APRIL FOOLS !
The Farmer and The Cook in Meiners Oaks is being sold to TRADER JOE’s, not to Whole Foods Markets, as previously reported.
But really now, the entire hoax was nothing more than a deeply layered commentary on marketing, authenticity, greed, counterfeit sensibilities and the overuse of certain words that must not be sustained much longer in our common lexicon and should be banned like a cellphone in an acoustically challenged café. Let us be clear: APRIL FOOLS!
So, take out your earphones. We are not selling The Farmer and The Cook to anyone, unless its our employees someday. If they want it. But they probably know better. The Farmer and The Cook is not for sale! We are not sell outs! It should be amply obvious that we are not doing this for the money. At one time we actually thought that we could make some money doing this, but that misapprehension was scuttled long ago. But that does not mean we would consider selling your little store to an awesomely popular chain of corporate stores headquartered in Germany or Texas. Thanks, by the way for bringing us all your used TRADER JOE’s bags to reuse at The Farmer and The Cook. We love being able to help the environment.
WE APOLOGIZE if our little ruse provoked distress, but we meant most of it in the spirit of good clean fun. SORRY! We thought that surely our modest little joke, which appeared in the weekly newsletter of the MANO FARM CSA, should have been recognized immediately as a FARCE, from the very first sentence, fully tongue-in-cheek and rife with absurd references. But the idea that The Farmer and The Cook could be sold blinded all to the game, and many found it impossible to continue reading through their tears. Are things so rotten that even the one small symbol of integrity in this crummy world can be ripped from us? If you were upset, your response to our joke is a nice compliment. First the Ojai Frostie and then the old barely adequate F and C…….
But, Betty Charisma? Well, we have meant a number of people who have adopted curious names to suit themselves better, and the hypothetical Betty is in public relations, after all. Better than being Maude Chucklebunny, which was her former name. Organic food is bad? We are going to Cebu? Can you pronounce it as Say-Boo?
Though we intended the MANO FARM NEWSLETTER as nothing more than an April tickle, we found that it was a handy, even inevitable way to again carve with sharpened word processor at the impossibly paradoxical circumstances we all must weather. What is really no joke is all the hypocrisy, self-promotion, fraud and lip-service we all find it so easy to ignore. When we promote local consumption we back that up with an immense proportion of all the food consumed in and sold at The Farmer and The Cook either grown by us or someone we personally know.
When we say its all-organic, we really mean it. How can we believe in and work towards an organic life while selling the status quo?
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."
F o r a g e r
Mano Farm CSA Newsletter, Meiners Oaks, California,
Thanks to everyone for responding to our call to pick up your shares promptly so that the walk-in doesn’t get too crazy. The cooks get grumped-out when they can not find the mozzarella. Remember to remind the cashiers about your bunch of flowers. We have had flowers for awhile…and will have them off and on until Thanksgiving. We have been supplementing the shares with things that come our way, from Tutti Frutti ( Chris Cadwell and family in Buellton) and from Camille Sears’ fruit orchard a few blocks from the Farmer and the Cook on Lomita. This week we have some red potatoes from T and D Willey Farm in Madera. I have known Tom and Denesse Willey for over twenty years now. They are exceptional people, great farmers, exemplary citizens in ever way. I buy the Willey’s produce from Nojoqui Distributor in Buellton. We love Nojoqui. They bring all the regional produce to us twice a week and when we have surplus we sell it to them. Our potatoes are done but these Willey Choice Class potatoes are just as good as USDA No. 1 and inexpensive compared to the new crop of No. 1s coming in now. Anything we obtain for distribution is organic, just like the store, por su puesto. Last week John and I hauled 160 thirty foot lengths of pipe up from Hueneme for the new farm at Gozo. Thanks to Larry Herrold for trucking it up to Ojai for us. By the way, Larry has a certain way with a backhoe if you ever need artistic dirt work provided. And he is a liberal backhoe operator! Listens to Terry Gross on the radio while he digs rocks! However the big THANK YOU goes to Driscoll Berry Co, for loaning us that $12,000 dollars worth of pipe for the farm. We had no idea what a budget-buster this pipe business would be. The attachments required to fit the whole thing together will cost another $4K, so you can see that our original seven thousand dollar estimate was a tad off. But we are close. And we are ready to put that nutsedge at the Ainsworth’s in the rearview mirror. It is a pretty distressing challenge. We have learned that the sunflowers are a good weed suppressant, so we are planting more of them. The beets also seem to defend themselves well. But beans, cucumbers and squash and just about everything else will not compete without a lot of hand work. I believe we will have water flowing at Gozo by the middle of next week. It has been a hay-stack needle to get this rigged up but suddenly now we have confidence. We will have a bit of a hiccup while one farm starts and the other plays out, but we have replanted cucumbers, tomatoes, basil and squash at Jake and Kim’s and will be harvesting first crops from Gozo in September. As you know we don’t use manure or manure-based compost at the farm for many reasons, including the contamination issue with regard to veterinary drugs in the manure. We were just guessing that there might be a problem there. Now research recently has borne out our assumption, indicating that some antibiotics from manure do persist in the soil and have been found at significantly measurable levels in crops like corn and lettuce. We should consider that driving to Los Angeles probably exposes one to worse pollutants than random small doses of antibiotics, however if your diet is dependant on a thirty pound box of produce from one farm every week, week after week, then perhaps you would be more inclined to be observant of the production practices at said farm. Thank you for your support.
