring farm:

A veritable forest of tomato seedlings in the greenhouse!

Luscious artichoke plants

Broccoli seedlings under a floating row cover. Row covers protect from frost, bugs, birds, and other nasties.

Peach tree in bloom. The wood and other doo-dads are helping it grow into a good shape.

And the delicious eggs keep coming!

Spring Seeding has Begun

The seedlings are up! This hopeful little guy is a brussels sprout.

We planted several trays of spring crops last week in our new greenhouse. We've planted mostly Brassicas so far because they are the most cold-hardy of plants. Brassicas are cabbage-family crops, like broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, kale, etc. They just started peeking their heads up a couple days ago. So far, so good. The greenhouse is sheltering them from our weird weather. At night it keeps the frost off of them (temps in the low 20's....brrrr!), and during the day we open the doors to keep them from roasting.

Gal made these awesome new tables for our greenhouse this weekend.

This bizarre looking plant is Romanesco, related to broccoli and cauliflower. It's been growing since July, and this is the first one that's ready to harvest! (The white bits are frost.)

A busy and happy New Year

We actually left the farm for a day!

We had a wonderful past week filled with visits from dear old friends, delicious food, and a walk on the beach. Once again we are reflecting on how fortunate we have been in the past year to have continued moving toward our life goals while living in this beautiful place. Thank you all for being a part of it!
The CSA is back this week with regular deliveries on January 4th.

Kristoffer and Christian enjoyed getting to know the chickens.

Farm volunteer, Natalie, was a huge help in finishing the floor of the new greenhouse.

We visited Shumei Farm in Santa Cruz for a farm tour and to learn about the "Natural Agriculture" method.