happy transplants

Its that time of year - everything must get planted…  In go the many thousands of seedlings we have been nurturing in the greenhouse. In go the seeds, by the tens of thousands, in long neat rows as all the direct seeded crops go in the ground. And so, the greenhouse empties as everything moves out – first to the “hardening off” tables where they acclimate to being outside for a few days or weeks, then out to the field.

Nearly everything has been planted out at least once, and most have been planted more than once (lettuces – many types, kales, chards, broccoli, cauliflowers, cabbages including napas and savoy, celery, chois – bok choi, tat soi, parsley, oregano, chives, thyme. The direct seeding of around an acre has happened twice (peas, beans, salad, basil, cilantro, dill, scallions, spinach, carrots, beets, radishes). Last to go out will be those tender crops that can’t stand any cold weather – squash, peppers, cucumbers, eggplants and a few others.  Getting everything started is the hardest part of the season and its going great!

Are you getting Hungry Yet?

I hope I’m whetting your appetite with my long list of veggies we’ve already planted. Harvest starts in a short  6 weeks from now and we still have around ten spots we would like to fill for the season. If you were thinking of joining and haven’t called yet, please go online to send in your signup in. you can reserve a spot with a $150 check.

If are already a member, please help us promote the CSA by telling your friends or posting a link on your facebook page, let the world know how excited you are about the bounty approaching.  you can link to our website, or the new simple facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/turkeyhillcsa, or go post a message on our page and all your friends will see that activity.

On the Farm

Pictures (with captions) tell the story – click a thumbnail to enlarge and start the slide show.

The early signup discount is our way of saying thank you for taking the leap into this season with us. As we plant, prepare the fields and lay out the irrigation, harvest still seems a ways off – but we all know it will be here soon. If you can afford to pay up front and are planning to join the CSA this summer, NOW is the time to act – you’ll get 10% off your veggies for the season. Click Here to Sign Up!

Greenhouse Zone

The greenhouse has been rapidly filling up, and the earliest flats are bursting at their seems waiting to get out and into the field. Take a look at these pictures and you will see what I mean (click to enlarge & view slideshow):

Each one of the long black trays in the pictures holds 276 cells, and each cell has a single transplant. It takes just a few trays of say broccoli to fill an entire 300′x5′ bed in the field (about 750 plants). Its an amazing process watching the packed transplants spread out into a much larger area in the field, then grow to fill in this area. The 600 sq feet of heated space in the seed house turns into acres in the field.

Field Prep, Seeding & Irrigation

The irrigation water has arrived! That means its time to hook up the sprinklers and start making and planting beds. Earliest to go out will be the 1st crops we seeded – onions, leeks, artichokes, kale, chard, chois (joi choi, mei quin choi), broccoli, cabbage and lettuce. All these are now will be planted from transplants weathering out the current storms in the warm greenhouse.

Along with that I will be doing my first large direct seeding – usually about a third of an acre, mainly peas (sugar, snow and shelling), carrots, beets, cilantro, dill, salad mix & spinach. These crops grow fast and will be some of the 1st week pick in around two months – late June.  Did I mention something you love? I hope so, because there will be a lot of it this summer and we still need your signup!

More updates from  the field soon, stay tuned!

Spring is in the air, with warmer nights, sunny days and precipitation arriving as rain instead of snow. I started up the seed house last week – which involved lots of cleaning and getting the fans and heater going. This year my son Noah and I replaced the ‘inflation blower’ – a small fan in the greenhouse that inflates the space between the two layers of plastic covering the greenhouse. These pieces are sealed on all sides and the fan inflates the space between them, creating an insulating air pocket between the inside and outside. The old blower setup had become compromised because of the way we originally set it up and lots of air was leaking.

Inside the greenhouse I am keeping the air temperature to around 50 degrees minimum at night, but the newest flats of peppers, eggplants and early flowers sit on a heat mat set to 90 degrees and covered with plastic to form a mini-greenhouse inside the greenhouse. Early plantings are progressing bit by bit – I can’t be in too much of a hurry because of the upcoming planting timeline. Typically, our earliest plantings are transplanted into the field at the end of April after our main irrigation supply, Fire Mountain Canal, is turned on. Some years we have a supply of early water by the end of March, but without knowing if i will have this water I can’t grow transplants too early – instead I will direct seed early crops like beets, peas, carrots and salad if I have early water.