F o r a g e r
Mano Farm CSA Newsletter, Meiners Oaks, California,
Forragers,
Pouring out of backyards and over fences, roaring down our sleepy Motown streets like the delinquently absent rain we wish was falling, knocking down walls and breaking out the windows of a Chevy Truck with a sprinkler head, lighter, gopher bomb, screwdriver, tractor pin, 6 non working pens, half a muffin, two copies of LA Yoga, irrigation plugs, a dead CD and other crap on the dashboard, threatening to rip the limbs off inbred stone fruit and citrus or apple alike; is an offering of spring that I cannot recall. In the evening every piece of ripe delicious fruit calls out to us and asks to be eaten.
In the morning on the way past the Carrot forrest and other buried gold, the Sunflowers greet us and stand at attention already in their invisible rotation, warty ribbed cucumbers poke their heads from their fuzzy pup tents like the first day of a jamboree and ask about some hot lunch, while, all the while, Zuccinni’s horn section plays an acid jazz riff that would resurrect hip hop and reunite Pangea.
This week we challenge you to Forage for your own food. Find a tree or berry bush somewhere in your neighbor hood and eat what you pick. This is a great way to introduce your children to new food and hip them to how it grows. Remember that: Nothing in this farm called Earth is forbidden. So eat up!
F o r a g e r
Mano Farm CSA Newsletter, Meiners Oaks, California,
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Ca$h is our con$tant, our monthly place holder for what we have and you want, but it can get in the way of our greater transaction, a partnership if you like, that should reach beyond my tractor payment and the contents of the weekly share. Nonetheless, and quite predictably, if a share seems suddenly on the paltry side you’d like to know why. We have been advising everyone about diminished availability as we brought the property known as Gozo at Help of Ojai’s West Campus facility in Mira Monte up to speed. You no doubt remember the drama of the pipes. Sometime in August we came to the conclusion that we had to work on one place or the other but not both if we were going to make Gozo function. To a degree, Mano suffered as a result, but not so that the shares were significantly diminished. We still planted a couple more lines of cukes and squash and basil when we could. For example, last week held approximately 22 dollars in product based on Farmer and Cook Prices, around 32 dollars in Whole Foods prices, except what we have can not be found at Whole Paycheck. We know we are guilty of creating expectations that are now hard to meet. We were putting so much product in our boxes a few months ago that an eyepopping number of people decided to split their shares. Too much product in the share. One week we estimated that the share was worth over 40 bucks, Many weekly shares were near that in value. The literature warns of this. That is, the literature that you will find in staggering volume on the internet. Another foundation piece of Community Supported Agriculture is that the community rides the roller coaster of supply shortages and surplus with the farmer. We felt like we did our part by being generous. However a number of CSA members have voiced their concern about the value of the share. It is down, to be sure. This week’s share will also be lighter than normal. The apples are worth 3 dollars, the Buetinut squash 3 dollars, the flowers five dollars, the basil four dollars, the cukes two to three dollars, the lettuce one fifty to two, the herbs another three, the yellow squash two dollars, the tomatoes around four dollars the chard around a buck fifty, the collards and another buck fifty, the kale another buck, the oranges another two to three bucks.
