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Peasants Plot Sustainable Farm |
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Peasants Plot Sustainable Farm |
Our bees got a little too crowded in their hives and decided to move out! We still have thousands, though.
07/23/10
Sometimes I eat in the country. Sometimes I eat in town.
For those that don’t know, I hold an off-farm job still. I often
find myself doing errands along the shopping strip that defines a nearby
town. In the Target a couple of days ago, I sat in their café and
opened up my amazing sandwich of beet spread and basil leaves.
If you’ve ever opened up a beet spread sandwich and tried to eat it in
a public space before, then you will relate to the difficulty and near
spectacle created by bright fuchsia and deep red blobs pouring out all
over face and hands. The fact that mung bean sprouts were
toppling out everywhere, too, didn’t make things less conspicuous. It
felt natural and necessary to apologize to my onlookers while I quickly
hid the evidence.
The above maneuver went over a little better yesterday at a different
public sitting area. I began by engaging a few nearby people in
small talk and then explained the sandwich prior to unveiling it.
Beet juicing is even more of a bloody mess but worth it.
And, of course:
Equally alarming is the situation in the toilet, which is a perfectly
normal bodily response.
-Julia
Official Introduction:
Meet Kale. Kale is one of our favorite crops for many reasons including
taste, cultivar variety, nutritional value, and hardiness in the field. This
spring we were amazed that some of our kale plants overwintered. We
gave them no special attention last fall. The first frost in November
gave them an extra sweetness. Then after a couple of really hard frosts,
the plants appeared to wither and die as the brutal cold crept in. In
the early spring new plants miraculously emerged from the old stems. They
were smaller leaves on little mini kale plants, so kind of weird but
miraculous still. Eventually we plowed the bed to replant for this
year’s vegetable crop.
We will be presenting 5 different kales to you as the season unfolds. The
green curly stuff is the kale you normally see in the grocery stores. The
same leaf with a purplish red color is “red curly.” The finger-like
leaves are on Russian kales, either white or red. And, still growing
in the field, look forward to the infamous Dinosaur Kale.
Unlike chard (beet family), kale is in the brassica family along with
cabbage and broccoli.
The leaves of this plant are sometimes described as “tougher than other
cooking greens” so many people use the leaves in soups or dishes that
require long simmering. It is true that the longer you cook kale,
the more tender it gets. Russian kale has a softer, more tender
leaf than the standard curly kale. Russian kale is especially good
to sauté. Todd and I are fans of kale cooked all ways: simmered
in a little water or in soup, steamed, sautéed, juiced, raw in salads,
and even baked. Baking kale can result in this yummy thing called Kale
Chips. The recipe is on our website along with a variation entitled
Revolutionary Kale Recipe. (You may also have heard its other name,
Crispy Kale.)
If you are sautéing kale or eating it raw, consider chopping it into
small pieces or strips. We have some customers who sneak kale puree and
juice into their kids’ meals without them even knowing.
Sesame Kale Salad
Remove kale leaves from stems.*
Chop kale into small pieces or strips.
Dressing: Whisk together 2 parts sesame oil with one part apple
cider vinegar or lemon juice. Add
salt to taste (do add salt—it helps soften the leaves).
Drizzle dressing over kale and toss to coat.
Sprinkle salad with sesame seeds
Eat immediately or after chilling.
*If you don’t like chewing on kale stems, you can always use them for a soup stock: Boil alone or with other vegetables. After boiling for a while, remove the stems. Cool the water and freeze in containers for later use.
Another Introduction:
Meet the beets. These are beets from Deer Creek, the farm that
we share our booth with at market. They are organic and grown with
care, just like vegetables from Peasants’ Plot. Jeff Franklin,
the farmer of Deer Creek, started his farm the same year we started ours
and we enjoy the camaraderie. Why are the beets so obscenely large? We
wish we had his recipe. The truth is that each farm’s soil is different
and conducive to growing certain crops. His soil is especially
sandy (he is close to the Kankakee river), so his root crops can expand
without restriction.
We have beets in the ground at The Plot, too, so do look forward to those.
OPERATION: TOMATO FREEDOM
Throughout history third parties have inserted themselves between sparring rivals, often to assist the weaker of the two. This effort on the third party is seldom made altruistically; it is made to attain resources, power, etc. We on the farm have recently been battling all kinds of forces in order to save the tomatoes, not just because we want them to have a long and enjoyable pest-and weed-free life, but because we dream of one day devouring their sweet, juicy goodness.
