The heat of July has faded into the lazy days of August here at The Open Gate Farm. We have gone from sheltering the lettuce from Summer's inferno to transplanting new baby lettuce plants as fast as we can.
The Harvest Jubilee is coming! September 19th, it will feature about 20 local farms. We are on the tour, of course, and have to make certain we will have something to sell on that crazy day. Our lettuce takes about 60 days to get full size, so these may be a bit small. But given enough warm days and lots of water, there is hope we have not missed the cycle.
Read about starting seeds in worm castings. Aha! We have a green plastic circular compost bin out back where for the last 9 years we have put most all our household wet garbage. Full of red worms, this is full of their castings too! I dug out a couple shovels full and spread it on top of one of the seed beds in the master garden. Absolutely amazing. Normally it takes from 6 to 10 days for lettuce to germinate and show their first baby leaves. I just checked and this latest set in the worm castings did it in 4 days flat.
Now to see if this cuts the time to maturity in half...or just gives them a head start. Stay tuned!
And just to make the day complete, here is a picture of Elaine enjoying quality time in the garden this afternoon.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
And if you are wondering what you might see this weekend...
Flowers for sale!
Food for thought...Merlot is on the right.
Butter, Cinnamon, Raisins, Pecans...oh, and a touch of sugar...
So don't be shy! Come on by this weekend!
Snickers on a cooler day...
85 and climbing at The Open Gate Farm
Dear Friends of the Farm:
It’s hot. It’s really hot. The hens have gone on vacation they told us. We see them hanging out around the duck’s swimming pool hoping for swimming lessons but the ducks are hogging the water and won’t come out. It’s hot.
It’s really hot in the kitchen. It’s hot there because our intern, Kathryn, has decided to re-ignite the bread business. She’s gone through the bread books and selected some winning recipes. It must be good because the first person who stopped bought a loaf of the Sweet Land Oatmeal Molasses. And some Fougasse just came out of the oven. Torn apart and dipped in olive oil…excuse me while I got get some more!
Heat can lead to stress and we don’t like stress around here so yesterday morning, as the temperature streaked to the upper reaches, we hustled up some arches and covers for the lettuce. Now when you come up the hill on Russell Road, you can see all the rows of happy lettuce, parked in their white roofed carports. Those covers lowered the temperature of the soil a good 15 degrees. That has allowed us to put just a head of each variety on the stand (count them…7 different ones!) or we can go to the garden and pick you a fresh one that does not need to go in a wilted lettuce salad.
On a sadder note, we must pass along that our dearly beloved male Indian Runner duck, Chai, is no longer with us. We think it was a wandering raccoon around sunset who did him in. From the huge cloud of feathers, he put up a pretty good tussle, allowing the girls to get away to safety in the chicken house. We miss him a lot. He was a real gentleman and kindness was his middle name. If you know of anyone with a spare male Indian Runner Duck who has impeccable manners, please let us know.
And we have, thanks to the suggestion of a customer, put a table up at the stand for you to set your selections on. Now you don’t have to set your bags on the ground as you continue your selecting of the finest produce we’ve ever raised! Keep those ideas for improvements coming! We can’t think of them all ourselves!
Spinach is now on the stand. Green leaves of health. Just stand there and look at them and you’ll feel the iron and minerals flowing into your body and giving color and tone to your skin that you’ve not seen since high school. O.K. You do have to eat it first. But it’s really tastey raw in a salad or steamed with a hint of vinegar over it. Just like with the beet greens! Lots of them are ready now too. Some even have the baby beets hanging on still so there you get a bonus!
Did you know that chard is a beet without a bottom? A couple years of breeding to get the stalks and leaves like they are, but by golly it’s full of health and strength for you too!
And for the young at heart…we have some Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies out. We substituted a few things so these taste really healthy too. Virtue and sin in the same bite. It can’t get better than this! At 50 cents each or 3 for a buck, you’ll be seen as virtuous by your family if you show up with a handful for dessert tonight!
Well, time to go find some shade and wait out this heat wave. If you can come over, we’d love to see you. If not, save your pennies until you can so you’ll be able to fill your tables with outstanding organic, certified naturally grown produce, and fresh home made bread that will leave your neighbors impressed, your in-laws jealous, and your family satisfied.
Happy Hoeing,
Jon and Elaine and Mr. Snickers, Mystery the quiet cat, Jerry and Harley and the girls from the egg department, and of course, DD, Quackers, and Cheese the sad but water loving ducks
The Open Gate Farm 269 Russell Road, Camano Island, WA 98282 360-387-4449 Email: tsgjon@aol.com Blog: www.theopengatefarm.blogspot.com/ Website: http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M19128 Open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to dusk until September 19 or so. Or by appointment if you call 360-387-4449 first.