Well that’s nearly thirty dollars actually, but who’s counting? Oops. Forgot the eggplant we got from BD. We have delivered on our promise every week. We have given you bigger bunches and loaded up the broccoli. And we have found fruit and hard squash and herbs which we did not produce and have purchased them using the funds from the CSA members in order to give you a good value. We bought potatoes from the Willey’s because they needed to dump them and we felt generous. Please help us to remain so. As we have explained in the past, CSA’s are designed to do many things, and educate consumers is one of them. A decrease in weekly value should be compared to overall yearly supply. We have now planted carrots, kale, chard, gold and red beets, collards, cilantro, parsley, broccoli , cauliflower, cabbage, lettuces, spinach, Asian greens, peas, endive, radicchio and dill. The arugula should be ready next week.
Please remember to pay in full at the first of the month, and to send the checks made out to Steve Sprinkel to me at 1651 Rice Road, Ojai 93023 or leave the check in the little drop box by the walk in
F O R A G E R
Mano and Rio Gozo Farms CSA Newsletter
the first gozo plant
we side with the seeds we side with the seeds we side with the seeds we side with the seeds
Take a load off Annie because the wait is over. Rio Gozo is planted and watered. The new farm is nearly three times the size of Mano however we only planted a third. The last couple of weeks have been a series of trial and error as we attempt to make everything work properly.
Our well pumps 800 gallons of water a minute. It is not an on demand system. In other words, it either pumps 800 gallons or nothing at all. The pump is across the freeway, behind two locked barbed fences about 200 feet from the road. When the pump is turned on we have ten minutes to get across the freeway and into the fields. Not all of the sprinklers function properly and often the pipes malfunction and separate. If a sprinkler head pops off 40 gallons flow out like a geyser. If we catch it in time we can replace the sprinkler head without flooding the surrounding rows and turning off the pump however if a pipe separates hundreds of gallons flow out every minute and we must shut down the pump or the flooding could potentially cause major damage. I hope that this gives you some idea of the thought and labor that goes into growing our food. These issues are not problems but rather the challenges that make farming both frustrating and exciting.
In the coming weeks we will continue to provide you with weekly insights into this farm and all our efforts.
Contents: Watermelon, Squash, Kale, Collards, Chard, Cherry tomatoes, basil, Heirloom tomatoes, Cucumbers, Red Beets, Gold Beets and apples from Creek Road.
PLEASE SEE ATTACHED FLYER ABOUT OUR NEW PAYMENT SYSTEM.
Mano y Mano
F o r a g e r
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE GOZO MANO FARM COMMUNITY
WESTERN OJAI VALLEY DIVISION
kohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohlrabikohl
And Kohld-rabi it is! We are hitting the mid to high twenties on the fabled plains of Gozo these mornings. The beautiful ice keeps us from picking until nigh on nine o’clock in the morning, so on CSA pick-up days please consider coming a bit later in the day to accommodate the weather-induced schedule.
The purple intergalactic vegetable in the harvest today is indeed a kohlrabi, a central European favorite ubiquitously encountered in Vienna, Salzburg and Prague. The sphere is like a sweet heart of cabbage and the leaves like kale. Please use all. More of them will be arriving soon.
RECIPE: A good combo dish using the kohlrabi is to sauté some onion or leek with some minced garlic added after a time, then slide in some finely cut turnips and kohlrabi , without much stem.. You do not need to peel the kohlrabi when it is young and tender. Later with your old-rabi, peeling is more likely. Then slip in all the finely chopped turnip and kohlrabi leaves, maybe adding in the collards if you have plenty of folks to share this with. Squeeze on a bit more garlic just because you should and splash the namashoyu for the sake of geography. And merely let the leaves surrender to the heat, no need to overly cook ‘em.
I have eaten 94.2% of all kohlrabi in the raw state. This may not indicate anything other than laziness or desperation, with no intention of salaciousness, but it should give you an idea of the flexibility inherent to producing and eating the cruciferans: your cabbage and turnip, broccoli and cauli, your arugula, bok choys and collards. And they pack a mighty dose of health to go with that crunchy sweetness. It’s the cold that brings the sugars out in the broccoli this time of year, and barring a real snapper we hope to cut the brok at peak proficiency.
If its greens you want we aim to deliver. The spinach is nutty-good, the salad mix a delight. And the bokjoy is by far our happiest vegetable. It’s a good mix for the season. Keep a pot of rice going and get to narfing those leafs. Sometimes they can make all the difference in the world. And such simplicities are difficult to locate, harder still to replicate. Thanks for bringing back those boxes and paying on time. We are grateful to all. Let’s get some rain.
