Carrots!

Hello Farmies,

Good news on the Tour de Farm. Linda and I spoke with the organizer of Tour de Farm and he was full of answers. Yes, they will pay for everything, (tent, tables, insurance, ect.) Yes they will bring volunteers (up to 12 from the cities, who will likely camp overnight sunday at the farm). Yes they will pay for the produce. Overall, I think there is absolutely no reason to stress. Just focus and farm beautification, which does include the immense weeding challenge we have ahead, yikes they were big today.

Other good news is that we had a delivery to the co-op and New Scenic Cafe toda

y. Carrots were on the list! They look great.

Galynn was wondering about how to harvest carrots today. I took a few pictures to help explain. Basically, you just use the "digging fork" to loosen the soil by the carrots and then pull the carrots by hand. I recommend taking the greens off right away (unless they are to be used for green top carrots of course). The reason for this is that the greens take away from the carrots nutrients. So the longer they stay on, the more they deteriorate the carrot.

Wednesday's Activities

Hello Again Farm-Landers,

Yesterday was a successful day at the market. I think we were helped out quite a bit by the UMD Stores Sidewalk Sale. Maybe this is something to remember for the future. We sold out of peas right away, sold out of broccoli and sold most of our kale. It'll be nice to bring more and more variety to the market in the coming weeks.

At the Farm, I finished planting the row of late brassicas. I filled in the spaces where things had bit the dust, and extended the row some. There are two packets of lettuce seeds in the greenhouse. These can be planted at the end of the brassica row, if anyone feels inspired. Linda and I had talked about how we didn't have any lettuce to provide to the farmies. Linda thinks there is still time. I hope to get to fixing up the pumpkin row soon! Attached is a picture from a few weeks ago at the market. We need some more pictures to make this thing interesting!

Weeds and More Weeds

Hello

Mr. Jeremy Beckman accompanied me out to the farm yesterday. We worked on weeding along the front of the rows (mostly Jeremy's doing). If I had a gold star to give out, Jeremy would get it. Also did some watering and farm chores. Tomorrow I am planning on weeding around the pumpkins, straightening the rows, and willing them to grow fast! I'll be doing the same with the Three Sisters plots.

As for the Farm Dinner coming up, Linda and I talked some more about what needs doing. I am working with the Scenic Cafe people to arrange a car pool option for the dinner attendees. We'll see how that goes. See you at the meeting on Wednesday!

Brian

Weeding, weeding... and weeding

That pretty much sums up my day. It was very wet outside (but it didn't rain while I was in the field). The weeding tools were not working well because it was sooo wet (the clay just clumped at the end of the tools and the hoes just stripped the weeds instead of cutting them off at soil level). So, I used my hands. They were stained slightly green by the end of the day, but the parsley rows look much better (the lambsquarters (a "weed") were past my knees). Hmmmm... rain is forcasted for this coming Tuesday. That would make it the third rainy Tuesday in a row. I have mixed feelings about that.

I think whatever munched up all the red cabbage came back and munched most our replacements (even though they weren't red cabbage). Some critter seems to like to eat at the same spot. At least it doesn't touch the other plants, such as our fabulous looking kale. Also, there's one random head of broccoli amongst some other brassicas (on the west side of the peas). It's about to flower, so some one should pick it and eat it quick!

To the Market We Go!

So today Leah and Brian and I manned the market, which started off rocky when it started pouring! However, we moved inside, made our table as cheerful-looking as possible, and proceeded to do quite well!

The peas sold like candy, the scapes and kale did well, and we sold almost all of Sarah's bags!!! In ONE afternoon!! Woo-hoo!

I'll try to get some pictures up here!

Fruits of Labor

Let me start out by saying that it's tough to beat a timeless summer Sunday at Grassroots Cooperative Farm. The toil and trials of cooperative market-gardening intertwined with a sense of place create a weekly experience I value as much as the crops we grow.

A three person crew and a loaf of monkey bread helped to get some solid amount of work in at the farm today. Sarah tackled adding more twine to hold up the tomatoes on the trellis, Galynn weeded between crops to stave off quack-grass infestation, and I ran the roto-tiller between the rows for combination quack-grass control and soil breakage - the roto-tiller offered an advantage to wipe out weeds at one time. But now comes a responsibility to maintain quack-grass free rows without additional use of the roto-tiller, which can compromise the soil structure.

More crops are reaching maturity! Today we got to bring home some member shares of kale, garlic scapes, peas, and parsley - it all looks delicious.

"new" sink and first deliveries

Yesterday was a very rushed, but productive day. Paul and I picked up a concrete sink from Don's house and brought it to Grassroots where we cut a hole in the white harvesting table and dropped the sink in it with a smaller table to support it underneath. It maybe sounds easy but I can promise you it was not. The sink had to be approaching 400 lbs. However, it worked out ok and now we have a sink WITH a counter. Kinda like a kitchen on the field.

The first deliveries of parsley, kale, and spearmint to the co-op and garlic scapes and kale to the New Scenic Cafe' were soaked in the new sink and delivered that afternoon. I didn't really talk to anyone at the Scenic,(just put it in their cooler and left the invoice on a clipboard) but I did talk with the receiver at the co-op and he was very impressed with the produce. Good work everyone.

As for the rest of the week the tomatoes definitely need to be trellised again and weeding weeding weeding. The quackgrass is trying to overrun the farm again. Unfortunately, we may have to run the roto-tiller through again when it dries up a little. I say unfortunately because every time we use the tiller we break up our aggregate matter and that results in the hard-pan we are starting to see on the field. However, the quackgrass is rampant and must be dealt with. Jennifer, the lady that is loaning the tiller, suggested we roto-tilled first and than wheel hoed religiously afterwards to keep the weeds down.

Once again, good work everyone. The deliveries were beautiful and as Jahn the assistant manager of the co-op produce section commented, "I would pay cash money for that (kale)."

Have a great weekend and if there is time, try to spray out the gunk in that watering tank by the garage so we can start using it!