While cruising through the Pike Place Market yesterday in Seattle, it struck me that the world seems to view lettuce as having only two colors. Green or red. But like so much of commercial food, what is presented is only a shadow of what should be. Their idea of red is really green but with a red tinge to the tips of the leaves.
In Vermont, along about September, the maple and oaks and elms begin to change the colors of their leaves. It starts at the tips as the chlorophyl dies and the minerals which have been there all along reveal their reds and yellows and oranges. But at that stage, we don't refer to them as being red or yellow or orange. We say they have started to change but are not yet in their full glory.
So why do we accept lettuce that has only the tips of the leaves red as being red lettuce? Shouldn't the whole leaf be red? Like the Merlot lettuce we have on the stand now? Or the Rougette de Montpelier? When you come to the garden in the evening and the light is fading, the Merlot has an unearthly glow to it. It sits next to it's green friends and looks like burgundy wax figures. That is red lettuce. The stuff that has a touch of red on the tips of the leaves is not.
Cinnamon rolls are simple to make. Mix up some dough, roll it out, cover it with butter, sugar, cinnamon, sprinkle on the nuts and raisins, roll it up, cut the log into pieces, put in the baking dish, let rise, bake, frost, and enjoy! Hah! It is simple until you don’t do it all winter and you fire up the oven in the Spring and follow the recipe and they don’t come out right. For some reason, the first batch took over 2 hours to rise and then were still too small. Tweak the yeast and they began to rise faster. But still too small. Until Friday. Then they blossomed into the big, soft, sweet cinnamon rolls of last year.
The key, you see, was to take the 15” x 25” flattened out sheet of dough, covered with butter, smothered in cinnamon and brown sugar, starred with chopped pecans and organic raisins, and roll it not along the 25” dimension, but along the 15” side. The log we sliced into rolls became 12 rolls, not 16 or so and that made all the difference. We took a 90 degree turn and found the big ones again.
So if you were not impressed with the first rolls of the season, be assured we weren’t either! But we think you will be now. They are big, full of sweetness and sin, and the lemon butter icing completes a snack that will fill not only your tummy, but your heart as well. And be assured, we have written the critical changes on the recipe this time!
Lots of new will be at the stand this weekend! The sweet Sucrine Romaine lettuce is ready. They are a solid head of small leafed romaine lettuce which makes a wonderful salad. Break out your favorite Caesar dressing and get ready for some pleasure. The Bibb is ready too and if you are fast, you may be able to get one of the favorites from last year…Canasta Brasiliana. Canasta is a large head of green leaves with red tinged edges that holds in the fridge for weeks and never loses its flavor. As it grows, it begins as a leaf lettuce and when fully mature has a small head in the middle. The best of both worlds!
Radishes! These bright shining balls of red and white are going to be rolling across the stand and into your bags this weekend too! Just like last year, they will be 50 cents per bunch, or 2 bunches for a dollar. Change is available in the green box like last year too. Color has come to the salads at last!
To paraphrase Mayor Daley of Chicago’s comment on voting…come early, come often. The best lettuce is the freshest and that is first thing in the mornings. Once it has sat for a couple hours, these heirloom lettuces can become a bit stressed. To improve your dining pleasure, we have instituted a new rule. If you want a fresher head, we can go to the garden together and get you one. Don’t think you are insulting us by asking (in case we are so busy listening to your stories of winter survival we don’t offer). We want you to have the best and we’ll walk the extra mile to do it. Or in this case, the 200 feet to the garden!
We are delighted that Kathryn Norris has joined us for the summer. This charming young lady has what it takes to become a world class farmer and we are tickled to help her on this journey. She will be greeting you in the stand, giving tours, answering questions, and weeding when you’re not looking. She has already made a great dent in the buttercup population around here. It gives us hope that maybe we’ll win the battle after all! It will be a bittersweet Fall, when she returns to Bible School in Minneapolis. But until then, we’re mighty glad she’s here!
Well, it’s time to let the chickens and ducks out into the rainy morning, then gather the eggs. And Snickers is ready to go give the rabbit who has moved in under the lumber crib out back a lesson in staying out of the garden.
Have a great week and we hope to see you at the stand this weekend, hauling home the finest produce we can produce!
Happy Hoeing,
Jon and Elaine and Professor Snickers, Mystery the curious cat, Jerry and Harley and the girls from the egg department, and of course, Chai, DD, Quackers, and Cheese the rain loving ducks
The Open Gate Farm 269 Russell Road, Camano Island, WA 98282 360-387-4449 Email: tsgjon@aol.com Blog: www.theopengatefarm.blogspot.com/ Website: http://www.localharvest.org/farms/M19128 Open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to dusk until September 19 or so. Or by appointment if you call 360-387-4449 first.
