Making a stand

To market or not to market, that is the growing question.

As you may know from my first post, the weeds took over the gardens quite quickly this year, and we weren't sure if we'd have enough produce to set up the old farm stand. Well, it's more like a farm "trailer", but it still works! It's my Dad's old hay wagon, and though it's not as charming as a big farm stand with all the quaint decorations and such, it has an odd quaintness all its own. Usually, I hook up Dad's 1952 Farmall tractor to it, which really adds to the quaint quotient, but I didn't take the time to get the old girl up and running this year.

Well, not all the pumpkins are completely orange, but they have some great shapes:)

The gourds are so cool, we always look forward to all the various shapes and colors every year. Oh, and who doesn't like some yummy squash?!

Corn stalks are always popular, and we always grow nice tall indian corn stalks, they're the best!

Everything is based on the "honor system", and it usually works pretty well, other than a couple of instances in 2007 when somebody stole a bunch of the pumpkins. The world always has a few bad apples in it - or are they the wiry orange worms within the bad apples?

So, we'll keep on working hard and trusting in the common good, and keep our little tradition alive every year if we can.

so, I guess the answer is... to market!

Until then, may your rows be straight, your vines long, and your harvest full.

-the farmer not-so-extraordinaire, Dave

Apple a day

So... we all know about the old saying "an apple a day keeps the doctor away", but what happens when you need to bend over, kneel, and reach to pick up hundreds of apples off the ground?



Can you say chiropractor?



We have four ancient Macintosh apple trees in our backyard, and though we aren't at the point in our young part-time farming careers where we can keep up with the pruning and spraying of the trees (not that we are keen on using all those chemical pesticides anyway) in order to get bountiful tie-the-branches-to-the-tree-or-they'll-break-from-the-weight-of-all-these-apples type harvests, they actually do a tremendous job of growing lots of apples most years. The problem is, though a high percentage of the apples have issues such as worms and other such pleasant things, they grow to a decent size, then follow Isaac Newton's theory and fall to the ground quicker than our schedules allow us to pick them up. This creates quite the obstacle to such things as mowing the lawn and walking without spraining an ankle. So a-pickin we will go!



Now, if we didn't plan on using any of the apples, it would be a fairly straightforward task to just toss the apples into the garden cart and haul them off to the compost pile. Ha ha! Did I tell you I'm a Duford? I come from a loooong line of descendants who believed that just about anything you come across in your life could be used for something, someday, so we don't just throw things away (If you could have seen my departed Memere's basement, you'd find all the evidence you'd ever need to qualify this statement. Behold the five wooden"spaghetti mop" handles, and the cleaned out styrofoam fast food hamburger containers - and you know how long it's been since Mceedees served burgers in those - and you may begin to understand what I mean). No, this apple "picking" is a highly evolved, and involved process, more of an apple "choosing" and must be broken into the following categories:

1. The perfect specimen. This is like an apple you'd see at the market, rich red color, few if any blemishes. It's as if, on its way falling down to the ground, a small flock of swallows swooped in and formed a net to catch it, then floated gently to the ground to place it right-side-up near the tree, all the while a choir of angel voices singing that Carpenter's song about being close to you. Quite rare for our unkempt trees, and believe me I've checked.


2. The eating apple. Still looks pretty good, some "scabs" visible, no noticeable worm holes (doesn't mean they aren't or weren't there, they just aren't noticeable, and hey, what you don't see can't hurt you, right?). Just shine her up and crunch away, carefully.


3. The pie and/or crisp apple. this has a fair amount of scabbing, bruises and potential worm holes, but enough good areas that a skilled person with a paring knife could cut around this nonsense, throw a bunch of cinnamon, sugar, butter and french vanilla ice cream at it and make something quite delectable indeed.


4. The cider apple. This is by far the most common, and depending on your tastes and apple etiquette, could describe just about any apple that hasn't gone back to seed. Rumor has it that my dear departed Dad, Donald, had an extremely wide range of apples that he would plunge into the 'ol cider press, worms and all. mmm.... worms. We still have that old press, and by golly we'll get it out some year to carry on the family tradition to make some nice wormy cider. Just for you Dad!


5. The "oh my god, get it off me!" apple. There is the apple specimen out there that doesn't quite play nice with the other apples. Yes, I speak of the much reputed "bad apple." Picture if you will, daylight is fading, you're in a hurry to get all these #%&*ing apples separated before darkness falls, and you've raised your standards on what to keep or not keep, mostly just grabbing and throwing apples into the compost cart with somewhat reckless abandon. Then it happens, an apple that seems solid turns out to be anything but, and your fingers poke into the slimy, mushy flesh, releasing that fantastic fragrance of slimy mushy apple that the Glade Company has yet to offer the world. Or, you pick up an apple and say "hey, this looks okay... what the...", as six or so wiry orange worms poke out from the bottom, reaching menacingly toward you, like Medusa's fabled head of snakes. Or perhaps, after hours of picking up apples and carefully inspecting each one, your eyes get blurry, and you think that faint buzzing noise must be in your ears, and the flurry of activity near that particular apple is just some sort of mirage brought on by smelling fermented apples all afternoon. So you reach out to grab it, your senses just a click behind your brain screaming "yellow jackets! yellow jackets! abort!", but it's too late, your hand has already entered the fray, ouch! This is the main reason my allergic wife doesn't do the apple picking-up.


6. There is no sixth grade of apple, I just couldn't get out of the auto-formatting here.

Okay, that's better. So, how did I start this whole thing anyway? Oh, yes, an apple a day... Yeeess, just an apple a day is good for you, really.

Thanks for reading, as as always, may your rows be straight, your vines long and your harvest full.

-farmer-not-so-extraordinaire, Dave

The weeds win

Okay, so this is my first blog ever; as part-time farmers get with the times a little slower than some:), so bear with me if this seems dull or boring.

What isn't slow is the progression of weeds in the garden. One day you notice a few weeds starting to reach for the sky, and the next day, you can no longer see the plants that are supposed to be in the garden! How is it that the same soil you think is non-nutritive, due to your pumpkin plants struggling to grow, allows weeds to reach epic proportions in no time at all? It is clearly a cruel joke of some kind, ha, ha, ha, frickin' highlarryous!! So, in addition to the rainy summer stunting all of our good crop growth, I give up! The gardens are what they are, and so be it. Fortunately, we don't depend on the farm stand for substantial income, but it would be nice to at least pay for the seeds!

There is a special satisfaction of being able to have a farm stand and actually sell the produce that you grow, like a contribution to the local economy and well-being of the neighborhood or something. Unlike my Dad, we don't have a fully "circular" farm eco-system, with animals providing natural fertilizer for the gardens, so we need to look at our soil quality a lot closer to get things up to snuff (whatever that means!). At least the grandkids can pick out a pumpkin for themselves!

The sweet corn has just started yielding some of its tender kernals, though there isn't an over-abundance of corn either this year. I'll need to alert my sister Cheryl, as she likes the it a bit more "poppy" than most people, and there should be some she'll like. The tomatoes have produced quite nicely, as well as the green peppers. We had to plant the cucumbers a couple of times, and didn't get too many for our labors, though they were delicious. We will have a good crop of Butternut Squash, which is good, well, for those who like squash anyway:)

So that's it for my initial blog, and I hope to have pictures to include in future blogs. Hey, I'm a rookie, okay? Until then, may your rows be straight, your vines long and your harvest full.

-Dave (graniteman and farmer-not-so-extraordinaire)