There is a reason for tractors.

Trying to obtain a tractor for a couple hours worth of work is proving more difficult than I had anticipated. I need to pull about 15 beds. I have been tilling everything by hand with a hoe, but the work smarter not harder mentality is nagging at my current work ethic. Lots of plants need to bed down shortly. Direct seeding a large first round of veggies is ready to happen.
There are still lots of spots in CSA that need to be filled, and are looking for people to enjoy this season’s bounty with us. There are other obtainable markets for fresh produce, but we really feel that the CSA is the best way to advocate closing the system on consumer producer relationships.

Our family

Once again, after the advice of many of our friends to include a family photo in the brochure, we totally left it out. They told us,” a CSA connects the members to you, and including a family photo in your brochure would strengthen that connection.”
The truth is we really don’t have any recent family photos. Maybe using the timer function on the camera is a little beyond us. There are tons of pictures of Sadie, and she is a great representation of her parents. However, she doesn’t quite represent the hard work we do to make the CSA happen. She will learn soon. So to everyone who wanted to see more of our friendly faces in the newly released brochure, I apologize. We will get some good hard working pictures of us as a family on the blog soon.

Hot Hot Heat

Man, it is super hot here at the Mud Puddle (the car thermometer said 105 yesterday). No puddles to speak of right now. We are working hard to make sure that the plants and animals, and us, get enough shade and water throughout these long days of intense heat. Lucky for us, we can go and jump in the river to cool off. Not so for these poor plants…

Anyway, we weeded this morning around the brassicas that were planted a few weeks ago. In this particular row, we have a ton of volunteer tomatillos and peppers coming up, so they had to be pulled out gently enough not to disturb the kale and chard sprouts. While the adults worked on that, Sadie chased Cornelius ’round and ’round, and trampled some lettuce. We hope it grows stronger due to encountering some baby delivered adversity. God decided to lay in the shady patch of lettuce as well despite the “No dogs in the field” rule. What’re you gonna do? At least he didn’t tear it out of the ground, I guess.

I am done with my Saturday rotation at the winery, so I will be back to doing markets again, which I am excited about. I can’t wait to see how much stuff we have been producing recently, and to check in with all our CSA members and make sure everyone’s expectations are being met. We already have ideas on how to improve for next year, but I want to hear what the paying customers think, too.

Selling Time

We are now setting up our booth at Wooldridge Winery today. This will bring some needed attention to us in the area. Hopefully people will be interested, and we will get some more CSA subscribers.

not archimedes.

The greenhouse is filled with starts.  In the middle of april tomatoes will be planted there.

Chickens have doubled in population.  We now have all these new chicken types: barred rock, black sexlink, light brahma, and speckled sussex, and golden wynadottes. Our two coops have been consolidated into the newer field coop.

Hops have been trellised using our natural surroundings.  Straight up a tree.

Irrigation is layed out.  Not perfectly, but there is water to the crops.  The crops which we seeded in Febuary, we are now planting.

Now we have a lot of marketing to do to get the CSA shares sold this year.  This upcoming weekend we are setting up shop at the Woodridge Wine release.  To everyone who is going to be out drinking wine in the beautiful Applegate Valley, and at Wooldridge Winery; stop by our booth.  We will be there on Saturday and Sunday.  On Sunday we will also be at the CSA Barn Dance at Hanley Farm in Central Point.

Slowly Gaining Speed

I went to another monthly meeting of the League of Women Farmers the other night. This is such an inspiring group; I love when we do farm tours. We went to Whistling Duck Farm, which is one of the longest running, most successful farms around here. Mary and Vince have been hard at work doing what they do since 1992! We wandered through their fields and Mary told us about how they do their cover crops, (which is definitely something we could use some pointers with) and looking down their 500-600 foot rows it dawned on me that we can do this.

In one of the classes I have been in recently, someone said, “It’s not rocket science. It’s just growing vegetables.” Everyone laughed, of course, but this is one of the main reasons I am out here doing this; I had the same thought in Chicago. “It’s not rocket science. How hard can it be?” Then I got out here and found out about water rights and farm insurance and succession planting and the cost of seed and irrigation line and fencing and how hard it is to do what we do without a tractor. There are a lot of impediments involved in the just growing vegetables part, so it is easy to get lost in everything else.

But this time of year is great because all we have to do is start seeds and watch them grow. There are row after row of soil blocks in the greenhouse with little sprouts coming up out of them. It is so awesome to see. We don’t have quite as many as Whistling Duck, but they also have quite a few more acres than we do.

Our neighbor who has an awesome tractor came over and turned over the rest of the field for us to start using for vegetable production and for planting forage for our chickens. Chad planted crimson clover into it to get a head start on all the newly uncovered weed seeds that will germinate quickly.

We moved all of the chickens from the backyard coop to the field coop. This was part of the master plan, but we had to hurry it along because one of the chickens escaped (we aren’t sure how) and the puppies killed it. So rather than let them get used to killing chickens, and us losing all our current layers, we relocated them to the field house. Now we just need to get another CSA membership or two to pay for the portable electric fencing we want to use to pasture them effectively.