The Open Gate Farm Camano Island, WA May 13, 2009 Lettuce stand together!
Dear Friends of the Farm:
Thank you one and all for a great opening day weekend! It was bigger and better than last year and a real joy. Make new friends, but keep the old, as they say. And the gathering of old friends and hearing these dear people in the garden talking about trips and cures and healthy foods was a great pleasure as was the warm reception to the lettuce. The red leafed butterheads were particularly favored.
And the new friends! We may see them only once a year when they come up for the art tour on Mother’s Day Weekend, but they too have stories to tell. We sure gave a lot of tours to out of towners who promise to return next year. It is fun to become part of someone’s tradition. And the lettuce left town with them too. Lots of it.
And the lettuce may be going faster. It may have been a mistake, but we sent the Stanwood/Camano News a press release announcing the opening of our produce stand and by golly, they printed it! Uh oh. This could be a long three days! But we can crank out cinnamon rolls pretty fast and other bread stuffs to fill in when we run out of lettuce…or, in the words of that famous French Queen, “Let them eat rhubarb!”.
Finally got the rhubarb weeded and freed from the grasp of the buttercups. Those guys are on the Washington State Department of Agriculture list of noxious weeds. Wouldn’t think so, with their pretty maple leaf shaped leaves and charming bright yellow flowers. But their roots are many and go up to three inches deep, wrapping themselves tightly around the rhubarb crowns and choking the poor dears to death. Only way to get rid of them is to pull them or use chemicals and being Certified Naturally Grown, the latter is out of the question around here. So, dig and wrench, dig and wrench, dig and wrench. Got about a pickup load full of the rascals!
There are three plants we do not allow here. Buttercup, Scotch Broom, and wild mint. We have found that putting a gallon of vinegar in the hand pump sprayer and hitting the buttercup kills the leaves. We have to make several applications as new ones come on until the roots finally run out of energy. And it seems to be the same with the Scotch Broom. So if you are driving by and you see one of us out with a sprayer, don’t worry. We are not using Roundup or any of the other ugly guys. Just the same vinegar you can put on your Ark lettuce you just bought at the stand. Mint, by the way, we pull easily and put in the trash to get it off the property.
The weather has been cool and rainy these last few days, but that has helped the lettuce hang in there and not bolt. We’ll take a measuring stick out and let you know the results, but some of those speckled Ark butterheads are at least a foot across.
And this is the weekend for the first of the Bibb lettuces! Ate one last week and discovered the core was sweeter than the leaves. So on to the stand it goes to accompany the Ark, Capitan, Bergams, Merlot, and Montpelier.
Made up some rhubarb sauce by taking a stalk, whacking it into pieces, putting a bit of water and sugar in the pot and cooking it on medium and low until it was mush. Poured warm over cold vanilla ice cream, it gave a reward that made all the hours of pulling buttercup worthwhile. And you get to enjoy it without so much as touching a trowel! Still $1.50 / lb and worth twice that.
Swallows, the violet-green variety, have finally moved into the little green roofed “Heidi” style birdhouse our son, Adam, and his wife, Joscelyn, gave us many years ago. Normally the swallow family takes up residence in one of the regular bird houses around the post from this one, but the English Sparrows beat them to those digs this year. Looks like it’s time for the house building to begin again. We like having the swallows with us. They show up each Spring just as the bugs become a bother and to watch them sweep and swoop across the lawn in the evening is to see poetry in motion. And fewer bugs at the end of the evening.
Well, come by when you can, for you won’t bug us. Not even with your questions. There are no silly questions here for we had to ask them ourselves once!
Happy Hoeing,
Jon and Elaine and Snickers the bird watching farm dog, Mystery the curious cat, Jerry and Harley and the girls from the egg department, and of course, Chai, DD, Quackers, and Cheese the bug gobbling ducks
The Open Gate Farm 269 Russell Road, Camano Island, WA 98282 360-387-4449 Open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to dusk until September 19 or so. Or by appointment if you call 360-387-4449 first.
There is something magical about “opening day”.Yesterday was “opening day” of the boating season down in Seattle.Parades of boats chugging past tens of thousands of eager watchers, music, dance, food, port-a-potties…all the elements for excitement and entertainment and exhaustion were present.But when the kiddies are tucked in and the parents collapse, it is generally agreed a good time was had by all and Summer has officially arrived here in the Northwest.