Right off the bat, tomato plants are pretty labor intensive compared to most crops. With all that trellising and all... My entire childhood my mother grew tomatoes. She would buy some plants, stick 'em in some cages, and pretty much call it good. But on a farm there aren't usually hundreds upon hundreds of tomato cages laying around, so you have to build something. And then affix tomatoes to said something, and then repeatedly make needed adjustments throughout the season as those babies grow bigger. So we built something, kinda. Then we laid some red plastic mulch to keep the beds weed-free, in theory, and planted seedlings into it. And then we kind of forgot about the tomatoes for a while... But hey, cut us some slack, we were focusing on plants that are either making food to be harvested right now or crops that would surely be lost without immediate attention. And gosh darnitt, before we knew it, the tomato hoophouse looked like this:
Specks of red plastic still visible, but a 4-foot solid sea of green. The aisle ways flush with weeds totally digging the Amazonian climate we've had as of late. We had no choice but to rip those gigantic jerks out by hand. Panicked at the thought that this very same thing could happen again if we dared to look away for a minute (or a month) we decided to permanently smother those weeds with a seemingly enormous amount of cardboard. We broke down and tore apart anything close to resembling a box and laid it down in the aisles. It actually looks kinda cool-
albeit unfinished. We were only able to scrounge up enough cardboard to cover 2 and a half of the 5 aisles. Alas, in times of war, some mission details are overlooked prior to engagement. And sure, we left half the aisles totally exposed, but at least we weakened the threat of total weed takeover.
Then as we were tidying up the few weeds that appeared here and there
through any and every hole in the plastic mulch I noticed some strange,
blackish, pellet-y stuff under one of the plants. I showed it to Todd,
who said he wasn't sure, he'd seen it before and every time he panics
and thinks its eggs or poop from tobacco hornworms, but he hasn't seen
any hornworms so he doesn't think we have them. And then his eyes got
real big and he said “YES WE DO! LOOK AT THIS *EXPLETIVE*!” And that
was our first hornworm siting, about a week ago. Since then we have found
more and more each day, and they are some beasts of destruction. Numerous
plants have had much of their leaves stripped off, and many an unripened
tomato has been chomped on. Look at the size of these guys-
They can do some serious damage. So they must go. So far, our plan of attack is to hunt them down following trails of poop/eggs or eaten plants, rip them off, and stomp on them.
War ain't pretty.
-meagan
Lactuca sativa
I started several trays of lettuce plants today. New Red Fire and Two Star are our tried and true, slow-to-go-to-seed lettuce varieties that have been able to handle the extreme heat of this early summer. Some of you got some small Rossimo lettuces bundled together this week; they were small because if we would have let them go any longer in the field, they would have succumbed to the heat, felt it was their time to reproduce, and shot up a seed stalk (what we call “bolting”), rendering the leaves bitter and tough. But we wanted to share these tasty little red-leaved heirlooms with you before they gave up the ghost. In the weeks to come, expect to see larger heads of the two lettuces I planted today, as well as a nice romaine called Jericho that has been specifically bred to tolerate the heat. No promises, but I've seen Jericho heads hit the six pound mark on the scale (though no lettuce is gonna get that big in the heat of the summer).
We're trying to bring you the best lettuce varieties so you can enjoy beautiful salads and thick, fresh sandwiches throughout the year. During my farm journeys through three states, I've found that not many small farmers have the guts to grow cool-weather loving lettuce during the hot months (for the aforementioned problems of smallness and bolting). But the Peasants won't let a little heat get in the way of a nice head of greens. We hope you're making lots of great meals with your lettuce.
~joe
I just got back from market. Everything sold, and mostly all by 10:30.
I am energized and glad to have a few hours left on the farm before I
have to sleep. Today Joe, Meagan and Ryan visited me in Lincoln Square
and it was so nice to feel the support of our farm crew on their well-deserved
day off. Todd also took the day "off." Not from farm work,
just from the market. He is still outside in the field right now in fact.
Once the fields dry out and he feels more caught up in the planting,
he will be able to relax. And won't look like he's melting into his shoes.
Jeff from Deer Creek is also glad to have some dry days for many reasons.
One reason being that he and Todd think less moisture in the soil will
help all the carrots reach further down into the soil, searching for
water, becoming the long elegant luscious roots we all love.
The photos were taken around sunset a few days ago and include kale beds,
onions, broccoli, garlic scapes and potatoes. Notice the flowering potato
plant.
Happy Fourth of July. See you at market!
