Fall Harvest

Fall crops are in! Lots of organically grown squash, onions, potatoes, pumpkins, and decorative corn. Also red, yellow, and orange bell peppers while they last.

All of the onions, potatoes, and squash will store well for several months, stock up and save with bulk purchase prices.

All squash (Butternut, Spaghetti, and Acorn) - $1.00 /lb or $0.75/lb for 10 lbs or more
Onions (Yellow and White) - $1.00 /lb or $0.75/lb for 10 lbs or more
Potatoes (Red and White) - $1.00 /lb or $0.75/lb for 10 lbs or more
Bell Peppers - $0.50 each
Cayenne Peppers - $0.25 each
Indian Corn - $0.50 per ear
All Pumpkins any size - $4.00 each or 3 for $10.00

Call, text, or email to place an order and schedule pickup

Coming soon: Organically raised, pastured meat chickens will be available after Thursday 10/19

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Sweet corn and tomatoes

We began harvesting sweet corn this weekend and we are seeing the first wave of heirloom tomatoes ripening up! Blackberries should continue for about another week. Probably the last week for cucumbers though.

Following is the listing of produce that will be available this week, along with pricing. Aug_21_Price_List. Call, email, or text to place an order and schedule pickups.

Chicks arrived last Tuesday, and are already starting to sport their white wing feathers, we'll be taking orders for meat chickens when we get into late September/early October.

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Blackberry Season

Sweet, juicy, organic blackberries are now fully in season and should be available, based on weather, for the next 10-14 days. Freshly harvested pints available for $4.00 each or pick your own by appointment for $3.00 per pint. Call, text, or email to place an order or schedule a time to pick.

Green beans are starting this week and tomatoes and sweet corn should be ready by this weekend or early next week.

Following is this weeks price list: Price_List_8_14_17

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Produce Availability and Price List - 8/8/17

Price List

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Blackberries & Fresh Produce!

Hope everyone is enjoying summer! It's been a slower start to harvest season this year, but we are beginning to have more variety available every week. Blackberries have also just begun!

We currently have the following available:

Fruit

Blackberries - $4.00/pint

Veggies

Green Peppers - 2 for $1.00
Cucumbers - 2 for $1.00
Collard Greens - $2.00/bunch
Kale - $2.00/Bunch
Red Potatoes - $2.00/pound
Zucchini & Summer Squash - $2.00/pound

Herbs

Basil - $2.00/bunch
Chives - $2.00/bunch

Please call, text, or email to confirm availability or to place an order and schedule pickup.

Thanks!

-Wade

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Week 15 - Final Week for CSA Shares

A fairly heavy frost both Sunday and Monday morning confirmed that this will be the last week for the CSA season. It has been another tremendously enjoyable year for me and hopefully also for all of our shareholders. I am writing this update as I wait for the chickens to be processed at Wilcox Poultry in Brown City, and I am reminded of how many awesome people I have had the good fortune to meet over the past 3 seasons on the farm. Like Ken and Robin Wilcox, our current and past shareholders have been both supportive and inspiring and I cannot express enough how appreciative I am. The end of the season is always bittersweet, while I am ready for a reduction in hours of physical labor :) I will miss the harvest anticipation and the weekly shareholder conversations and comradery.

Not only will this be the last week, we have also decided that this will be our final CSA season. I have been provided an opportunity to return to the financial service industry that is just too good to pass up. As a result we will be shifting the sales of produce to a special order and on farm pickup model next year. We will continue to provide high quality, organically grown strawberries, blackberries, asparagus, peppers, tomatoes, etc., just not as wide of variety of items and on a slightly smaller scale.

Now, back to this week...several late season crops will be harvested this week, including turnips, Brussels sprouts, butternut squash, and a bonus harvest of spaghetti squash from a late planting that produced way better than I thought it was going to! We also will see carrots for the first and only time this season, while many crops had a banner year with the heat, they were the most disappointing item. We had 6 different planting and germination was horrible in all of them. I was originally blaming the seed but believe the real cause was was the heat and lack of moisture at planting time (lesson learned for next year, irrigate carrot plantings until emergence). We combined the harvest from all 6 plantings to provide this week's share. An excellent recipe that uses both the turnips and carrots is: Tugboat Turnips

This week's share contents will include:

Butternut Squash
Spaghetti Squash
Onions
Turnips
Carrots
Radishes
Apples
Brussels sprouts
Kale - Blue Curled Scotch
Sweet bell or banana peppers
Cayenne Peppers
Chickens

Thank you again to our shareholders for your support! It's been a great season and I look forward to hopefully seeing you out at the farm next spring!