Into the Field…

The ideal scenario is to transplant into the field right when the plants have formed a nice root ball, but before they are root-bound – if I plant too early in the greenhouse, the transplants will wind up waiting to be put out and getting ‘root-bound’.  With a crop like lettuce or broccoli, this means greenhouse seeding around 6-8 weeks before transplanting – meaning March 1st is the earliest I want to start seeding these crops in the greenhouse.  Other crops like peppers, eggplant and tomatoes are slower growing and get transplanted into larger containers before eventually making it into the field in late May or early June after the danger of frost has passed.

What to Plant?

Figuring out exactly what to plant and just how much is part of the art of small scale farming. I look at last years records and go thru each crop on a spreadsheet, trying to decide what crops deserve more space, and which ones I had too much of. I mix this with a health helping of intuition about the season – what will work well, what I can wholesale, etc. Every year there are new varieties to try, and there are always new or developing projects. For example this year I’m planning on filling the new hoop house with melons – lots of small watermelons ant cantaloupes.  The larger field hoop house will be filled with lots of colored bell peppers, eggplant and tomatoes.

Whats Next?

The next few weeks on the farm are a whirlwind of activity – spreading manure and preparing the field for planting is the biggest job. This spring I have large field sections that were planted in cover crop last fall and these will be left until late spring or early summer when they will be mowed or tilled in. Many of this year’s veggies will be planted in the inner part of the field, among the old apple trees – last year this section of the field was fallow. The far field will get larger scale plantings like corn or beans.

Sign Up Early!

Your CSA signups have started to trickle in, and we appreciate that. Summer is still a ways off, but early signups do help us plan the season. If you can’t afford the pay in full option (with a 10% discount on veggies), you can just send $150 to hold your spot for the season. We really want people to sign up as soon as they can so we can best plan the season’s plantings. We usually receive a steady stream of signups, then a flurry just before the harvest season begins, but we would rather have the signups come in earlier.

Thank you! More farm updates will arrive as the season progresses. 

Does everyone remember the bounty of last summer? Think back, then think forward and sign up for this season’s box.

I have opened the signup for the 2012 CSA. As usual, the spots we are offering are limited, so sign up early to assure yourself a spot. Click here to sign up, it only takes a few minutes. Your $150 (non refundable) deposit reserves your spot – you can pay the balance thru the early season. This year’s price for membership is Half – $350, Full $575. Delivery is $120 for the season. the fruit option is $100/$200 (Half/Full) for the season.

I think you will find joining the Turkey Hill CSA is an excellent value, and there is no better way to get a huge variety of fresh veggies all season long for a very reasonable price. If you can pay in full by May 1st we offer a 10% discount (on the csa membership fee). We also accept all sorts of payment plans and work trade as well.

Remember, signing up early really helps the farm and is one of the best aspects of doing a CSA for the farmer. Your deposits & early payment helps fund our early expenses – seed, greenhouse heating, labor for field prep, seeding and planting, fuel for the tractor and more – all these expenses come well before any produce we have, and your early deposits help fund these so we can later reward you with the bounties of summer. Sign up here.

On the Farm

The season planning process is well underway – I’ve sorted thru all the seeds I have on hand, and I’ve started putting my orders together . Some interesting new varieties and as usual I’m thinking about what to do more or less of in the field this year. I keep an overall record of the quantities we grew, and I think I know what items we had too much of or too little of, so I’m trying to adjust accordingly.

Our new close in hoop house will be devoted to melons this year and I’m planning to grow quite a few of the yellow oblong icebox sized melons that were a big hit on the farm last year. The larger field hoop house will be devoted to peppers, eggplant and tomatoes. I’m also planning a large patch if the roma type canning tomatoes variety I have grown to love. The strong bush plants produce early crops of large meaty tomatoes that are almost juiceless. We made some sauce of these this year and the quality was fantastic. I’ll have these in the boxes mid season (makes great chunky salsa) and later in the season available by the case.

Its almost time to prune the trees in the orchard and thin the berries. I hope to include berries from the farm in this year’s fruit option. I’ll have more pictures of the berries this year on the berry research page.

On the Website

I’ve added a few fun links to the website – I posted a new photo album is a compendium of many photos from the 2011 season. I’ve also added a link to the entire list of 2011 weekly emails so you can scroll (backwards) thru the last season to remember what we had.

Dont forget, the CSA  spots we are offering are limited, so sign up early to assure yourself a spot.Click here to sign up

I hope you have all enjoyed the abundance this summer. While we got off to a late start, most  crops still produced an abundant supply for the CSA boxes.

