20. July 2011 by admin.

Heirloom Tomato Tasting at The Common Market

This Saturday July 23, 11:30am-2:00pm at The Common Market in Frederick. See their website for directions. Meet me there and sample some great local food! Heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, ice cream, sauces, juices and jams. All local items at The Common Market will be 10% off!~

Here is the flyer with more information about the different tastings happening in the store on Saturday:

July 23 CM demo

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14. May 2011 by admin.

March/April Newsletter

The Common Market hosted a Crop Mob at our farm, and it was a great collaboration! Thank you, Alexis and The Common Market Education and Outreach Department for organizing the event. The mob helped with so many jobs that I started feeling downright pampered by the end of the event. They even did the job of writing up a summary, so my blog entry is taken care of. Along with The Common Market’s write-up, there is a nice article in The Frederick News Post.

View the story on The Frederick News Post web page by clicking here or pasting this into your browser: http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/art_life/display_features.htm?StoryID=120718

I am including The Common Market’s write-up here, written by the great education and outreach staff at the market, but I encourage you to click on their link to see their nice collage of photos from the event: on The Common Market’s website.

The Co-op’s First Crop Mob: Story from the Field

“The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope”
-Wendell Berry

It’s official; our first Crop Mob
was an enormous success!

  A HUGE thank you goes out to everyone who participated in our Mob and to Phil, Ilene, Noah, and Jonah for being wonderful Crop Mob Hosts! Mobbers ranged in age from 2 - 60+ years proving that Crop Mobs are truly for everyone! Our Mob included House in the Woods CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members, Common Market employees, shoppers and Owners, a Frederick Community Action Agency employee and even a few folks who just found out about the event on the internet. We were fortunate to have had not only a beautiful day, but enthusiastic participants who came prepared to help out and to learn a thing or two about organic farming from real life farmers. Participants got a chance to have their hand in growing food that will be sold at the Co-op, included in the weekly shares of House in the Woods CSA members, and enjoyed by those members of our community who utilize the Frederick Food Bank. Look for more Common Market sponsored Crop Mobs in the future - I can assure you this is not our last Crop Mob!

Not only did we raise money to provide fresh vegetables for the Frederick Food Bank, we also completed a commendable amount of tasks including:

-weeded the entire garlic patch
-weeded the onions
-transplanted eggplant seedlings in the hoop house
-transplanted bok choy seedlings in the field
-transplanted cabbage seedlings in the field
-prepared beds for planting by spreading the landscaping plastic over them
-planted bean seeds
-transplanted herbs into the herb garden
-filled “dirt bags” to use as row cover weights
-raised money to purchase CSA shares for the food bank
-mixed up a batch of potting mix
-pre-loaded trays of small pots with potting mix for seedlings
-erected the pea / tomato trellis
-grinded corn for chicken feed
-watered all the seedlings in the hoop house

Frederick County’s first crop mob was also featured in the Frederick News Post. View the story on their web page by clicking here: http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/art_life/display_features.htm?StoryID=120718

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3. May 2011 by admin.

Heirloom Tomato Seedling Sale

The House in the Woods Seedling Sale is THIS FRIDAY AND SATURDAY! 10a-5p

Organic heirloom plants for your garden. We feature beautiful heirloom tomato plants, and we’ve got some new ones to share with you, along with old favorites. I should have plenty of basil plants, peppers and eggplant. Make it a nice country drive, bring friends and family, a picnic, visit the farm animals.

Sale Hours — Use our NEW FARM LANE, see below!
Friday May 6th, 10am-5pm
Saturday May 7th, 10am-5pm

***USE OUR NEW FARM LANE ON SALE DAY, on PARK MILLS ROAD***

Address for GPS purposes but there is no mailbox: 2225 Park Mills Rd, Adamstown, MD.
Take 270 to Rte 80 West, go two miles, take a left on Park Mills Road, go about three miles, pass Mt Ephraim Rd and Bear Branch Road. Watch on your left side–you will cross over Bennett Creek, pass a house, then immediately look for our new farm lane with a big “House in the Woods” billboard on sale day. Gone too far if you get to Lilypons Road. Drive up the lane and follow signs for parking.