-Wade

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Week 14 Shares

Today is one of those perfect autumn days, full October sun, nice breeze, and a fantastic array of color!

Shares this week will have quite a variety of colors as well:

This week's apples will be a combination of both Red and Golden Delicious. Many of the goldens have some amount of sooty blotch, which is a surface blemish that shows up when moisture levels are high. It doesn't effect taste, just appearance, a late season fungicide would eliminate it, but we opt to just deal with it. A little water and a cloth will rub it off easily.

The chickens continue to pack on the pounds, they will go in for processing next Tuesday!

Share contents:

Apples
Onion
Jalapeno Peppers
Red Cabbage
Swiss Chard
Radishes
Acorn Squash

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Week 13 Shares

According to the calendar it's now officially fall, and boy has it been feeling like it. With overnight temps down in the 40s most of the winter squash vines have died back and we are beginning harvest this week with spaghetti squash!

Following is our favorite spaghetti squash recipe, it is way awesome! http://dfo-recipes.weebly.com/spaghetti-squash--meatballs.html

This week includes our final harvest of arugula, the cooler weather has meant less pest pressure so fewer flea beetle holes in this batch :). If you haven't tried it yet, give the Arugula Pasta recipe a try: http://dfo-recipes.weebly.com/arugula-pasta.html

The sweet peppers have colored up nicely and there is a mixture of varieties in this week's harvest, (some shares will get yellow, some orange, others red, etc). If you get one of the long sweet reds, just don't confuse it with a cayenne. The sweet ones are much larger and have smoother skin. The second picture below shows a comparison of the two so hopefully you can avoid any issues.

Sweet Red Peppers on the left, spicy Cayenne on the right

If you don't plan on using your cayenne right away, you can use a needle and thread and string them up through the green stems and let them dry for a month or two and then crush into red pepper flakes or use a blender to turn them into cayenne pepper.

This week's shares will include:

Green Beans
Onions (yellow)
Spaghetti Squash
Tomato
Cherry Tomatoes (the last few from the vines)
Arugula
Apples (red delicious)
Sweet Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Cayenne Peppers

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Week 12 Shares

Beets are back this week, and based on multiple request, we have included the beet greens as well. We have clipped and bundled them separately as they wilt very quickly if left attached to the beet. If you haven't used them before, the following recipe is simple and good: cooked-beat-greens.html

The chicken's new pasture this week is a field that I planted a clover mix cover crop into this spring, the clover is now about 18" tall and the chickens have been feeding on it like crazy, they have actually left food in the feed trough during the day in favor of the clover!

This will be the last week for the McIntosh apples, but the red and golden delicious should be ready to start this weekend. It looks like we will have many extra bushels of the goldens and some of the reds, if anyone is interest in purchasing extra quantities please let me know. Pricing is $12 per bushel for shareholders and $15 per bushel for non-shareholders.

This weeks shares will include:

Green Beans
Onions - White
Beets
Beet Greens
Kale
Tomatoes
Jalapeno Peppers
Cayenne Peppers
Apples - McIntosh

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Week 11 Shares

Finally some decent size leeks this year! For shareholders that have been with us for the past couple of years, you will remember leeks that many times looked more like green onions, however this year with the combination of weed suppression, heat, and moisture, the crop sized up much better. While they are a pain to harvest (dig, trim leaves & roots, wash, bundle), they have many favorable qualities. One is that they make great potato and leek soup. http://dfo-recipes.weebly.com/roasted-leek-and-potato-soup.html. The other is that they are excellent practical joke props. Simply place a leek anywhere there is a water pipe (under the sink, in the basement, in the laundry room, etc) and shout in a distressed voice: "there's a leak in the (fill the blank)"

The chickens are starting to fill out, they just completed week #4, so they are about at the half way point. We have a couple of hawks that cruise past once and a while and everyone heads for cover under the coop. One had just flow past and nobody wanted to come out for a picture...

