Boy, it's wet!

Well, there's good news and bad news....first the good news, all the snow is finally gone.  Now the bad news, it's rained over two inches today into a ground that just absorbed four feet of melting snow.  Yea, it's saturated.  We do have many plants started inside, that's good news!  I should be direct seeding a few things in a few days, don't see it happening, that's the bad news.  So we work inside.  Worked on a new chicken coop in the new barn so I can split up the flock.  The purpose is to give them more ground to range on.  Built a small area in the old barn for the broilers.  They'll be coming April 7. 

Noticed some erosion happening in one of the fields today with all the rain.  Guess what, it was the one field I didn't get a cover crop on last fall.  That won't happen again.

I have a friend who always plants his potatoes on St. Patrick's Day.  I've always waited a little longer to get them in the ground, but I was thinking maybe this year I would try a few that early.  I'm  not sure that's going to be possible.  A good sign that it's wet and muddy is when you're walking along and the next thing you know, you took a step, but your boot stayed in the mud behind you.  I'm glad no one was taking any video of that dance.

Rousedale Farm in Baltimore Magazine!

We have an incredible article in the March issue of Baltimore Magazine. You can read it in the magazine, complete with a few photos or check it out on line, minus the photos, at baltimoremagazine.net. A few months ago writer Jane Marion spent an afternoon with us talking a little about my past radio life, but mostly about the farm. You never know what to expect when someone shows up at your front door to write about you, but Jane is an incredible person and we enjoyed having her and loved the article. We had a great time with Cory Donovan too, who came a few days after Jane to take some photos. (hundreds of photos) I'm sure Cory's highlight was holding a frame full of bees I had pulled out of the hive so he could feel the weight of it filled with honey. It's funny, we never heard from him again.

Through that article we've received many emails asking about our CSA among other things. It really helped in getting the word out about what's going on here.

Thank you Jane!

Rousedale Farm eggs now at Savory Deli!

Starting today you can purchase our eggs at Savory Deli in Fallston at Upper Crossraods on the corner of Baldwin Mill Road and 152 (Fallston Rd.) The eggs at Savory will be our brown eggs. Vicky and I discussed whether or not to include some white and green/turquoise eggs with them, like we do with our delivery customers. I felt people may intially be surprised and put off a bit when they opened up their dozen and had a turquoise egg staring them in the face. I mean, the egg itself is no different than any other egg, except the shell color, but if you've never seen one before..well... She thought it would be different and unique, I thought it would be scary. You're not going to beleive this, but I won! I still am in a bit of shock. I think that's the first discussion we've had that I actually got my way. What I'm expecting to happen is no one will by any eggs until we put a turquoise one in each dozen.

Thanks to Scott and the gang at Savory.

I think I smelled Spring!

Oh man, Vicky and I went for a walk today and as we were walking up the road I told her I thought I smelled Spring.  What a wonderful aroma that is.  An earthy fragrance, that if it could be duplicated, could make an incredible room freshener.  It seems so good to have the weather slowly getting warmer.  I don't remember a winter like this ever and we STILL have snow on the ground in a lot of the garden areas.  I was hoping to get a few early veggies in the ground soon under our row covers, but I may have to shovel snow to get them in!  Up on the hill, where the blueberries are it's much better, drier and most of the snow is gone from the south facing slope.  The strawberries?  Still covered with snow.  Happy to say that all three bee hives survived the winter.  Now is a very important time to feed them some sugar water just to make sure they have enough to eat as the queen is starting to lay eggs and all the new brood will be hatching soon.  The bees really need to be looked after this time of year. A lot of times you think you got them through the winter, but now is the time they will start eating the honey reserves in the hive more then during the colder months as they begin to come to life and start getting ready for Spring and if they eat up all the reserve and you aren't feeding them anything and there is certainly nothing blooming right now for them..it's bye bye bees.

We have such a great variety of veggies we're planting this year, we can't wait.  Many heirloom varieties of vegetables will be grown.  We have become a country that is so force-fed by the industrial food complex, that we have almost forgotten what a real tomato or carrot tastes like.  If you haven't experienced trying some of the multitude of heirloom or different varieties, instead of the one or two you find in the supermarket, you're in for a treat when you do!

We have ordered our first batch of meat chickens.  We'll start with 100 on April 7.  They should be ready for the table by the first or second week of June.  When they're done we'll start another 100. Hopefully we'll have plenty for sale from June through the end of the year.

Vicky's got many of our early vegetables already growing inside.  I'm excited to get stuff in the ground!!