-Julia
6/23/10
Well, we are very tired of this rain. Our plants are not complaining
except that they are more crowded with the thriving weeds. Joe,
Meagan and Ryan have been doing a lot of finger-weeding of grass in all
of the beds and things are starting to look pretty clean again. Our “paths”
between the rows of vegetable beds are planted in cover crop, soaking
up a lot of the soil moisture and saving the beds from becoming too saturated
and susceptible to fungal problems. All in all the vegetables in the
ground are doing well.
The vegetables that are still not yet IN the ground are our main concern
since rains have prevented plowing and/or planting for weeks now. Luckily,
just minutes before the last big storm, Todd had decided the soil was
just barely able to tolerate a tilling and hopped on the tractor. He
got about halfway done when those dark clouds came and drove him inside.
It is easy and hypnotizing to see storms coming when there is so much
sky, but it is often hard to guess how fast they are coming and how severe. Which
is part of the fascination, I suppose, and the danger.
Enjoy the full moon and stay away from lightning.
Well,
it's been business as usual down on the farm! We've spent the last week
or so weeding, harvesting, and a wee bit of seeding. I myself tend to
be a fan of random, one-time farm projects like building things, setting
up trellising, and even laying down straw mulch with the knowledge that
this bed is one that I shan't have to hoe. But there is something to
be said for routine. Part of which comes to mind every time we are deeply
entrenched in some said one-time project where nothing seems to be going
right and we all feel like we have no idea what we are doing. It is not
uncommon during these moments that I find myself longing to be mindlessly
weeding and getting a job done that I know how to do. Se la vie; pulling
weeds is suddenly romanticized when one is trying and failing to square,
plumb, and level a greenhouse for the first time.
But I do try to always enjoy the experience. While baking in the sun hand-weeding carrots for countless hours I remind myself how lucky I am to be outside all day, every day, all summer long. My livelihood is what most people consider a retreat, look forward to on their "down time" and savor every fleeting moment of. I am very grateful to be able to live this life, and to be sharing it right now with all the wonderful folks who traipse around these fields.
meagan
Hope you're enjoying your first week's share of veggies. More is certainly
on the way as the weather continues to heat up and we 
approach
the summer solstice.
But the weeds also love the heat and light, so we've been hitting the beds hard with hands and hoes over the past couple of weeks pulling those wild little plants out by their roots so all your tasty, chemical-free veggies can grow without too much competition. Lamb's quarters, pigweed, and purslane are the main soil trespassers at the moment; although they are tasty and nutritious in the their own right, these feral little pains in the ass want the soil nutrients that we've worked hard to naturally give to all those greens you're enjoying at the moment.
Salads are no doubt on everyone's minds and plates right now, but this week we're also focusing on getting some of our heat-loving crops going. Tomatoes are getting trellised and otherwise pampered, and you'll be happy to know that some already have little fruits forming. Summer squash and cucumbers are on the list to go in the ground soon.
Elsewhere around the farm, we seeded another succession of those spicy little French Breakfast radishes. Carrots are growing like mad, the hardneck garlic is shooting out its sinuous scapes, and the potato plants are beginning to flower—which means tubers are gonna start plumping up in short order.
Besides
all that, we're harvesting away, savoring the recent food bounty, and
relaxing a bit at night while enjoying the recent emergence of lightning
bugs.
In anticipation of this Sunday’s market, I prepared an answer for a
popular question.
“If you don’t use pesticides, how do you keep the bugs off?”
TOP TEN ANSWERS
1. Organic farms use age-old methods to feed their soil and to
provide environments for strong healthy plants that are less susceptible
to bug and disease epidemics. The natural microbial life in soil,
often compromised with conventional farming methods, plays a big role
in the complex balance between bug and plant life, so organic farmers
make a point out of keeping the soil as alive as possible. We feed
our soil with carefully monitored compost created from local and on-farm
sources.
2. Each vegetable sold at our stand really derives from two seed
purchases: the plant seed itself plus the seed planted the prior
season as green manure, the organic fertilizer of choice. Green
manure can fixate nitrogen in the soil while building the soil structure.
3. We plant crops that attract beneficial insects. These
are bugs like lacewings and parasitic wasps. They eat the eggs
of the destructive bugs, so we like them.
4. We plant crops next to other crops. Certain pairings discourage
certain bugs.
5. We plant trap crops, which are never meant for market, just
a distraction.
6. We protect crops with row covers. For example, arugula
and mustard greens are very attractive to flea beetles, so as soon as
we can in the spring we plant and immediately cover the bed with a thin
white fabric only to remove at harvest.
7. We pick bugs and/or eggs off by hand.
8. We minimally use organic-approved (OMRI-approved) products such
as diamataceous earth for really bad outbreaks of things like cabbage
loopers.