We started harvesting onions this week, which like the leeks, are significantly larger than in the last couple of seasons. They take about a week to dry and cure, so they should start appearing in shares next week.

As some of the fall crops begin, some of the summer ones are coming to an end. This week will mark the last appearance of zucchini, summer squash, potatoes, and cucumbers

Another great shareholder provided recipe that uses green beans, cherry tomatoes and basil. We made this on Monday and everyone approved. http://dfo-recipes.weebly.com/green-beans-and-tomatoes.html

This week's shares will contain:

Leeks
Green Beans
Potatoes
Cucumber
Zucchini or Summer Squash
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Bell Peppers
Jalapeno Peppers
Apples - McIntosh

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Week 10 Shares

Welcome to September, hope everyone had an enjoyable Labor Day weekend! We did spend some time grilling and hanging around a bon fire, but we also spent part of Monday picking apples! The kids were "thrilled" to spend part of their last day of summer vacation at the orchard :)

We also got the chickens moved out onto pasture on Monday, they are enjoying the extra space and wider variety of menu options other than just starter feed!

Cabbage harvest this morning! A lot easier this year with the 100 gallon "harvest bin" and the new loader forks for the tractor, less carrying and lifting!!

This weeks' shares will include:

Potatoes
Basil
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Cabbage
Green Beans
Jalapeno Peppers
Cayenne Peppers
Apples - McIntosh

One of our shareholders shared the following pickled green bean recipe and included a couple of sample jars for us. They were awesome and both jars were gone within a week. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2012/06/spicy-dilly-beans-recipe.html

Depending on your preference for heat, I'm sure you could could swap jalapenos and/or the cayennes for the red pepper flakes

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Week 9 Shares

A short update this week, we've spent a ton of time trying to catch up on the latest flush of weeds that emerged with all of the rain over the past two weeks and had started to take over almost all of the fields. Due to the large amounts of rain, more than half our cherry tomato crop has split so we are back to pints for this week, hopefully we dry out and the next picking holds up better. Crops liking all the rain: green beans and green peppers, lots of them this week! The orange tomatoes this week are Valencia, an heirloom variety that has great flavor!

Part of the green bean harvest, 80 lbs this week!

This week's shares will include:

Potatoes
Garlic
Chives
Green Beans
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Green Pepper
Jalapeno Peppers
Collard Greens

Hope everyone has an enjoyable Labor Day weekend!!

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Week 8 Shares

It's hard to believe another summer is coming to an end :( Back to school shopping was high on the list of priorities this past week as the remaining days of summer vacation has entered single digits. Best of luck to all of the students, teachers, and parents in the upcoming school year!

Lots of farm and orchard related activities this week as well:

The new batch of chicks have settled in nicely and are starting to sport their white wing and tail feathers already

We have just about wrapped up our field strawberry planting project which has added 4 additional 100' beds. It has been a dual purpose project, cleaning up and narrowing the rows in the hoop house and utilizing the excess space in the aisles of our young orchard. We installed drip irrigation and weed block prior to planting so once they fill in, they should be relatively maintenance free (hopefully)

Our apples continue to make good progress, while still a bit smaller than normal at this point due to the dry conditions most of the summer, they have started to catch up some over the past week. The Macs are usually ready just after Labor Day, we are starting to see a few drops so we'll keep a close eye, but hopefully they hang on a bit longer and continue to size up!

McIntosh

Red Delicious

Golden Delicious

Fortunately not a lot of fruit set on this tree....

This week's shares will include:

Potatoes
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumber
Zucchini or Summer Squash
Beets
Swiss Chard
Red Romaine lettuce
Arugula - a bit dirty from rain splash but we didn't want to wash and pack it wet
Basil
Garlic
Jalapeno Peppers
Blackberries
And a final picking of sweet corn, not a lot of ears and they are pretty small but perfect to cut off the cob and use in this awesome foil packet recipe - http://dfo-recipes.weebly.com/grilled-shrimp-foil-packets.html

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Week 7 Shares

Well you won't hear me asking for rain again at least for a couple of weeks. We received just shy of 10 inches from Friday through Tuesday morning! While it was very much needed, it put a bit of a wrinkle in our normal Monday and Tuesday harvest schedules. It was all hands on deck this morning to pick and bag/containerize as much as possible. Beets and arugula got pushed off to next week, however everything else made it in!