Steve

Winter Wonderland/Oily Food

26 inches of snow here at the farm! Twenty six!! So that's two incredible snow falls this Winter so far. Baltimore, which were near, is close or may have surpassed the record snowfall for a winter season. While we've been snowed in, I've started to read Barbara Kingsolver's book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." I wanted to share her insert in the book entitled "oily food". She writes, "Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We're consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen-about 17 percent of our nation's energy use-for agriculture, a close second to vehicular use. Tractors, combines, harvesters, irrigation, sprayers, tillers, balers, and other equipment all use petroleum. Even bigger gas guzzlers on the farm are not the machines, but the so-called inputs. Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides use oil and natural gas as their starting materials, and in their manufacturing. More than a quarter of all farming energy goes into synthetic fertilizers. But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of the total oil used for our food. The lion's share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate. Each food item in a typical U.S. meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles! If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast."

Another great book I've read this winter is "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

Seeds and plants are ordered for this season, more on what's going in the ground at Rousedale in the next blog.

Message to all....find a farmer!

Steve

Here's what's happening on the farm!

Hi everybody,

This winter has been pretty rough and it's just begun! Thanks to neighbor Ken for plowing us out when we got 20 inches of snow a couple of weeks ago. I think we would have been snowed in for a week. The average snowfall for the entire month of December here is 1.7 inches and we got 20 inches in a day! It was so wet in the fall and now so snowy it's been tough to clean up some of the garden areas from the fall harvests. I finally took Hank the tractor and the big tiller out a couple of days ago and even though the top inch or so of the ground was frozen, I was able to till under much of the remnants of the fall crops like broccoli, cauliflower, lettuces, some herbs etc. and get them into the soil to start adding more organic matter. It just looks better all cleaned up too.

A lot of the newer chickens are beginning to lay their eggs right on schedule. It usually takes about 5 months for them to start laying. The first couple of weeks that they lay, the eggs are much smaller then what they will be once they get rollin'. Just a reminder, I deliver eggs in the Fallston area every other Thursday and once a month to many other areas. If you're interested just send me an email and we'll get you on the list for delicious fresh, free range eggs from happy chickens. Also if you're interested in having a small flock of your own, I will be happy to part with a few of the newer girls that are just starting to lay. These would be perfect for you to start with.

We're already starting to cruise through seed catalogs and are starting to plan for this coming year. I planted some strawberries this past fall in hopes we could have some fresh strawberries this spring for our CSA customers and for us too, without having to wait a year before we could enjoy them. They seem to have gotten a good foothold, we'll see how they winter over. Of course the garlic is in the ground and should be ready in June or so. This year we planted a type of garlic called "music". It's very tasty and the name is the best!

We have heated with wood for almost 30 years. Here at Rousedale for 17 years. Here we have two woodstove inserts in fireplaces that have done the job. This fall I purchased an outdoor wood furnace. This is not one of the hot water boiler types, but rather, a forced air system that I hooked right into the duct work of the house. It works pretty well and it keeps the dust and mess out of the house. When it's been really cold and windy, we still start the wood stove in the family room just make it a little more cozy. I do have to say, though, that the furnace is doing a pretty surprising job.

We still have a few spots still available for this year's CSA and plenty of eggs, drop us an email if you need any information beyond what's on the site.

Happy New Year!

Steve

Cream of Cauliflower Soup

We had a luncheon for our CSA members at the farm at the end of the 2009 season and I remembered a soup recipe that I hadn’t made in years. Cream of Cauliflower soup. It’s really easy, really tasty and comes off as a very time consuming, forty ingredient, masterpiece. It’s a great way to use up some cauliflower too!

Prep time should take about 10 minutes.

Your ingredients are:

1 Large cauliflower
3 T butter
1 medium onion, chopped
3 T flour
3 cups milk
1 cup sour cream or plain yogurt
3 vegetable bouillon cubes, crushed (a few times I couldn’t find vegetable bouillon cubes and used chicken bouillon with quarter cup of the cauliflower water in the roux)
Chopped parsley or chives and grated Parmesan cheese to garnish.

Trim cauliflower and steam until very tender. While cauliflower is steaming, sauté onion in the butter until softened. Add flour to butter and onion and cook for a few minutes, stirring to blend flour and butter. Slowly add 3 cups of milk, the sour cream or yogurt, and stir or whisk until thickened. Drain cauliflower and blend in a food processor until smooth. (this is where you can use some of the cauliflower steaming water as well). Process the milk mixture for a smoother texture. Add pureed cauliflower to the thickened milk mixture and stir well. Heat through. Garnish is the key to a wonderful finish on this soup. Salt and pepper to taste. Don’t over salt as the cheese adds a bit of salty taste.