F o r ag e r
The Newsletter of the Gozo-Mano Farm Tribe CSA,
Charismaville, California, 93023
protocolsprotocolsprotocolsprotocols protocols protocols protocols protocols protocols protocols protocols protocols protocols protocols
A frequent concern that many CSA members have is What To Do With All The Produce. We have solved our own problems by giving the vegetables to you, he-heh, but we have enough experience with the personal avalanche to help you dig your way out. Don’t panic. Don’t roll yourself into a tight ball the minute the CSA box lands in your kitchen. That will not help. Instead, address the box, and as you begin to take stock of the contents, mindfully retrieve files from that internal folder called RECIPES, and allow each bunch of green stuff to tell you its own story of how it would like to please you and those who will soon consume it. This exercise and previous issues of the redoubtable FORAGER newsletter ( of the Gozo-Mano Farm Tribe) will serve to remind you of exciting things you were able to make before-and perhaps experiments that did not turn out so well. Someone was just telling us about a garlic-kale gazpacho they made one winter day not too long ago that they decided, in the end, was not a terribly wise concoction to brew up. It may have saved them from getting that bad cold that is going around though. Wash your hands, eat well, drink water, use garlic in your kitchen and sleep. Keep a tincture of Echinacea on hand and use it liberally when you feel that unwanted guest knocking on your door and you may block its entry.
Now to the Protocol. Lock onto your box. Get rid of the carrot tops right away, wash the carrots and have a snack. Put on a pot of water for rice, quinoa or barley. Fridge the rest of the carrots in the same plastic bag you keep the kale or chard in and remember where you put them. Pour into the pot the measure of grain for your dinner. Simmer and Watch. Identify a green or even the broccoli you would like to have as a special salad ingredient on top of raw spinach or the salad mix for dinner or lunch within the next few days. Choose the kale, collards or chard or the broccoli. Wash the whole bunch well, chop it and steam it for two or three minutes. Steamed greens should always look greener after they are cooked than how they started. Gray collards that have been in a pot simmering with hamhocks for three hours may be prized in Georgia but they are not the bomb here in Cali. Now you have reduced the size of that collard bunch by 80%. Put the cooling greens into a covered glass storage container or Tupperware ™ and fridge them. ID at the same time what you will eat that evening or if too late, for the next day: like the chard. Steam the chard and eat with olive oil and pressed garlic, salt and pepper. Plate with the grains you just steamed. Eat all with broiled organic tofu or chicken. We might have suggested fish, but other than catfish, trout and maybe salmon, eating fish, at least regularly, may soon become passé. You know, its that fisheries thing. While you are still fixing dinner, wash the beets and set them to boil or steam-but only until you can easily put a fork into them. When done, dump most, less the silty dregs, of the steam/boil water into a mug to consume like tea when it cools. This beverage will provide power to your body and inspiration to your mind. Drink these liquors ritually. A lot of the good stuff is in there. You should by now be having more fun than watching the CNN’s Big Map of Super Duper Tuesday. Containerize the beets and fridge them. These you can slice and use on top of this marvelous salad you will make, just like you can with the steamed greens. Did the word mayo just pop on your screen? The steamed greens or broccoli can also be spread into a frittata or quiche. Its going to be a good time to bring back the frittata, mark my words. And now to finish with a modest sermon. One reason we participate in CSA is because we like the vegetable and we know it is good for us to eat them. The stuff in your box is without a doubt the best source of vegetative nutrition available to anyone, even better than the farmers market or a fresh bunch at the Farmer and the Cook because the handling has been exquisite. You get a highly perishable unit into your kitchen in supremely good condition, without exposure to all manner of industrial foo-faw including vehicle exhaust or other consumer-vectors. Handle these goods like the champions you are. Eat every last shred and eat ‘em quick. The share is only what the Department of Agriculture considers the equivalent of your daily requirement, and after all, the USDA is owned by the Monsanto Corporation, so what do they know.