Our next batch of chicks arrived yesterday, they are acclimating well to their new home, spending most of their time eating and sleeping. They will be at the fuzzy, yellow, and cute stage for about the next two weeks, feel free to bring the kids and stop by to check them out

The field tomatoes are starting to come in this week, we've got a couple of new heirloom varieties this year: Purple Ukraine and Kellogg Breakfast. Like many heirlooms they still have green/yellow shoulders but the rest of the fruit is ripe and delicious. The Purple Ukraine are a cool red and green on the inside as well.

Purple Ukraine on top, Kellogg Breakfast and Brandywine on bottom

And of course because we were already running behind on harvesting.....the front tractor tractor tire that I knew had a cut in it but had not had a chance to replace yet, completely blew as we were going back to pick up potatoes, so there was a lot of manual hauling of harvest totes from the fields to the shed today.

This week's share contents:

Sweet corn
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Cilatro
Zucchini/Summer Squash
Jalapenos
Red Potatoes
Green Beans
Garlic
Blackberries

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Week 6 Shares

Another hot and dry week! We are starting to see some signs of stress on a few crops, but hopefully the weather forecast is accurate and we get some rain at the end of the week. We are picking what the raccoons have spared from the first planting of sweet corn, from my walk through count yesterday it looks like 3 ears for a half share and 6 for a full. The ears are smaller due to the lack of moisture, but the one I sampled still tasted great!

Our daughter Clare used some of the blackberries this past week to make a delicious batch of cupcakes with blackberry frosting. The recipe link is: http://dfo-recipes.weebly.com/lemon-cupcakes-with-blackberry-frosting.html

Our cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen up and I'm excited for everyone to try a couple of the new varieties we planted this year. One type, Sweet Pea Currant, was a bit of a mistake, I didn't realize it was a bush variety and that the tomatoes are only about 1/4" - 1/2" in size, picking is quite laborious but they taste good and are cool to throw in a salad. By far my favorite new variety is Sun Gold, it is a bright orange cherry with an amazingly sweet flavor (and it's way easier to pick than the tiny sweet peas)

This weeks shares will include:

Red Potatoes
Sweet Corn
Summer Squash / Zucchini
Cucumbers
Tomatoes
Cherry Tomatoes
Green Beans
Lettuce
Basil
Jalapenos
Blackberries

A note on storage for the basil - it does not like to be refrigerated. We've found that keeping it in a glass of water, with the cut stem end down in the water, seems to work the best.

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Week 5 Shares

Add bacon and bread to the grocery list, BLT season is beginning! We began harvesting some tomatoes from the hoop house this week, they are a combination of Big Beef and Hungarian Hearts both provide large slices perfect for a sandwich or burger!

This weeks shares will include:

Lettuce
Cucumbers
Summer Squash/Zucchini
Tomato
Green Pepper
Jalapeno Pepper
Garlic
Blackberries

The apples are progressing well at the orchard, the drier than normal weather has resulted in lower pest pressure so far, but we continue to monitor yellow sticky cards for apple maggot fly. Two rows of McIntosh are looking good as well as several rows of Red and Golden Delicious.

McIntosh

Golden Delicious

The racoon battle continues, they have shown zero interest in the cans of tuna that I have been using for bait that worked very well last year. Several dozen ears have succumbed over the last few days, in fact they seem amused to leave partially eaten ears right next to my traps! After consulting with my dad yesterday I switched to dry cat food for bait and I scored two overnight and had no crop damage, perhaps the tide is turning....

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Week 4 Shares

Our hot summer continues! Hope everyone was able to find some shade this past weekend when we had the 100+ heat index days. We spent the weekend and Monday in Washington DC and Philadelphia on college visits and doing some quick sight seeing. Lots of water breaks and stops at air conditioned buildings!

The heat has the accelerated the blackberry ripening and we started picking this morning! Wednesday shareholders will be the beneficiaries of the first picking today and Thursday/Friday shareholders will start seeing theirs next week.

We dug the first row of red potatoes yesterday, as I have mentioned before, they are one of my favorite crops to grow and harvest. Whether boiled and tossed with butter, salt, and parsley or mashed as in this recipe mashed reds, they are delicious!