Here on the farm, however, yesterday was spent weeding and planting and digging and watering and running to the store for more paint and supplies and then collapsing at the end of the day. For you see, our “Opening Day” will be this Thursday.For us, this is the day the stand gets launched upon the ocean of hope.It is the day that the lettuce we planted back in January takes center stage and is paraded out for your purchase.It is the day the most tender rhubarb of the season is gently plucked and set out for you to make into sauces, pies, cakes, cookies and for us to run out of fresh eggs from the ladies down in back.It is the day we start giving tours and hear the stories of what you all have done over the winter.
It is also the day before 29 artists here on our little island open their studios to the public for tours.This Mother’s Day Weekend event is well publicized, for which we are grateful, for our little 2 acres is located on a main road for their traffic.So when you come up to see the paintings and pottery, stop in and pick up some Ark or Capitan butterhead lettuce.And some Merlot lettuce to add color and character to your salads.Pick up some rhubarb to make into a sauce to pour over vanilla ice cream.And come walk about the farm, see the new chicken run and meet the ducks who came to live with us over the winter.They want to hear your stories too.
But leave your dogs in the cars.Snickers wants all your attention too.
This Spring, there has been a rising note of anxiety in the agricultural press regarding food safety.We too, are concerned that no one gets sick from eating anything we provide.Toward that end, we have spent time this winter just past studying up on this issue.We’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from our food, but we have changed a few practices here to enhance that level of safety for you.
Bad bugs come from two sources primarily.One is animals (wild ones like deer, especially).The other is cleanliness.We addressed both of these last year and enhanced our security measures this year again.
Fencing in the garden has eliminated the deer and rabbit salad bar.You will notice it is a tall net fence along Lake Grove.It has been up for over a year and we have not seen it broached yet.The fence on the yard side is lower, and made of wire.But the 2” square openings are too small for even a rabbit.We know because we saw Peter try one evening this week and he left with an empty shopping basket.And we are in the process of installing fencing along Lake Grove Road which will keep the chickens home and stray animals out of the yard as well.
Cleanliness.No matter whether you buy your food from us or up at the store, you must wash it before you eat it.We rinse ours all off here before putting it out for purchase, but that is more for looks than for a guarantee of sanitation. Shiny carrots sell better than muddy ones. If you want to munch a radish on the way home, we suggest you wait.But we are putting in better washing facilities down in the garden, and looking at how to keep the produce hydrated on the stand.
Because many of our items are heirloom, they tend to be tender and fragile and don’t stay crisp and fresh as long as the pesticide grown ones from stores do.This means we don’t pick as much at one time and we need to keep them chilled and sprinkled during the heat of the day.When you think of how often the sprayers go off in the stores which are air conditioned, then you’ll understand why shade and cool breezes are important to our efforts.
One other point of interest may be the manure we use.While it comes from happy cows, it is still cow manure and we use it liberally around here.But this year, we are following the guidelines we found.We built that big composting box for reason.We filled it last fall and monitored the temperature to make sure it spent 3 days at over 170 degrees Fahrenheit.This is the temperature that kills salmonella.Additionally, it sat for over 90 days, the time by which it has been established bad bugs die in compost.Only then does it get spread on the ground and dug in to feed the food we eat.
This is actually a good thing.The composting process takes time because the manure and wood chips and straw rot down and are converted into a form which is far easier for the plant roots to absorb.That is why lettuce fed composted manure will outgrow lettuce grown in fresh manure every time.And time is what this is all about.
We just ran across a note from last year.It seems when we planted some radishes between a couple rows of lettuce, that lettuce grew twice as fast as the ones without radishes by their feet.Don’t know why…but we’re going to trundle out to the garden and see if it works again this year.The “why” may make a good research project for Kathryn, our intern, when she gets here.
Several of our readers do not have high speed internet access.To keep their lives free from the boredom of long downloads, we do not include pictures with these newsletters.However, we have started a blog, thanks to our son, Adam, and his patient tutoring of the old woodchuck.You can visit it at www.theopengatefarm.blogspot.com where there are pictures and more articles.It will not be replacing this newsletter, but augmenting it.You will also find this newsletter there, if you want to pass the blog address along to friends.
Blogging is not, however, high on the list of activities of Snickers, our small farm dog.He has been very busy lately, supervising the work around here.His extraordinary digging skills are evident in the lawn and flower beds which by now should be pretty much rock free.He does like to run past the chickens at top speed and has figured out exactly how close he can come to them so they will be startled but not scream which gets him into trouble.And he is always ready to guide the squirrels back up their tree and point Peter back to his hole in the sun filled grove of trees by the back lane.
It’s been a good winter, a delightful spring, and if you folks come by for a visit, the summer will be excellent.Hope to see you soon!
Happy Hoeing,
Jon and Elaine and Snickers the hustling farm dog, Mystery the sleepy farm cat, Jerry and Harley and the girls from the girl choir, and of course, Chai, DD, Quackers, and Cheese the dog watching ducks