9. Organic farmers, especially on small farms, often integrate pasture
livestock into their field rotation. Chickens are great to pasture
on next year’s garden because they eat bugs in the ground and fertilize
at the same time!
10. Finally: The truth is that we sometimes simply CANNOT
keep the bugs off. Organic farmers generally know that the
natural world will sometimes win. To hedge our bets, we make sure
to maintain a diversity of crop families.
We do not use chemical fertilizer, chemical pesticides, chemical herbicide, chemical anything.
5/24/10
We ended up buying a lovely truck in Kentucky and christened her Betty
Lou. (Mary Lou didn’t work out.) Make sure to check her out at the
market—only a couple of weeks away!
Keeping all of our greens fresh: Some people say to wrap spinach and
chard in paper towels and enclose in plastic wrap. We have found
that
this is not necessary. If we have already bagged your greens, like with
the mixed greens, simply put them in your crisper drawer with the bag
slightly open. We’ve had them last for up to 10 days in our refrigerator.
In the days after harvest, the moisture from our initial washing will
leave the bag. As the week goes on and the greens loose this moisture,
sealing the bag with a tie is recommended.
Notes on Spinach and Chard: Both spinach and chard are excellent sources
of vitamins A and C, potassium, and iron. Green leafy vegetables or “cooking
greens” such as spinach and chard are also sources of calcium and magnesium.
Chard, an offshoot of the beet family, is especially good for those with
sensitivity to oxalic acid. One way to clean chard is to fill a large
bowl with cold water and 2 tablespoons of vinegar or lemon juice. Hold
the bunch by the stems and swish the leaves in the water several times.
Any grit will sink to the bottom of the bowl. Since all of our greens
have been through a wash bin at least once, you may not encounter any
“grit” at all. Putting salt in a bowl of water and soaking greens is
another tip.
A basic way to cook spinach or chard is to place washed leaves in a shallow
saucepan with only the water that is clinging to the leaves. Cook, covered,
for about 3 minutes, or until wilted.
Or steam for about 3 minutes.
The stems of Swiss chard should be allowed a longer cooking time than
the leaves.
Anyone else have any tips?
Incidentally, I sat next to a genetic engineer for Monsanto at a Denver
airport bar and grill this last weekend. We didn’t talk.
-Julia
Meet Peasant's Plot 2010 interns Joe & Meagan!
We are originally Chicagoland natives who spent a number of years in Central Wisconsin. We both graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point, and while we were in college we became more and more concerned about the food system as a whole: where our food came from, the quality and diversity of ingredients, and what exactly we were putting in our bodies. Some pamphlets for a local CSA caught our eye, and we signed up to be worker shares for the 2007 season. The worker share opportunity was our first introduction to diversified organic farming, and it was a life-changing experience for us. The next season Joe was a part-time intern on the farm, working every weekday for about 4 or 5 hours. I worked 2 jobs at the time, assisting adults with disabilities and as the director of a child care center, but tried to make it out to the farm as much as possible.
By the end of 2008 it became obvious that we wanted to further our education in organic farming, and we applied for full time internships on a CSA in Western North Carolina. In March 2009 we packed up our cars and 2 kitties and went to live in the mountains. Throughout the season we learned most of the ins and outs of farming, as well as the many components of market sales.
The initial plan had been to relocate to North Carolina permanently, but ultimately wanting to live near our friends and family won out over the beauty of Appalachia. We spent the winter working sporadically trimming trees in Connecticut and researching farming opportunities for the upcoming season. We were so excited to have found Peasant's Plot online and are even more thrilled to be here. It feels great to have our hands in the dirt again!
It is definitely our dream to one day have a farm of our own, but for the moment we are focused on just living, learning, and enjoying the adventure.
Thanks for supporting local farmers and their interns!
-Meagan
5/10/10
Mary Lou is our nickname for a truck we found in Kentucky. We
hope she is as nice in person as in the photos. Of course we all
know how photos over the interweb can be deceiving, but we really think
this might be the real thing. Mary Lou fits most of our specifications,
including the fact that she is diesel and ready for biofuel. Wish
us luck on our first date with Mary Lou this Friday!
Our CSA is full and we are optimistic about the season. It is
hard not to sound cheesy when talking about the delights of spring and
the sound of chirping birds, so I will leave the poetry to someone else. It
is enough to say that optimism abounds.
In the ground as seedlings: broccoli, lettuce, onions, kale and chard. In
the ground as seeds: spinach (just coming up), carrots, arugula, radishes,
beets. And 950 pounds of potatoes planted. In a hoophouse
(or coldframe) are tomato and pepper seedlings and more broccoli, leeks,
chard, basil, more onions. Under fluorescent lights inside are
many more seedlings, mostly tomatoes, awaiting their time in the sun.