F o r a g e r
Gozo-Mano Farm CSA Newsletter, Meiners Oaks, California,
IF you happen to drive by one of our farms and you observe someone spraying crops at the end of the day be not overly concerned. Its only kelp. Maybe a little Neem. A dose of bacillus Thuringiensis, perhaps, or some sort of approved soap. We even make our own potions when the moon is just so, out of weeds and flax and molasses. Even organic farmers are allowed to spray , but its what’s in the tank that matters. We got issues out there once in awhile. Take the aphids. They have begun to inhabit the chard, kale and collards. We have observed their populations grow over the past few weeks and wondered if some beneficial insect ally or Act of Gozo would rescue the poor things. I counted the ladybug larvae on the chard today and realized that there was no way for them to gain the upper hand on the aphid. The rain helped to wash the buglets off, but face it, its Spring and stuff has got to live. The birds are doing their thing, the myriad winged creatures are all abuzz, but today we recognized that we had reached the tipping point. Indeed it is time for change.
There are many products that have been approved for use on organic farms that we do not use. These materials are in solution with what are known as inert ingredients. These inerts as they are called are secret synergists and nefarious chemicals that pesticide companies use as carriers to fill up the bottle of stuff. They are considered proprietary so the manufacturers have been given a bogus exemption by the USDA and the EPA. We asked them to divulge the ingredients long ago, but it was so hush-hush only the Chinese know. The active ingredient might be a mere tincture obtained from a humble chrysanthemum, providing pyrethrum, for example, which is only 2.5% of the total mystery. We solve this puzzle by not using these materials. We blow the aphids off with water or soak them in kelp and molasses. You see, the target critter breathes through its pores, so if you gum up their shell with sticky stuff they are nearly just as doomed as they would be if Lannate ( its bad) was applied. We also keep planting crops once older plantings are reaching that point where they are tired out and susceptible to infestations. We also scout on hands and knees to really get in touch with that modest universe at our feet. There we observed today aphids that had been parasitized by a wee wasp that flies around laying her eggs on the aphids heads. The baby wasp pupates on into the host, lunching away in the noonday sun. Here we decide to only spray kelp but no soap because we want to allow the wasps to proliferate. Patience in the past has paid well. In the past I have much enjoyed watching the big red wasps going from lettuce to lettuce looking for loopers, occasionally hauling off the wriggling prey to a nest of sleeping young, who, when they awake, will find lunch ready for them.
This week’s recipe is offered by Leslie Davis:
beet salad
3 large beets (or a whole bunch of small ones), roasted, steamed or boiled
1 bunch kale, steamed
1 large carrot, shredded
into a salad bowl, cut up beets into chunky pieces, chop the kale a bit, grate in the carrot, add the dressing.
dressing
blend:
4 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp balsamic
1 large clove garlic
some chopped up parsley or basil
salt and pepper
*top with toasted pumpkin seeds
F o r a g e r
Gozo-Mano Farm CSA Newsletter, Meiners Oaks, California,
Every time I put up a cold frame-the true definition of the passive greenhouse we built a few weeks ago at Gozo-I remember Frank Arnosky. Frank is a professional greenhouse operator in central Texas. He and his wife Pamela are more famous for their cut flower business, Texas Specialty Cuts, than they are for the greenhouse operation. A long time ago when I was farming a few miles west of Austin, Frank paid me a compliment I have always remembered: “ You grew those tomatoes here without heat? That’s doing pretty good.” Maybe that is why I still put up poverty cold frames instead of throwing done big cash for the pro model.
Frank had nice big heated greenhouses, a whole bank of them, perhaps an acre or so under plastic. He grew poinsettias and six-packs of snapdragons for a few seasons before he switched out to cut flowers, mostly grown in the field after they had been started in the greenhouse. It was the best thing he ever did. Like a lot of growers who had come from other parts of the country, Michigan-born Frank and Pamela ignored the status quo and rolled the dice with innovation. When I first started farming in Texas no one grew beets, lettuce, carrots or broccoli in the winter even though the Germans had done it in the 19th Century when they first immigrated and that Central Texas lies below the latitude upon which San Diego, California is planted. So people Like me and Frank ran out some winter seeds in September just when most farmers were picking their last tomatoes and okra. We did garlic and onions and a few flowers of our own. I can’t say it was a piece-of-cake because the winters can suddenly turn against you with fifteen degree temperatures for two or three days straight, and that is the end of all your winter vegetable plans. But four out of five years you could dodge that bad news.
We have started our tomatoes and basil already, and have broccoli, cabbage and collards up too. We are experimenting with herbs and cut flowers, things like hyssop and yarrow. We planted a lot of onion seed that is coming alive now and trying to get the chile peppers to sprout, but they demand steadier heat than we have been able to provide. We are working on that.