Here are the final pickup/delivery dates -

Crested Butte – last delivery Sunday October 9th – this will be a big delivery, watch for items outside the box like pumpkins!
Marble & Gunnison – last pickup Saturday October 8th - - this will be a big delivery, watch for items outside the box like pumpkins!
Farm pickup  - last pickup Friday October 14th

The farm has slowed its output and the pace of work has slowed as well. Fall project loom – uncompleted spring projects, thinning the berries, discing the fields and planting cover crops and more await as the harvest winds down. Send me an email about the season – what did you like or feel overwhelmed by.

Whats in the Box?

Lots of the same crops continue until it freezes. Week 15 featured some 18 items, but some are done – most of the things in your box store very well, so keep them for weeks to come!

Cabbage
Carrots
Corn
Eggplant
Cucumbers
Kale
Sweet/Colored Bell Peppers
Anaheim peppers (semi-hot)
Tomatoes
Garlic
Onions
Potatoes
Summer Squash
Winter Squash
Celery

Fruit – red & green bartletts, gala apples, honeycrisp apples – last week we will have some d’anjou pears, golden delicious & jonathan apples.

Get a Winter Box

We have a limited number of winter boxes available this year for $45/box. the boxes include a mix of potatoes, winter squash, onions and – all of which will store for several months. please email me with your order, and let me know if you want more or less of one item, or a certain type of winter squash.  These boxes will be delivered with the final box (see above) and will be labeled with your name!

Watch this space this fall for a signup/renewal offer for the 2012 Harvest Season.

 The Last Slideshow of the Season

Click any image to start

On the Farm

Fall has settled in to a beautiful September on the farm; many afternoons are drizzly or rainy, with a window of clear morning time to get out in the field and harvest.

Last week I finished the mowing and switched the tractor to shovels. I finished hilling up the potatoes and worked on hilling up the celery – we have a nice looking crop we will pick for the last weeks. I then switched to digging and we dug the first row of potatoes. This week everyone got some of the huge fingerling potatoes called  ’Kipfel’ – they were amazingly productive… slice in two, coat with olive oil and bake! We also dug purple vikings and yellow finns which we will have next week.

This week we dug the first Shallots – these aren’t quite ‘finished’ or cured for storage, but they are still delicious. We will have more in the final weeks. Next week we will have leeks for everyone, so look up a potato leek soup recipe. We will also pick more winter squash this week and for the final weeks – since we may not have a freeze before the final delivery, the winter squash we pick may not be completely ripe – in any case, winter squash is best after storing for a few weeks in a cool spot – a kitchen counter or pantry shelf.

The fall carrots look great, and the Delectable sweet corn is finally ready this week! We picked some this week and will have even more next week, then possibly some the following week. Eggplants, peppers and tomatoes continue coming in strong.

This week we picked salad mix, but the remaining patch is looking a little rough with spots on some of the leaves – meaning this may be the last of the salad mix. We should have cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes for a while still.

In The Box

This week:

Salad Mix
Artichokes
Carrots
Beets
Corn
Eggplant
Cucumbers
Sweet/Colored Bell Peppers
HOT Cayenne peppers (full)
Kale (full)
Tomatoes
Potatoes
Squash
Shallots
Savoy Cabbage (farm members next week)

Fruit: Gala & Honeycrisp Apples, Peaches

Last Week:

carrots, red onions, romanesco, broccoli, eggplant, artichokes, cucumbers, squash, chard, kale, tomatoes, peppers – green bartlett pears, akami apples

Also new this week is bulb fennel. This delicious vegetable is tasty raw sliced thin in a salad or cooked – in a savory soup. the leaves can be used for a sauce or dressing. or, if you can’t use i right away, dry it and store in a jar. This is the only time we will have this unusual vegetable, so enjoy. Also new this week – red onions, not fully size up, but we knew you wanted them for their fresh onion sweetness.

With only six more weeks to go its time to talk about the final weeks! We took a salad break this week, but a fresh crop or two is coming so we expect another month of salads. We picked the biggest red onions we had, but plenty more, plus more yellow and white onions. All our onions will store for 2-4 weeks, and most that you get later in the season will store for 2-4 months, so if we are giving you more than you can use in a given week, save them up for the post-CSA dry times! The same applies for garlic.

We started picking the new crop of carrots this week and we will have carrots of increasing sizes for the next month. If you get too many, make sure they are clean and top well, then store ina  bag in your produce drawer – stored properly they should last 2-3 months. We will also have some more beets which store well. We have a nice crop of leeks that will be ready in 3-4 weeks, and a giant crop of shallots that will be ready for the last few weeks of the season. Also due for the last few weeks – potatoes – several varieties, winter squash, and celery – yes celery! We have plenty of basil if you want to make some pesto, please email or call to special order.

