Week 19-Slaughter at the chicken corral

Hi Everyone,

I try not to get to attached to the animals that we have here at the farm, with the exception of Molly the dog and Jinx and Rose the cats, sort of, but I did get a bit attached to our rooster "the falcon". He came as a miscue in sexing at the hatchery. We were supposed to get all females in our order, but sexing day old chicks can be a tricky business and occasionally one of the opposite sex can slip through. As that bunch of chicks grew, I noticed he looked different than the rest. Ever so often I would call Vicky out to the back barn and point him out asking her,"what the heck is that?" I decided one day that he looked like a falcon, thus the name. Well, the falcon grew up to be a beautiful Araucana rooster. He graced the pages of Baltimore Magazine and our web site and while many roosters in the past have been pretty ornery, he was a nice guy. He also treated the ladies with respect. Most of the roosters we've had in the past would chase a hen down, grab her by the neck,slam her to the ground and in a cloud of dust have his way with her, the falcon did not. As I have explained to many visitors, he seemed like the "tentative" rooster. He was fairly large and slightly slow and would usually approach a hen as if to say,"excuse me, would you mind if I climbed on your back for a moment? I promise it will only take a couple of seconds." Much of the time it would look like she would say,"all right, but don't do that grab the neck thing" and that would be it. Some of the time as he would try to mount, she would run off as if to say,"not now you big oaf, leave me alone." He was an interesting fellow and always took care of his flock, no matter how disrespectful they were to him. We lost the falcon a few days ago as part of a fox attack. A total of 22 chickens lost their lives including him as, I suspect, he was trying to save the ladies. A fox will attack a chicken house and just go on a killing spree. He won't just kill one and drag it back to the den for dinner, he goes into a killing frenzy and leaves bodies scattered all over. It was bad enough to go about picking up the hens, but when I came upon the rooster, my heart sank a bit. It sure seems quiet around the farm without the falcon's crow.

As I convey my sad chicken story, good things are happening to the produce on the farm. It's getting cooler, we're getting some rain and the Cole crops are liking it very much. We took a walk last night and noticed the broccoli was starting to get small heads and the lettuces,radishes, carrots etc. were coming along well. So, this week we start that transition.

In your crates this week:

Mild Lettuce
Spicy Lettuce
Sweet Potatoes
Tomatoes
Basil
Beans
Summer Squash
Pepper/onion/garlic basket

Vicky and Steve

Week 18-Volunteer Uprising

Hi Everyone,

Boy do these weeks fly by or what! Tina, who volunteers on the farm a couple of days a week, was very concerned when she saw me tossing unusable produce into a pile into the mowed area between our various fields. I asked her what was up and she said that she didn't like seeing things wasted. I made it clear to her that absolutely nothing is wasted on the farm. If we can't eat it or you guys can't eat it...it goes to one of two places, to the chickens or to the compost pile. It's amazing the difference in the amount of chicken feed we go through when the chickens are getting a lot of the "seconds". Apparently I got to serious for a moment because the next thing I knew I was hit in the head with a half rotten tomato. I felt THAT was very wasteful.

Speaking of chickens, a fox has made off with a number of the flock and our production numbers are down a bit. I am frantically looking for about 50 pullets to add to the flock. What is a pullet you ask? Now the educational part of the program....a pullet is a hen around 18 weeks old that is or just about to, start laying. Once a hen starts laying it also takes her about a month to get the eggs up to size. Her first eggs are quite small and slowly build to the size they will be.

In your crates this week you will find a bag of turnip greens. We think they taste pretty good. They have a little bite to them and may be nice to mix in to salads and of course you can cook them the old southern style with a piece of ham or ham hock and onion, sugar, and crushed red pepper. For measuring purposes, you have a pound of them. If you get a green gourd like thing, that is a buttercup winter squash, to be cooked like all other winter squashes. Also, we're throwing in a sizeable zucchini. Many people that have stopped by the farm have taken them to grate and freeze for winter zucchini bread. That's my story and I'm stickin to it.

Be aware that within the next couple of weeks we will be getting back into salad greens, radishes, carrots, and eventually cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, kale, etc. We sampled some arugula today, no bug holes, tender and spicy!

Week 18

Tomatoes
Buttercup and or acorn squash
Summer squash
Garlic
Basil
Beans
Turnip greens

Have a nice weekend and week!

Vicky and Steve

Week 17 a plea, a goodbye and what's that smell?

Hi Everyone,

Please all, anything you can do to bring some rain would be wonderful! It will be three weeks Monday since we had a drop of rain, so the Fall crops that we had to delay planting because it was so hot, had a little rain on the 23rd, but nothing since. This has been now officially the hottest Summer on record and many farmers in Maryland have lost up to 70% of their crops because of it. It's a business that can succeed or fail no matter what you do, so much of it is totally out of your hands.

OK enough of the sad tale of farming.

There is however another reason I'm a bit sad today though...we are saying goodbye to a couple of friends that we have grown quite accustomed to, Beta Vulgaris and Cucumis Sativis. They have been good to us this season and I hope you've enjoyed there presence, but this will be the last week for beets and cucumbers. The Fall beets never germinated, so see you in the Spring. You will be getting a cute little pumpkin that is a pie pumpkin that you can use for pie filling or use as you would any winter squash.

Vicky's been making sauce all week and I've been eating it all week. Anytime you walk anywhere near the house the aroma of this incredible sauce is wafting through the air. It's like I've been beamed over to Italy and am wandering outside Luigi's trattoria. I sneak into the kitchen to dip a buttered piece of bread into the boiling caldron and inevitably am caught by the cook yelling," Get out of there, it's not ready yet!"

In your crates Week 17:

Tomatoes
Cucumbers
Beets or Eggplant
Rosemary
Summer Squash
Pie Pumpkin
Beans
Swiss Chard

Have a great weekend and week.

Vicky and Steve

Week 16

Hi,

Well, here we are at week 16 and as I may have mentioned before, the winter squash is about a month ahead of where it usually is, due to the record setting heat this Summer. Thus you will start receiving some winter squash in your weekly crates. Although spaghetti squash is classified as a winter squash, winter squash to us is, Hubbard, butternut, buttercup, acorn, pumpkin, anything that is orange inside. We start you off this week with a Hubbard type called a Kabocha. Ours is a scarlet kabocha called sunshine. Flesh should be bright orange, smooth, sweet and great for baking, mashing and pies. The potatoes this week are small baking potatoes that can be baked, used as home fries, or the real little ones, steamed and mixed with salt, pepper, herbs and butter.

We worked on the grapes this week and they have grown incredibly this summer. All are seedless eating grapes and we hope to have a few next season. I let one concord vine set a small cluster this summer and tasted one this past Wednesday. Without saying a word I called for Vicky to come up and handed her one. I think her direct quote was,"Now that's what a grape is supposed to taste like." She apparently liked it.

This week in the crates:

Tomatoes
Potatoes
Hot Peppers
Garlic
Summer Squash Variety Pack
Beets
Parsley
Kabocha (winter squash)
Beans