Today we were at 3 markets, just as it has been the last 20 weeks or so. We only have one more week of that schedule, and then we’ll be down to 1 market/week – Saturday mornings in Auburn. The markets went well – about 50% better than last week. 

The crops are still plentiful, the offering diverse. I felt like the grocery store this morning – beets, carrots, radishes, turnips, spring mix, arugula, celery, potatoes, winter squash, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, strawberries. That’s what we had at the booth this morning.

We are finishing some projects on the farm. Carrots are weeded, thinned, and ready to…grow some more. We have a couple 200ft beds that we’re ready to harvest from now. Our friend Matt, at Pyramid Farms, is the Carrot King. While I haven’t personally seen nor tasted his, I understand he has a pretty solid reputation at the Chico Farmers’ Market in the winter – for his carrots. OF course, he’ll never tell me the variety – that’s okay. Anyway, he’s pretty particular about when he starts to harvest his carrots. We’re a little colder up here in the foothills, so I feel good about digging them now. And, they are delicious – all sweet, no hint of bitter. I can’t wait till it frosts so they are even yummier. All told, it’s a small patch – 8 beds of 200ft (4 rows/bed). they look great.

Next project – plant all the garlic. That will be a Monday/Tuesday thing, and we’ll use the transplanter with the tractor. We’re a couple weeks later than I hoped, but well within the acceptable range of Garlic planting times for our area. We’ll plant 200lbs this fall.

After that -weeding and thinning some fall greens, turnips, radishes.

And then…weeding the strawberry patch. It’s a mess of organic matter. That will take a while. We have our help for one more week, and then they’re gone. So, we’ll have to utilize them to the fullest.

It’s the 9th of November and the hardest work is behind us. All of the fields are cover cropped and we’re just waiting for it to rain now.

All the Garlic is in, as of last week. 250 lbs!!! Quite a bit. We planted a little later than optimal, but, hey, it’s in, it’s growing and there’s no stopping it now. It added up to about ½ acre and we applied 12 tons of compost to that area to ensure a good stand of Garlic. In fact, 150 lbs are for seed garlic for, who else, Peaceful Valley Farm and Garden Supply. 2 varieties: Dujansky and Capathian – both are beautiful, striped red hardnecks.

Story time…

First a huge shout out to Pilot Peak Winery for loaning us 18 MacroBins to help out with the winter squash harvest a month ago. That saved us, big time – thanks a ton you guys!

On friday, Logan and I had to harvest for the co-op and the Saturday Morning market. We thought it would just take a few hours and somehow we put it off and put it off. We were resorting garlic, taking trash to the dump, cleaning bins and delivering bins – everything except for harvesting. I guess we had started to take our employees for granted!. Finally, we started harvesting – a large list: radishes, beets, carrots, peppers, winter squash, shallots, strawberries, celery, lettuce, potatoes. We had to leave on the early side also, to get our co-op delivery in. So, we ended up not even harvesting mustard greens, turnips, arugula, nor spinach. oops. Moral – if it’s not a pressing need, don’t do it on harvest day. We learned – we’ll be on top of it this week.

This is an update to the saga with the farmers’ market police on tuesday.

We do three farmers’ markets on Saturdays. Logan does one in the town of Auburn, about 45 minutes or so from the farm. One of the board members of that market let Logan know that rumors were spreading through the market about us. they were saying that we don’t grow all the food we sell. the board member assured us that he/she believed us and that we should take the rumors as a compliment.

Compliment taken. i cordially invite any grower out to our farm right now to see all the food we are producing. We don’t work 90 hour weeks for nothing – it only seems that way when you look at our paychecks. Oh no. we have tomatoes, melons, and everything under the sun producing in grand abundance right now. It’s not necessarily pretty, but it’s all there and we grow it all.

So, apparantly we’ve made waves at our markets. We feel honored that other vendors and growers are paying such close attention to us. It really fires us up to have these rumors going around. It makes me feel like we hit another level in quality and production.

I also have one recommendation to the grower(s) that indulge in such childish behavior (like spreading these rumors):

1. get a life. this is just pathetic

2. farm more. Maybe if you produce more you can take a higher quality and quantity of product to the market and people might actually buy your stuff. Also, if you farm more, you’ll be too tired (like us) to engage in this kind of nonsense.

3. act your age. we’re all adults. if you have a question or concern, just ask us. we’ll have you out to the farm and alleviate your concerns.

The spring-planted (from seed, not bulb, mind you), August/September cured shallots got boxed today. In other words, we spent the afternoon gettin our box on.

It was a nice alternative to real work, like pulling up drip tape in field 2, or cultivating the carrots. It was upper 90s today, so real work sounded pretty tough (especially after a huge lunch of fettucini alfredo and ice cream). I usually hate not doing something in the field during the afternoons, but today was the perfect time to box up one of our precious commodities.

We planted, so I thought, a lot of shallots in April. The yield was okay, but we’re left with ~500 lbs of shallots to sell now (I hope the co-op sells lots of shallots).

Was it a good idea to try to sell this many shallots locally? We will see. We don’t want to get into commercial distribution because the prices suck for a small-acreage farm like Four Frog. We are into getting more money/lb, not less. Therefore, retail first, wholesale next, and, then (hopefully never) distribution. If we ever go into distribution commercially, we will be office farmers, and I want to save that for older age, when I don’t want to be in the field everyday, all day.

Not that distribution is inherently bad. It’s all good. We’re all doing our best to make a living.

Anywho, shallots are so yummy. Ours turned out giant-sized this fall. Yum. Restaurants might be a good outlet for us. If you’ve never eaten one, come buy a shallot from Four Frog at the farmers’ markets. If you live across country, we might mail you one!