Speaking of our lack of CSA memberships, we would like some opinions. Why do you think people aren’t signing up so far this year? It is not just us; a couple of the other women farmers and I were talking about it Tuesday. There is a general shortage of CSA customers across the board. Yes, yes. The economy sucks. But this is food, not designer handbags, as my mom said. What is holding people back from buying into the farms so far this year? Or do we all just need to chill and give people some time?

Check This Out

February, the checks for this years CSA memberships started trickling in. We really need this money to get all of our shit together and prepared to serve our customers this year. We have one check in hand, and got a call this morning about someone signing a check to give to us. This early money will help us get our much needed supplies.
So far we have been scrounging together what money we have to purchase the equipments that are a must. An item that is a must in efficiency for our farm is a soil blocker. We purchased one from FedCo last night and it should be here in a week or so. A soil blocker reduces the amount of waste, and increases planting efficiency by not having to use pots. With pots we have to wash them, and sanitize them every year to ensure healthy plants, they are flimsy plastic that break and put into landfills, and plants in pots may not have nearly as healthy roots. A soil blocker also improves the amount of pots/blocks can be made at once, and since the plants are not longer in pots the do not have to be removed from those pots before being planted outside.

Taking Time out.

Lately, we are resting our bones.  We are still piled up to our necks with ideas, current projects, and prospects for next year.  Yet we need to simmer down a bit even before we start rethinking our strategies for the coming years.

Two weeks ago we wrapped up our 1st growing season here in Southern Oregon.  Hectic barely describes what we endured, but no pain no gain.  Between the annual growing of vegetables for sale to our CSA members, caring for new and old animals, working outside the house, moving into a new (used) home, and RAISING A NEWBORN CHILD time quickly evaded us.  Starting with limited experience in all these fields, we rolled with it.  Ben’s arrival proved invaluable, it could not have been accomplished without his hard work. Ben is currently on a vacation back to Chicago, and we are planning to return there after Thanksgiving.

Just because we are resting, we are not wasting a terrible amount of time.  Things that need to get accomplished are getting done, we just hindered the rate that they are getting done.  To start out with, we have been getting the property winterized.  As much as we do not have a winter around here compared to Chicago, it does freeze occasionally.  Therefore, we need to pull hoses and irrigation systems inside, as well as attempt to bring the greenhouse up to speed.  We have brought some of our potted plants into the greenhouse for protection.  We have layed down mulch around the trees and shrubs, and the chickens that were in the chicken tractor were moved into the nicest chicken shack this side of the  Cascades (thanks Tracy!).

For all our loyal customers, we can not express enough, our joy that you joined us in this experiment in farming.  We are excited to work with you in years to come and supplying the best (meaning better than this year), freshest produce to you.  We are also anticipating enlarging the community participation in our CSA next year.  We are struggling to get next year’s brochure out because there are some inconsistencies that need to be addressed. We are almost ready to release it, but there is an internal debate amongst ourselves here at Mud Puddle.  We are concerned over the method of pick up and delivery of vegetables for next year.

Last year, we gave everyone the option of where they could pick up.  Although having one of several options for pick up might have been more convenient for the customer, it complicated our situation here at the farm.  First, having multiple days for pick up complicated the efficiency of picking and delivering, as well as compromised the freshness of the vegetables.  Since we do not yet have large amounts of refrigerated storage space at our farm, the food is always freshest when it is just picked.  And since we only had enough time and labor to make one large pick once a week (before our first pick up on Fridays), the people that forgot, picked up the following days, or were delivered on a later day always seemed to have vegetables of a lesser quality.

Secondly, because we had options and not a set guideline on pick up and delivery, a break down of communication occasionally occured.  We therefore missed and were not always clear on where the food was going.  This food just sat around and diminished in quality till a new time was sorted out.  We just want to make sure that everyone gets the same great product.  We could only hope that freshness lasted for ever.

Lastly, we want to interact more with you, the customer.  Yes, many you have came to our parties, and we see your faces upon pick up and delivery.  But rarely enough to capture input since our minds are always on delivering food both cooked and fresh to you.  We know most of you, but closer association and even some dialogue with you would make our job more pleasant and resourceful.

This then leads us to our current problem of the best way to get produce to you.  We do not necessarily want to write it in stone on the brochure yet.  Not until we have a better grasp of the proper solution.  One solution we came up with for next year would be to go to Grants Pass Growers’ Market, and to possibly have a one day on farm pick up between selected hours.  These would hopefully solve the quality issue by having a more certain time frame to deliver the freshest vegetables from our hands to yours and then into your fridge.  Previously they just sat in the office, or at our house till they were taken away.  Giving you a window to retrieve you vegetables gives us a better opportunity to keep them the freshest.

The hours that market is open, and the unselected hours that our farm will be open for pick up will allow no room for confusion.  We will happily hand you your CSA box, with no sad looking veggies in it.  And seeing you at market for CSA pick up will provide the perfect backdrop to engage in conversation with you. At market we are also hoping to have extra and experimental vegetables for sale.  We want to meet more of the community that support locally grown foods.

