Seldom Seen Farm

The Hendricks County Flyer did a nice piece before we went to Italy

View the Article

Winter Store Update: The store is about 95% ready to go. We will
post before November 1 with what we have available. . . after the store
gets that other 5% necessary.

Seldom Seen Farm Photo Gallery
http://www.webbgalleries.com/SeldomSeenFarm/index.html

Angela Webb put this together yesterday. Angela bouquets flowers with
Kelly in addition to doing freelance and studio photography. It’s
pretty cool. . . is still odd to see myself in a picture harvesting. . .
but through all the pictures you get some sense of what goes on out here
(including the truck that wouldn’t start yesterday. . . friends don’t
let friends pour coca-cola on battery terminals).

Indianapolis Winter Farmers Market (New Winter Market)
Saturdays 9 - 12:30, November 1 - Dec 27th
2442 N. Central Ave, Indianapolis

http://indywinterfarmersmarket.blogspot.com/

-=- Michael Pollan’s Letter to the Next President:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Well, the veggies and lettuce machetes are put to bed for the evening.
Kelly is out in the shop grinding her latest project, and I’m trying to
wrap up the weekly loose ends (except laundry). Late last week I
purchased a biodiesel processor. . . should have built it myself, but
where is the time? This will allow us to convert waste cooking oil from
restaurants into fuel tractors and greenhouse heaters. (more details
Journey to Forever ) While we can’t run on 100% biodiesel
year round, this will take a significant chunk off our fuel expenses.
(up 66% from last year despite less usage. . . plus household fuel
usage. . . I’m sure eveyone on this list knows the story, we’re all in
the same energy boat).

Winter Markets and Marketing PDF Flyer
Another flyer is attached with our winter marketing options. At the
moment it looks like we will have much more volume of goodies than any
winter before, but who knows what is in store weather wise? (If someone
has reached a clairvoyant state concerning weather, we need have a chat)

The on-line store will be open soon after we get back from Italy, with
what we have available. As soon as the store is updated to current
inventory, I will post a newsletter for November 1 delivery.

* Side note: The Traders Point Creamery Market switches to Saturdays on
November 1. There won’t be a Friday night market on the 31st. We will
be at that market and dropping vegetables in Broad Ripple on November 1.

Summer Subscription Program PDF Flyer
Attached is a flyer with details about our subscription program.
Questions and comments are welcome. We will have applications out soon
(next week?). We will likely hit a bottleneck on time for dealing with
administrative issues between now and the last week of October. (When
Kel and I go to Italy for Terra Madre, sponsored by Slow Food Indy) My
suggestion. . . if you are adamant about joining the subscription
program, email me with the subject line - “subscription program
application”. Please include your full name and your subscription of
interest in the body of the message. The program is first come, first
serve, and there are limited subscriptions available. (All of the
pickup points have yet to be ironed out)

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Late Fall/Winter Produce
A number of people have been asking at market about what we’re doing for
the winter. The prepay system last winter worked in most cases, but
looking back it seems more like a rough draft of how it could work.
Last spring I was a speaker on a Purdue Sustainability Tour at the
Cooley’s farm near Lafayette. They do a good bit of winter growing. . .
. and don’t even have a winter farmer’s market, just an online store.
So I’m working on it. The software I’ve found is less than robust and
missing a few key features I’d like, but there are some benefits to an
online store. . . . less of me muddling orders in my inbox. . . . and it
isn’t exclusive. If you need it, you can get it.

Instead of focusing on holding greenhouse crops all winter, we’re going
to have a heavy November and December. This means we will have a good
deal more stuff available this time of year, but will be light on
products in Jan-March. (it also means we get a break in January) We
will still be at the Traders Point Creamery Market and will do a Broad
Ripple drop. We have a greater diversity of stuff planned for the
winter greenhouses: scallions, chard, spinach, head lettuce, salad mix,
arugula, kale, bok choy, and salad turnips. Some storage crops may also
be available in November/December, these will likely include: napa
cabbage, cabbage, beets, winter squash?, diakon and redmeat radishes.