Today’s pick includes: beets, cabbage or caulilowers, broccoli, spinach, Romaine, Salad mix, carrots, kale and fennel.
Thanks for your dedication to the CSA and for supporting the Farmer and The Cook. Please come by on a weekend evening to try the special dinners we are cooking and to hear some good locally-grown music. Call 646-0960 for reservations. We serve from five until eight-thirty. Music ends usually around nine to nine-thirty.
F O R A G E R
Continually Hunting for Special Information
To Share With the CSA membership
Being early is usually a goal I leave to other farmers. If you have tomatoes before June you can be rewarded with market share and good prices, but the blight may spank you just the same. This year I had nary a hunch about what sort of Spring this would be. Last year I had a special feeling so we planted zucchini at Mano in Mid-February and were picking squash on the 1st of May. This year we have been dedicated to working mostly on the new ground at Gozo so Mano was given to cover crop experiments, seed production, composting and fallowing.
Gozo is a lot chillier than Mano, perhaps ten degrees or more on a given evening. Up at Mano the volunteer squashes have true leaves and will soon have flowers. The nut-grass, harbinger of warm weather, is already rampant at Mano, and we have volunteer sunflowers blooming. Scattered tomato plants at Mano are bigger than anything we have in the greenhouse at Gozo. So this is how we learn and create a plan. Rather than try lettuce or chard at Mano, which we did somewhat sporadically this season, we might better have gone with early zucchini again, sunflowers, even cucumbers and tomatoes while we kept harvesting winter things at Gozo. Paradoxically, we have cabbage and broccoli at Mano, fighting for supremacy over the nutgrass.
Such information leads me to believe that Mano will be the place or the late tomato and cucumber, while Gozo’s chill can be utilized for early Fall planting of lettuce again, chard, kale and spinach. I would much rather be late with the tomato than early. The early tomato is prone to disease, especially if it gets rained on and the spatters kick microbe-rich soil on to the little plants. That is how the blight comes on. Fall, on the other hand, provides the best tomatoes of the season, based on taste as well as fruit quality. We run into all sorts of problems with cracking fruit or blossom end rot on early tomato crops, whereas the late ones ripen into a mellow season when irrigation is not so crucial. It’s the too-frequent irrigations that will provoke a lack of calcium thereby leading to rotted tips on tomatoes, especially on Romas. That reminds me to include basil at Mano for late summer…..
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All this talk about earliness reminds me that I am late in announcing the HONOR THE FARM FESTIVAL. The festival will be on SUNDAY the 20th of APRIL from 11 AM until 7 PM. It will take place at Help of Ojai’s West Campus, on a small parcel we rent which is southwest of the main farm. There will be some pleasant music from Jonathon McEuen, Alan Thornhill and Emy Reynolds, music, food and fine beverages. Admission is $20 per person and children under 8 are free. No dogs please.
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We had such a nice time weeding over the weekend. We cleared the carrots! Thanks to Liz and Jeff Otterbein, A.J. Ashley and his wife Caludia, Grace, Katy, Quinn and Olivia. Grace brought some students from Thacher School out on Sunday too. It looks so much better.
You know how some restaurants always claim that they “use organic produce whenever possible” ? At the Farmer and the Cook we say that IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR US TO NOT USE ORGANIC PRODUCE 100% OF THE TIME.
F O R A G E R
Every Bug Observer’s Delightful CSA Newsletter
Serving the Western Ojai Valley
bugswormsbeetlesbugswormsbeetlesbugswormsbeetlesbugswormsbeetlesbugswormsbeetlesbugswormsbeetles
If only the birds knew that within the rows of baby lettuce lay curled a wonderful feast of worms we might not fret so for future salads. Entomology continues to secure our imagination. With the worm we have done mighty battle this past week, even venturing out in the mid-afternoon while Samba Da was whipping up a musical frenzy at the Honor The Farm Festival to apply remedies to the infestation.
One may not sit idly by, hoping for winged miracles, while lepidopterans are eating their own body weight every day. That is a lot of body, and you who are familiar with the near insanity of the Farmer and Cook salad bar know well that we treasure our lettuce. We started the pest control program with bacillus thuringensis (BT), the bacterium that is only harmful to the larvae of moths and butterflies, otherwise known as caterpillars. After 48 hours, the still thriving larvae proved that my BT was, as suspected, too old to be of use. I then swept in with an application of Neem, from the revered Good Tree of India, azideracta Indica. The Neem will have an impact on pests, but it is better known as an anti-bacterial ingredient in toothpaste and for cleaning up your bell peppers if they have bacterial leaf disease, which can be heartbreaking.