So this is what we are dwelling on.  Input from everyone would be helpful to find a practical solution for all parties involved.  Then, without haste we will get the brochure out to everyone.

Other happenings on the farm are general maintenance, cleaning up our tool shed, doing our research, and we also completed our chicken shack.   Our new chicken shack is friggin sweet.  It can house many more chickens than we have in it, double as dry storage for feed and tools, and allow the chickens to free range among our vegetables and trees.

We are still recieving limited eggs from our chickens.  There are still some for sale at 4 dollars a dozen if anybody is still interested.

The Promised CSA Recipes

So the past couple weeks we have been slackers for our CSA members and haven’t included recipes with our CSA boxes, and we have said we would put them on the website. So, here are a few for you to try:

Salsa Verde

Put your oven on broil. Dehusk your tomatillos, rough chop a quantity of onion (about 1/2 the quantity of your tomatillos), and enough hot peppers to make your salsa as spicy as you want. Toss them in some oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put under the broiler.

Keep it in the oven until it starts to blacken–but just barely. Take out and blend with a few cloves of garlic.

Chilaquiles

This is a traditional Mexican dish that a co-worker of Chad and Gabe’s in Chicago taught them to make. It is delicious as breakfast, but can be eaten any time of day. GREAT hangover food! Here is a picture of the version we made last week.

Chilaquiles

1 onion, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 zucchini, chopped

2 large handfuls of tortilla chips, preferably on the stale side

1/2-3/4 c salsa verde (or your favorite brand)

4 eggs, scrambled

1/2 c grated cheese

Preheat a pan on your stove top–it helps if this is a pan that can go straight into the oven. Saute onions, bell pepper, zucchini. Add tortilla chips, then salsa verde. If you want it really spicy, add lots of salsa, if not, cut your salsa with water. Cook until chips are almost completely soggy.

In a seperate pan, make scrambled eggs. When they are more underdone than you usually eat them, put in same pan as chips, and top with cheese. Put in your oven (if you are eating immediately, just broil. If you need to wait a few minutes; 350) and let all bake together. We topped ours with sour cream, and this really yummy pickled pepper relish we made.

Pear Galette–great served with vanilla ice cream!

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter–5 tablespoons cut into small pieces and chilled, 2 tablespoons melted
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 2 tablespoons apricot preserves, strained
• 2 large Bosc pears
• 1/2 teaspoon very hot water

1. Preheat the oven to 425°. In a medium bowl, toss the flour with 1 teaspoon of the sugar and the salt. Cut in the cold butter until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.
2. In a small bowl, beat the egg with the milk. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of the beaten egg over the flour mixture and stir. Working quickly, gather the dough into a smooth mass, squeezing it gently. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and pat it into a 5-inch disk. Wrap in wax paper and refrigerate until firm but not hard, about 30 minutes.
3. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a 9 1/2 -inch round, turning it clockwise an inch or two each time you roll to maintain an even shape. Transfer the dough to a heavy flat baking sheet. Fold up 1/4 inch of the edge of the dough to form a neat rim. Using a knife, score the rim in a decorative pattern. Brush the rim with a little of the remaining beaten egg. Brush 1 tablespoon of the apricot preserves over the bottom of the dough and refrigerate while you prepare the pears.
4. Peel, quarter and core the pears. Slice each quarter lengthwise into 5 thin wedges. Arrange all but 6 of the pear wedges on the dough in a spoke pattern, overlapping them slightly. Cut the remaining pear wedges and arrange them in the center of the tart to form a decorative rose. Brush the pear slices with the melted butter and sprinkle with the remaining 2 teaspoons of sugar.
5. Bake the galette in the middle of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the pears are tender and the pastry is crisp and golden. Carefully slide the galette onto a rack to cool slightly.
6. Stir the hot water into the remaining 1 tablespoon of apricot preserves and brush on the pears. Serve the galette at room temperature.

3 weeks in

This Friday marks our third week of delivering CSA boxes to our 8 customers. They are looking good, and finally filling themselves with fresh veggies. This week we delivered 1/2 of mixed greens, carrots, three types of beets, three types of turnips, two types of kale, 1/2 lb of shelling peas, herbs, and radishes. This might be pittance compared to what some other well established farms are offering at this time we are totally proud of ourselves. Going from absolutely nothing when i got here in october of 07 to now, we are feeling good about our progress.
There are still many obstacles to overcome here at Mud Puddle, but we are trying to overcome them without going crazy. Right now our water system is acting up, and that could cause real problems because our baby and plants need water. It is really dry and hot
this is where we rest when the heat of the day overcomes us. There are two hammocks up right now, and one more that i need to put up. they are great for everything from sleeping to resting. Even reading is possible in these hammocks but rarely does it last too long.

It is a bit early for potatoes, the flowers on the plants haven’t totally bloomed yet, and the leaves aren’t dying away. These are the indications that the potatoes are ready to harvest.