The raccoons made their first visit to the sweet corn last night, they "tested" 4 ears but found it wasn't quite ripe yet. Traps are going out tonight!!

This week's shares will include:

Lettuce
Cucumbers
Zucchini/Summer Squash
Radishes
Red Potatoes
Broccoli
Jalapeno Pepper

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Week 3 Shares

This weeks shares will contain:

Leaf Lettuce
Cucumbers
Chives
Zucchini
Turnips
Collard Greens

A portion of this weeks leaf lettuce was supplied from the "farm" that I grew up on which is my dad's garden! He has been growing organically from the beginning, back before most people were even aware of the concept. His current garden site has been in use for almost 40 years and he has built up some amazing soil over that time! Frequently his production exceeds the usage level that he and my mom need, so when he told me he had 100+ heads of lettuce ready for harvest, I told him I had the perfect outlet.

We harvested garlic this week also. It takes a couple of weeks to dry and cure and should be ready for shares by the beginning of August. I was pleased with the results of our planting/weed block process that we used last fall when we put the garlic in. We laid sheets of card board on the prepared beds, used a hole saw to make planting holes in the cardboard, and then planted the garlic cloves into the holes and covered with straw. The result was almost no weeding this spring and much bigger bulbs than last season!

The white and purple bulbs in this weeks shares are turnips. They are a cool weather crop and we do both a spring and a fall planting. If we have a cool start to summer then the spring planting is fairly abundant and helps fill in while some of the other warm weather crops catch up. With our hot summer this season, the spring turnip harvest is pretty light, however if you are a big turnip fan, we should have another harvest in October.

The deer continue to be a pain, they topped both of the first two plantings of green beans and 3 of the 6 rows of snap peas. We added fence height around all the fields and a strand of barbed wire at 7 feet. Knock on wood, but no tracks in the fields since the barbed wire was added two weeks ago! Now we are working on protecting our small orchard, each summer the deer have been eating most of the new growth that the trees put, so we are installing a 7' foot fence around the entire area. Ash posts courtesy of all of the dead ash trees from my dad's place. I have also worked up ground in between the trees to add 4 rows of strawberries as well.

The heat loving crops like the blackberries and tomatoes are sizing up nicely!

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Week 2 Shares

I hope everyone had an enjoyable 4th of July week! We spent a lot of time with family and friends, including a 4 day visit to Munising with my parents and sisters and their families. We received close to 5" of rain at the farm while we were gone, which when combined with temps in the 80-90s, has resulted in the some awesome crop growth (and also weed growth).

Kale just before harvesting for this week's shares.  Leeks and onions to the right — Kale just before harvesting for this week's shares. Leeks and onions to the right

This week's shares will include:

Lettuce
Cucumber
Radish
Zucchini
Broccoli
Kale
Arugula

For those who may not be all that familiar with or know what to do with the last two items, following is a brief introduction along with some suggested recipes.

Kale - Classified as a "Superfood" due to the high levels of nutrients and anti-oxidants. There are several different types of kale: red kale, curly scotch kale, blue kale, and black kale (which is not black, and is also known as dinosaur kale, go figure). To be honest, it is not my favorite vegetable when eaten just by itself, but it is a great addition to salads, and tastes awesome when made into chips, or included in a frittata. Lots of people add it as part of a breakfast or energy shake as well since it has a high level of protein.

Arugula - This green ranks much higher on my personal ratings scale, it has an awesome sharp peppery flavor that adds a great kick to a salad or a sandwich, it is also delicious sauteed as a side dish or included with pasta. It is also referred to as salad rocket, which is pretty cool.

Arugula Recipes Kale Recipes

One more tip - While we haven't seen a lot of cabbage moth flight, I usually soak the broccoli heads in cold salt water for about 15-20 minutes before using, any small cabbage worms that may be in the heads will come out. Unless you want the additional protein, then just skip the step and move to roasting or steaming. :)

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Week 1 Shares

It has been a busy and exciting start to the week! Our first harvests have begun and chickens went from field to freezer yesterday morning. The corn, tomatoes, and peppers have been loving the hot weather, but the snap peas and radishes not so much, which has resulted in somewhat lower yields for these early items. Tuesday's cooler temperatures were a nice break and we were blessed with an unexpected afternoon rain shower that provided about 0.25" of water.

This weeks shares include: