Our First eggs, spring 2010
Finally
So, it’s been a while (to say the very least), but we’ve been mighty busy……..this is what we’ve been up to. After 3 months of inspections and negotiating, we had to walk away from the property we had under contract back in October. We were really disappointed & felt that we’d wasted a lot of time (I take that back, not felt, we knew). We did not, however, fall over the cliff of despair. We had been watching a property here in Charlotte for a while, but the price had been too high – until last November when it fell into our range & we bought it on January 8th. Those of you who follow us on Face book know what we spent the next two months doing – painting, painting, painting. A very wet cold spring delayed our planting, causing us to debut at market much later in the season than usual. We love it on our little farm – the house itself sits on 1.5 acres & we also own an adjacent lot which is 1.2 acres – we bought 10 chickens, picked them up two days after we moved in – not my brightest planning move – but it worked out just fine. They live in a former dog kennel, with a nice indoor area for nesting boxes (we started with three, but they stubbornly will only lay in one) and a nice outdoor area for roosting, strutting around and clucking. They have supervised outdoor time everyday, which means they get to peck around on pasture & take dust baths while I stand guard & make sure they don’t wander into the street & get run over.
Scorching
I’m picking green beans this morning – and it doesn’t take me long to remember why we grow yellow beans. Green beans are hard to find, the stems, stalks and beans all look alike. The trouble is, reading seed catalogues in January is rather like reading restaurant menus when you’re hungry. Everything looks good. I don’t know why, but during those cold days, with the anticipation of spring honing a boundless appetite for summer crops, a wave of amnesia crashes over me & I am unable to recall any hardships related to growing or harvesting any crop. A bee works along side me today, welcome company as I write this newsletter in my head. I pull weeds as I harvest – an astonishing diversity – sicklepod, which the University of Tennessee extension site calls “one of the world’s worst weeds”, jimsonweed, lamb’s quarters, pigweed, morning glory and horse nettle. The multi tasking makes for slow going, not ideal since it’s so hot, the bottom of my sunglasses keep filling up with sweat. Harvesting takes me back – between 8th grade and college I spent every summer harvesting tomatoes. With logic I can only wonder at, we’d start picking in the late afternoon, about 5pm, the hottest part of the day, and finish at dark. Afterwards, a welcome reward, diet A&W root beer bought at the little general store on the way home.
July Recipe of The Month
I’m not going to give you an exact recipe – just an idea that I nicked, from I think Food & Wine.
Make a nice herb vinaigrette (olive oil, whatever vinegar blows your skirt up, herbs -I use basil & chives - & a little mustard), put it all in a jar with a lid & shake it up. Cut up big fat slices of tomato, top with crumbled blue cheese & bacon (that you’ve laid out on a baking sheet lined with foil & cooked in the oven at 350 until good n’ crispy – not cooked in a skillet in a hot kitchen with grease splattering all over your nice clean stove), drizzle with the dressing & cracked pepper (the bacon & cheese will add plenty of salt), enjoy.
What’s New
An appreciation for just exactly how much we have to learn. It always seems that whatever crop we’ve grown the least of sells the most and successive planting is just something I’ve yet to master properly. We didn’t anticipate (and I wonder could we have?) the enormous number of harmful insects that fell, ravenous, on almost every crop – we lost all our cucumbers to wilt caused by cucumber beetles, all our cantaloupe too. Flea beetles ravaged our early crops of tatsoi and mizuna and squash vine borer made short work of our summer squash. We moved from the cool spring to summer at an alarming pace, with temperatures at Easter already in the 90’s, June felt like July and now July is nothing short of Dantesque.
That said, we hope you’ll visit the new Atherton Market on South Boulevard. We’re there on Tuesdays from 11:30am until about 2pm. There are lots of great vendors there and the market runs until 6:30pm.
Every time I turn around, it seems a locally owned restaurant has gone out of business. If you can, please steer clear of chains & patronize locally owned places, and if possible, those that buy local products. Remember, it’s impossible for us to sell to restaurants unless you buy from them – this month for instance - visit Roosters for their 2 napkin BLT made with Fisher Farms yummy tomatoes!
Thanks so much for coming out to market, buying from us and other local vendors, we sure love to see you each & every time.
Kim & Rohan & PorkChop
Cut flowers, summer 2010