We had artichokes this week, will take a break for a week, then have more for several weeks. we will take a kale/chard break next week for 1-2 weeks, but will have cooking greens again for the last few weeks of the season. I know I’ve been inundating you all with cucumbers, but they are finally starting to diminish, expect a little less as time goes on. We had lots of eggplant this week for farm members, everyone else expect eggplant next week – eggplant and peppers should last for a while, they are under plastic and protected from a freeze.

We have a few more surprises in store for you, but I’m not saying what! We have lots of yummy fruit for fruit members – plums next week, more local peaches and lots of apples and pears for the next six weeks.

Please note that my newsletters will become more sporadic in the next few weeks, i’ll post irregular updates; feel free to email me any questions!

In The Box

Artichokes
Beans
Red Cabbage
Bulb Fennel
Baby Carrots
Red Onions
Romanesco
Broccoli
Eggplant
Artichokes
Cucumbers
Squash – summer
Squash  - winter
Chard
Kale
Tomatoes
Peppers

Fruit

Peaches from First Fruits, Paonia – two varieties (mixed in each bag) – very close to ripe, these are dripping juicy sweet delicious. enjoy!

Fall has settled in on the farm and a stead rhythm of harvesting has set in. Its week 10 and that means the long descent into the fall crops has begun.

Over the next few weeks you will see a few new crops that we haven’t at all or much of… The earliest winter squash – delacata, acron and festival are nearly ready. although we can start picking these next week, you will want to hold off for a week or two – or more –  before eating the winter squash, to let them develop their full flavor. towards the last few weeks we will have some of the longer storage winter squash as well – hubbards, spaghetti, butternet etc.

We’ve got a nice crop of potatoes to harvest, more onions (including red onions), shallots, leeks, bulb fennel, more cabbage and lots more salad to come. Plus, we finally started picking tomatoes this week (just a few members who didn’t get salad got them this week) and the farm corn has tasseled up and is 2 weeks away from harvest. We also have a nice fall carrot crop, plus some more scallions.

The field in pictures

Click any picture to enlarge

In The Box

Artichokes
Basil - call or email for perto quantities
Pearl Onions (some members)
Corn  - from Austin Family Farms
Cauliflower –  lots more – white, orange, green and purple
Cucumber -  yum, even more this week
Squash, summer - lots this week
Baby Salad Mix – still more coming, we may take one week off but then should have salad until the end
Beans –  purple – last week (still available by special order for canning)
Kale & Swiss Chard -  we will take a break again soon
Onions - big ones, fresh and delicious, red coming soon
Broccoli – A bit more, almost done
Romanesco – Crazy fractal broco-flowers – more coming
Napa Cabbage  – the end of the napa

Coming soon 
more Eggplant – we are just letting them size up
more Peppers – bells, etc.
potatoes, shallots, bulb fennel, leeks, scallions, carrots , winter squash

Fruit - no fruit for fruit member this week – good thing we had some melons… We are in a gap between Palisade and the north fork valley – The valley’s first peaches are just beginning to come in – around a month later than their reglar timing. We should have delicious First Fruits north fork valley peaches for the next 5 weeks. next week I also hope to get some plums from Austin Family Farms. the first apples (after those pristines) will be the galas, coming in this week or next, several other varieties will follow and apples will last thru the season. we will also have several varieties of pears some time in september. i haven’t heard anything about nectaries, we usually have these for 1-2 weeks, but I haven’t been able to find any yet!

New this week is Sweet Corn, from the Olathe fields of Austin Family Farms – I think you will agree its delicious! We will have more corn over the next few weeks.

Also new this week – Artichokes! These are a smaller variety than what you get int he super market. Steam until the the choke falls away if you list it up from a leaf (30-40 min). Most of these have little or no ‘hairs’ in the middle heart area to avoid. Enjoy these rare treats, we should have them again at least once or twice!

Also new this week – parsley and chives; we rotate the herbs each week for you to enjoy all the flavors of the garden – if you cant use something up, remember that drying is usually a good option! we will have more of these herbs again, plus thyme, oregano and some other surprises.

Where are the tomatoes? Thats what everyone wants to know! We have a relatively small tomato crop this year, but once it starts coming in we should have plenty for the CSA boxes – we have started to see a few ripe tomatoes, expect them in your boxes in a few weeks. In the mean time, use all the money you saved on produce by joining a CSA this summer to go down to your local farmers market and buy some local tomatoes!