Just as your peppers are gaining size, the pepper leaves turn spotty and drop, exposing your crop to the ravaging rays of an unkind sun, but if arrested soon enough one can salvage the matter handily. However, to the worm, my Neem was merely a cooling bath. Next up was diatomaceous earth.
Savvy farm folks call it DE when they have one booted foot raised on the bumper of their dirty truck, trying to be all knowledgeably blase and expert about things. DE is fine white dust, the pulverized remains of the minute skeletons of diatoms, teeny creatures that millions of years ago lived in vast seas with such mad populations as to be breathtaking. The humans now mine these deep skeletal remains that are many feet deep. Can you imagine the geological time involved for these diatoms to thrive in such profusion that now we can utilize their remains as filtration media and as a pesticide? They mine the stuff with rubber-tired loaders forty feet tall and haul it in trucks that are too large to allow on the highway! The dust particles are sharp and brittle. They cause severe discomfort to the target pest, usually a beetle with moving, hinged parts wherein this dust may enter and work its demonic job. I do not know if it killed any worms, but the worms I saw with a coat of DE were not happy.
They were looking for a shower. I figured that all the time they spent wriggling around trying to rid themselves of DE was time they did not eat lettuce. All this time I was scouting the rows on hands and knees, observing the worms to see if any were dead and if alive killing them individually by hand. You might want to know how many worms I have. I can guess fairly well. I have 3000 linear feet of lettuce. There is an average of nine worms per foot, yielding a total of 27,000 worms. I never saw the adult winged lepidopteran in flight until I was dusting with the DE and I raised two sneaky brown moths up out of the lettuce. No, I was not clement towards them. Each one can lay hundreds of eggs.
I hear this is a bad year for caterpillars. My neighbor BD Dautch has them, and up north a royal El Stinko is getting whipped up over coddling moth larvae on apples: The governor wants to spray six or seven counties just because he owns stock in the pesticide company. I am not proud.You will note that your bok choy and arugula are well ventilated, courtesy of the flea beetle. We risk damage to this warm-weather pest when planting in the spring, and in the beetles came. We are not too concerned because the holes have no taste, and when cooked or chopped the vegetable looks the same as one that had been nuked. We are loathe to spray organic pesticides on such crops when they are not endangered.
You may recall our earlier discussion on inert ingredients in materials approved for organic production. We only use such stuff when its absolutely a matter of losing the crop. Who wants a mystery residue? We can afford to do this because we don’t have to run the gauntlet inhabited by quality control freaks at the wholesale produce houses. We used to get away with a few holes, but no more….But since we run our own store and people have learned to expect a few imperfections there ( we hope there are but a few) and much produce now goes to our forgiving CSA members, we think we are delivering superior produce because it has a few holes.
Coupled with the pristine environments in which the crops are produced, with virtually no exposure to chemical drift from upwind neighbors, we believe you have ample reason to trust this product above any others you might encounter except for that which you can raise in your own yards.
FLASH! THIS JUST IN FROM GOZO! BLACK BIRDS SIGHTED TODAY ON THE LETTUCE BEDS! HUNTING AND PECKING DEEP WITHIN THE LEAVES, WE KNOW WHAT THEY ARE UP TO AND GLAD TO SEE IT. WHAT PROVIDENCE! WE PLAN TO RUSH A FEW PIE PLATES OUT THERE SO THEY CAN HAVE WATER TO DRINK.
Today’s shares are skimped because Quinn had to go to the dentist and our usual volunteers took a bliss holiday. But we put some oranges and an avocado in the boxes. The fennel is about done. We will have turnips next week. Lots of summer products are in the field now.
Thanks to those who came to the HONOR THE FARM event. We really appreciated seeing you there. Today’s recipe: cook your beet greens with your chard and eat them as is, or are.
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"april fools"
"our call to pick up your shares promptly"
" backyard foraging"
"Our well pumps 800 gallons of water a minute"
"community rides the roller coaster of supply shortages"
And Kohld-rabi it is!
"what to do with all the produce"
"Leslie's beet salad"
"passive greenhouse we built a few weeks ago"
"rather be late with the tomato than early"
"bugswormsbeetlesbugsworms........