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Late summer is setting in with this dry weather. Powdery mildew is on
the rise and taking over the squash and cucumbers. The leaves on the
beans have dropped or been eaten off by bean beetles, and the winter
squash are just about dried down. But the fall stuff is looking
awesome, if in need of a good watering. Late September and October
should have some excellent offerings. . . . maybe even cauliflower,
romanesco and normal. (romanesco is a cool looking vegetable, like a
fractal.
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/catalog/product.aspx?scommand=search&search=romanesco&item=2956
)

Infernal Combustion Note:
Our diesel has been down all week. . . . something about metal shavings
in the transmission and a replacement torque converter. Sounds
expensive. When I paid for it, I thought the biggest problem with it
was the smell. It came out of a pole barn next to a hog barn. I
couldn’t tell the difference between the smell of the whole place and
what the truck smelled like until we got ten miles down the road with
it. Oh well, we got it for the engine anyway.

If you’re making pesto this would be a good week to get basil. Basil
yields will begin to taper off from here on out. Ask Kelly or I for a
discount on greater than five bunches (2$/bunch). Kelly managed to put
up an enormous quantity earlier this week.

Notes on Markets:
Both Traders Point Creamery and Broad Ripple continue until the last
Friday and Saturday (respectively) in October. Traders Point continues
on Saturday Mornings from November - April

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Kelly and I are growing on three acres and 7500 square feet of
greenhouses. That’s a lot of ground for the size of our work force,
just the two of us. We limit our labor with machines. There is a
large tractor for tillage, a small one for cultivation. Then we’ve got
our market trucks and whatnot. Some events the past week or so have
gotten me thinking. . . . how many internal combustion engines are too
many. Late last winter at an Amish equipment auction I was a bit
suprised. While the Amish don’t drive cars or have electricity, they
have adapted fossil fuel engines for various purposes. The hay baler
had it’s own engine so that it could operate while being pulled by
horses. As did mowers and various other farm implements. The most
amusing one was the Honda powered washing machine.

Back on our farm I’ve been running a total on the number of household
and farm engines we have. Two tractors, walk-behind tiller, cement
mixer, chainsaw, two string trimmers, two lawn mowers, and vehicles. . .
. vehicles. You see our two working trucks at market. In addition to
that we’ve got Kelly’s car and then two full sized vans that don’t run
(we’re going to convert them to mobile chicken coops. . . maybe). Is
all of this really necessary? Do I have time to maintain everything?
On both counts the answer is probably not. While some are tools that
fit a specific need, others have just been collected over time when my
inner pack rat comes out.

I spent part of yesterday afternoon fixing a problem of my own making, a
self tapping screw lodged in a truck tire. Yesterday I was hoping to
use the manure spreader to toss compost in the new greenhouse, and
almost got there. . . . until I realized the spreader’s axle had broken
and the tire lodged against the machine’s side. Game over for the
spreader. I’ve spent gobs of time trying to get that thing working
right. Before that the lawn mower broke down when the throttle cable
snapped. But aren’t all of these problem self created? I buy junk and
spend all my time fixing it.

Evidentally I’m not the only one with this problem. The Parsons, who
run the corn and beans on the rest of the farm, were fixing an old
tractor when I dropped off tomatoes. Inside the barn was a jacked up
pickup truck with a missing engine, and earlier this year someone
mangled a disc mower on a stump (disc mowers are *very expensive*).

So, I guess I’ll keep fixing my junk. . . or eventually replace it with
something that’s at least new to me. The greenhouse still got compost,
even if it took a little longer.
So be, but I never want to manually wheel hoe three acres of
vegetables. . . I could always pull the cultivating tractor with a
horse, if worse came to worse.

Continue Reading »

Sometimes there are either too few hands or hours. Fall plantings of
broccoli, napa, kohlrabi, green onions, cabbage, and brussels sprouts
are mostly in the ground. The amount of rain we got on Monday was a
little unexpected . . . could have done with half of that.

2006 was a bad year. It just about cracked me and I swore the farm was
done if we had another extremely wet year. Well, this year has been
about as bad and maybe worse. Yet August is here and I’m not totally
burnt out yet. What changed? 2006 was the last year I hired more than
minimal part-time help. Both Kelly and I have gotten better at what we
do. In the morning we know what lies before us, and are pretty
productive in the field. I would say the two of us are worth 3-4
supervised hired hands. In a wet year cultivation becomes even more
critical, and there is no choice when the soil dries out. . . . you get
out there and weed. But there are different ways to weed, and my
concept of weeding has changed dramatically in the last two years. With
the cultivators for the tractor we can knock out ten times the area in
1/8 of the time, and it’s the sweetest gasoline I’ve ever burned.

