Monthly Archive: June 2016
Hello Everyone! So we are still waiting for some rain. There is some in the forecast for tonight and Tuesday but they have been wrong so many times now… I mentioned a rain dance in last week’s episode. My form of rain dance is to head out into the fields on my seeding tractor to do some planting. This has worked often in the past to get the skies to open up but I tried it last week and only managed to squeeze out a few drops! (more…)
Hello Everyone! So we continue to experience dry conditions here on the farm. We have had several more predicted rainfalls fail to arrive. We have another shot at a little precipitation overnight on Monday and perhaps a better chance of the wet stuff on Thursday. Keep your fingers crossed, say a prayer or perhaps do a rain dance if you are so inclined. In the meantime, we will continue to move the sprinklers around the fields and employ creative tricks to get the seeds to sprout. (more…)
This recipe found at food.com is a guilt-free vegan dish, great for anyone who is trying to cut carbs or just eat healthy. The recipe serves 4. Bon appétit! (more…)
Hello Everyone! So we waited with a mixture of anticipation and dread for the severe storms predicted for Saturday. We badly need the rain but worried about the high winds and potential for hail. In the end we got no rain at all, only 2 days of high winds that have been wreaking havoc with our crop covers and drying out the soil even more. There is some hope for precipitation at the end of the week; in the meantime, we will be moving the sprinklers around from field to field to keep the crops growing and the seeds germinating. (more…)
Hi Folks! We finally got some rain here at the farm on Sunday, just over an inch. We need more but are grateful for what we receive.
We have essentially lost the first planting of arugula, broccoli raab, and tatsoi as a result of the dry conditions and the heat wave. It had been under siege from a pernicious pest – the flea beetle – and was covered with an Ag fabric to protect it. (more…)
Sunchokes, of the sunflower family, are native to North America where the natives called them “sun roots” before European settlers arrived. Samuel Champlain, a French explorer found them in Cape Cod in 1605 and pronounced them similar in taste to artichokes. But why “Jerusalem artichokes”? They don’t come from Jerusalem nor do they look like artichokes. There are a few theories: when first discovered people started calling them “girasole” (or flower that turns looking for the sun) which eventually became “Jerusalem”. Another possibility is that as sunchokes became the staple food of the first European pilgrims in North American soil they named it as food for the “new Jerusalem”. (more…)
This recipe, found on allrecipes.com is an easy way to cook these vegetables. Jerusalem artichokes, or sunchokes, are starchy tubers like potatoes and turnips. When roasted, the skin becomes flaky and the flesh becomes tender, but the taste of a sunchoke is slightly nutty and sweet. (more…)
Hi Folks, Firstly, I would like to apologize for having been incommunicado until now. I normally write one or two pre-season updates to keep members apprised of how things are going at the farm. It has been an extra challenging spring this year, we once again got off to a late start owing to winter sticking around until Mid-April. Since then it has been exceptionally dry despite a week of “rainy weather” which delivered barely a half an inch of drizzle during 6 days of gloomy overcast skies. As always, my crew and I have been working hard to get the planting done and overcome the challenges. (more…)