It seems like the most difficult part of putting up the new high tunnels is over, but there are several steps left. The hoops are up on one (thanks to help from workshop participants in April) and purlins just finished. Todd had to stand on a 12-ft ladder to drill and attach each purlin.
The farm crew is Joe, Meagan, Ryan, and a group of about 15 worker shareholders
who will carpool out to us a few at a time twice a month. Joe and
Meagan live on the farm and help us out full time. They have had a huge
impact on our rate of production already. Ryan is a world-traveler
who has logically ended up in Manteno on our farm part time.
As storms move across the south, keep us prairie dwellers in your minds
and wish us free of tornados, free of hail.
Peasantly yours,
Julia
Take Action: Rescue Local and Organic
Farming in the Food Safety Bill!
The U.S. Senate will vote shortly on a sweeping overhaul of federal
food safety law (S. 510). The House food safety bill passed last
year (HR 2749) included several measures that potentially threaten small-scale
local farmers and organic producers, including a blanket application
of complicated monitoring and traceability standards -- regardless of
one's farm size — and a potential $500 fee for any farm engaged in onsite
processing (i.e., maple syrup production, sun-dried tomatoes, salad mixes,
etc.).
The vast majority of recent food safety scandals in the U.S. — E. coli
on fresh spinach, melamine in dairy products, Salmonella in peanut butter
— were all linked to industrial agribusiness practices. There's
no doubt that industrial agriculture and its international supply chain
need better oversight. But, family-scale local and organic
farms are probably the safest in the nation -- they are part of the solution,
not part of the problem -- and need to be protected!
What You Can Do
Now is your chance, as a supporter of sustainable family farming, to
help fix these problems. Senator John Tester (D-MT), a certified organic
farmer himself, is proposing an amendment to S. 510 that would exempt
small-scale farmers and food processors from the most burdensome regulations.
Please contact your Senators today and ask them to support
the Tester amendment to S. 510. Call the Capitol Switchboard
at (202) 224-3121 to find their phone number:
For the more information on the amendment, go to:
http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/04/action-alert-rescue-localorganic-farming-in-the-food-safety-bill/
Your Voice Makes a Difference. Thanks
for your support of organic, local and sustainable farmers!
We are proud to announce that we are 2010 Frontera Farmer Foundation Grant Recipients
http://www.rickbayless.com/news/view?articleID=130
Lately, there’s been a lot of great press surrounding the small organic
farm scene. In this month’s Mindful Metropolis, there are two stories
about two different farms, both started around the time we started.
Anyway, these newspaper articles have us thinking about how our own story
might translate to this format. We have had some time in the media
spotlight, since our first year’s NPR story, but we feel that the best
story about us hasn’t happened quite yet and that the NPR story may have
missed something.
The story that seems almost expected is this, paraphrased:
Just a few years ago, a young urban couple felt disgruntled by
the corporate work-a-day grind [The Man], so they
shed their city shoes for farm boots and moved to the country to live
off the land. Their new lifestyle involves waking with the crow
of a rooster and the physical rhythm and serenity of farm work.
Our story might be more like this:
Many years ago, when they were young adults, two people separately
decided they wanted to commit their lives to something basic and pure. They
met each other and became a young urban couple. One of them inherited
some land and thought the best use of this land was a little thing
called food. The couple shed their city shoes, went into sizable debt,
kept their other jobs, and stressed about the weather. Their
new lifestyle involves waking with heart palpitations and the physical
discomfort and drama of farm work.
Todd and Julia have the same human tendency as everyone to stress about their jobs, off-farm and on-farm. They sometimes don’t have time to cook. They sometimes order pizza made with highly-processed ingredients for delivery. Like many new farmers now, they didn’t grow up farming and they don’t have degrees in vegetable growing or business management. They don’t have a savings account. The real story is that they jumped right into this world of organic farming with nothing but the conviction that they were headed towards the place they were always meant to be.
We were meant to be here. And we’re not leaving.
When Todd and I hung out for the first time at a party together, he
asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said that I didn’t
have any great ambition. He said the same. In fact, this is exactly
what he said:
“I don’t have any great ambition either. I just want to be an organic
farmer.”
What could be easier?
03/07/10
The National Resources Conservation Services just approved our application
for another high tunnel! It is a cost-share program, but we will
be mostly reimbursed. Our third high tunnel! Look out!
Notes
from the farm