We have also spent winters debating out marketing and production
strategies, laying out budgets and income forecasts. The winter is when
the real farming happens. When there is finally a chance to settle, fix
what’s broken, and get the full picture on weeks that past like days.
But the ultimate goal is a full-time year round income that will support
life’s necessities (health care, retirement, new house). Changes made
annually seem to accumulate over the years, and add to the farm system
as a whole. But at least there seems to be a viable future in growing,
even in a wet year.

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Hoosiers Encouraged to Participate in GOING LOCAL Week by Eating More Local Foods

Event supporters’ long term goal is “eating of Indiana locally grown and produced foods will become the norm, not a novelty at Hoosier dinner tables across the state”.

An increasing number of individuals are rejecting well traveled food items in favor of more locally grown and produced ones. They call themselves “locavores”. The term refers to individuals who choose only to eat foods that have been grown and/or raised within 100 miles of their homes. Locavores pride themselves on finding and using ingredients that are locally available and in season. While few can realistically adhere to the extreme “rules” of a locavore diet, more and more individuals are expressing a desire to eat fresh, local, and in season food. In fact, the trend toward eating local food is the number one culinary trend in the United States. The supporters of GOING LOCAL Week in Indiana hope to encourage Hoosiers to follow that trend and eat more locally grown and produced food for a number of reasons.

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I’m dirty. Not in some perverse Michael Jackson kind of way. I just
stink like fish emulsion (organic fertilizer) and onions. Quite a
combination. . . imagine cooking two gallons of onions in a gallon of
fish oil. If the wind was from the east and my neighbors caught a
whiff, i’m sure they’d think I was crazy. Oh well. . . . they already do.

Kelly and I have been sponsored by Slow Food Indy to attend Terra Madre
in October. “The purpose of the conference is to increase small-scale,
traditional, and sustainable food production. Issues include what ‘high
quality food’ means, environmental resources and planetary equilibrium,
and aspects of taste and consumer safety.(1)”

There will be a number of Slow Food benefit dinners in the coming
months. The next is Sunday August 10th. Hope to have more details next
week.

http://www.terramadre.info (1)
http://www.slowfoodusa.org
http://www.slowfoodindy.net/

Really need a shower. . . .

What’s the difference? What do you think of when someone says summer
squash? Mention Zucchini and what veggie comes to mind?

Last Friday I was busier than usual at the Creamery. A customer was
rattling off what they had selected, and I was working on the total in
my head. “half pound of salad mix, two cucumbers, beets, two summer
squash and three zucchini.” The last two items threw me for a loop, and
I had to start over. I’ve never grown zucchini before. . . at least not
the long green ones. So the customer’s mind these yellow and green
things were two different products. To me. . . it’s all summer squash.
All three come out of the same row. The seed is mixed to save time
changing seed plates and emptying the seeder. So, what’s the difference?

Summer squash may bring to mind yellow crookneck, but is a much more
broad category. In most seed catalogs zucchini will be under summer
squash. But then there are yellow zucchini too. What about the patty
pans and round zucchini and cousas?

All summer squash are Cucurbita pepo, meaning that they will cross
pollinate readily regardless of visual differences. While all squash
originated in the Americas (along with corn, potatoes, tomatoes and
peppers), different varieties and sub-types came out of Europe and the
Middle East. Zucchini is, surprise, from Italy, and the variety of cousa
we grow is from Lebanon. Both cousa and zucchini mean squash in their
original languages. Is the division between the various types getting
blurry yet? All can be used in much the same way, but for various
culinary reasons one might be preferred.

Everyone has something to do with squash. . . here are some interesting
things you may not know about.

Cousa – Use smaller squashes ~3” as stuffing squash. Slice lengthwise
and fill with whatever is on-hand. Spicy sausage with a tomato base
works well. Larger cousa don’t get very tough until the lines on them
turn dark green. Use these for grilling. After cutting in strips
lengthwise they resist being eaten by the grill grates (our problem).

Patty Pan – Unnerving house guests with oddly shaped vegetables.

Zucchini – Our yellow squash this year is actually a yellow zucchini. .
. grill ‘em or add to a pico de gallo type salsa with cucumbers.

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