In The Box

Carrots
Artichokes
Parsley
Chives
Pearl Onions
Corn
Cauliflower
Cucumber -  yum
Squash, summer -
Baby Salad Mix – still more coming
Beans – green, yellow, purple
Kale & Swiss Chard -  we will take a break again soon
Onions - big ones, fresh and delicious
Broccoli – A bit more
Beets – new crop, a bit
Eggplant – some members
Peppers – several varieties coming in
 

Fruit this week, the earliest apples – pristine, and the first peaches from the valley – from First Fruits in Paonia.

The Farm in Pictures

Here are some recent shots! Click any image to enlarge. Panoramas below.

The farm has really reached its stride; everything is looking vibrant, and the produce is coming in so fast we can hardly keep up with harvesting it all.

This week we have several crew transitions going on.  Maura, our intern who started working with us this spring, is heading back to her teaching job; Sabina and Isabel (my god-daughter and daughter), our crack of dawn teenager team, are heading back to high school. Thanks to them, we’ve grown and picked a lot of produce so far this summer. To make up the shortfall, some of us will add days, and in the cooling days of fall harvest will go later into the early afternoons. Also as other farm tasks like planting, mowing and weeding fall away (we give up!), we are left with harvest as the main task.

In the Field

The cauliflower really started coming in this week, so everyone got some. I gave everyone cabbage again. I realize you probably still have a cabbage from last week, so its time to make some cole slaw or cabbage rolls.  See my note below about overflowing fridges. We finished harvesting the 1st of our two early carrot beds this week. Farm members got some FUNKY carrots this week, sorry about that – I mis-calculated the number of bunches and all I had left on friday was the ‘funny’ carrots with all kinds of splits and swirls. These strange shaped carrots are usually caused by nematodes (tiny worms) that attach to roots as they grow. The flavor of the carrot isn’t affected! It looks like we will have one or two more weeks of carrots, then possibly a brief gap or some baby carrots before we begin harvesting our even larger fall planting.

The broccoli tapered off this week after an initial flush, but we should have more in a few weeks as the side-shoot crop develops. We dug a few new potatoes this week because we ALL love potatoes, and the fresh new ones are delicious. We dug up a section of mixed varieties planted from last years leftovers. We may have new potatoes one more time, then a few weeks off, then several varieties and larger quantities for the last few weeks. We have a nice crop of leeks for fall so you make potato leek soup.

The field cucumbers started producing this week, and there will be even more cucumbers over the next few weeks. Please email or call if you would like some picking cukes, we have plenty and pick them at a tiny size. The field summer squash is also coming on so expect more squash over the next few weeks. The beans are finally coming in, so everyone got a bag of green beans, fulls got more, everyone will get beans again for at least two more weeks. we have green, yellow, purple, and a red specked fresh bean and will try to rotate the varieties so you can try them all.

The artichokes are looking great – we started picking a few last week; I hope to have enough for at least some members boxes next week. as these trickle in, a different group of members will get them each week, for example farm members one week, crested butte members one week, etc. The onions have really sized up, you can expect a steady supply for a while.

A Word on Overflowing Fridges

I know that the produce quantities can be a bit overwhelming, so here are some tips… I suggest trying to store as much as you can, but also consider cooking extra and freezing. Many vegetables can be frozen by simply blanching (brief partial cooking) putting in a bag and dropping int he freezer. Beans are a good candidate for freezing! Some veggies don;t need the fridge – onions, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes; also cucumbers, peppers and eggplant store best at around 50 degrees, so find a cool, shady, critter free spot and store them there.

In The Box

Cabbage – red, green, flat and cone shaped. half boxes got smaller sizes
Cauliflower – even more to come
Cucumber -  yum
Squash, summer -
Carrots – 
Basil -
Baby Salad Mix – still more coming
Beans – green, yellow, purple, red speckled
Kale & Chard -  we will take a break again soon
Onions - big ones, fresh and delicious
Garlic  - all dried and curing, we will have garlic on and off for the rest of the season.
Eggplant – some members
Peppers – several varieties coming in
Potatoes – new potatoes, freshly dug by hand for your eating pleasure.

Fruit

Peaches from the domingez canyon this week; a note to fruit members – I’ve been holding back a little on fruit because the variety has been limited. We should start to see North Fork peaches and early apples (Galas and Akami first) soon.

Coming soon

Tomatoes – starts in next few weeks, just a few ripening so far
Olathe Sweet Organic Sweet Corn – should start next week

Fruit coming soon

North Fork Valley Peaches from First Fruits, Apples

More Pictures from the Farm coming soon!