Our tomato plants are now also available at The Common Market (www.commonmarket.com).
We may have more plants available later in May as well.
Contact: ilene@houseinthewoods.com or 301-607-4048

House in the Woods Farm 2011 Organic Heirloom Plant Sale

$4.50 per tomato plant. Ask about other plants for sale.
Bring a box for your plants. Return pots to our mailbox, we’ll re-use them!

May 6/7, 2011. More info–ilene@houseinthewoods.com    301-607-4048

REDS AND PINKS, PURPLES AND BLACKS (ie dark red)————————————
____ Black Krim–Dark red beefsteak with rich sweet taste from Black Sea of Russia
____ Brandywine–Pinkish red, most popular heirloom originated in 1889.
____ Cherokee Purple—A favorite, from Tennessee cultivated by the Cherokee Tribe.  Plants loaded with beefsteak tomatoes. Deep red interior flesh, rich, complex flavor.
____ Rutgers– From 1934 “the Jersey tomato”, red tomatoes great taste for fresh slicing or cooking.
____ Cosmonaut Volkov– From the Ukraine named for the famous Russian cosmonaut. Red slightly flattened fruit with good acid-sweetness balance.
____ Black Prince– From Siberia, one of the most popular black tomatoes. Rich taste for cooking or fresh. Smaller fruit.

UNIQUE COLORS————————————-
____ Old German/Pineapple—a mild sweet fruity tomato, with red-yellow streaks to skin and flesh. Low acid, as are most yellow, orange and green tomatoes.
____ Green Zebra–A magic tomato, green with dark green stripes, skin blushes yellow when ripe. Green salsa or even green sauce! A hit for contrast on a potluck platter. Also have some Cherokee Green.
____ Valencia– Beautiful round bright orange tomato—mild, fruity sweet that might remind you of a Valencia orange. From Maine.
____ Garden Peach–Yellow blushing pink, fruity sweet and juicy, with a slightly fuzzy skin. Just like a peach! Cute little 2 inch tomatoes.

PASTES for cooking and saucing————————————————
____ Speckled Roma–Paste tomato, Red with a hint of orange and wavy yellow
streaks, a beauty! And sweet, you’ll want to cut some for the salad too.
____ Orange Banana –another unique paste, this one is orange! Plum-shaped orange paste with pointed ends and a good sweet-tart flavor.  An all-purpose plum tomato with good disease resistance.
____ Amish Paste–reliable traditional red roma with thick skin and less juice, ideal for cooking and canning, but sweet enough to eat fresh.
____ Heinz– Red plum tomato 2 oz firm fruit ideal for cooking.

CHERRY TOMATOES————————————————
____ Matt’s Wild Cherry–Mini red wild cherry tomatoes, prolific. Cute little stems
with six bite-size tomatoes on each. Kids love ‘em!
____ Sungold Cherry–Orange, super sweet mini tomato. A rare exception to our
heirloom rule in our tomato collection, this hybrid is worth it. Our CSA members
eat them all up on the car-ride home.

HERBS AND MORE (prices vary)—————————————-

Chamomile—beautiful little daisy-like flowers, dry them for tea

Sweet Basil and Thai Basil—great culinary herbs for any herb garden

Peppers–bell peppers, pimento, paprika, jalapeno

Eggplant–Italian Nadia, Japanese Orient Express, and an heirloom specialty Beatrice

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22. April 2011 by admin.

The House in the Woods Seedling Sale is approaching, organic heirloom plants for your garden. We feature beautiful heirloom tomato plants, and we’ve got some new ones to share with you, along with old favorites. I should have plenty of basil plants and some other plants to offer as well.

Sale Hours — Use our NEW FARM LANE, see below!
Friday May 6th, 10am-5pm
Saturday May 7th, 10am-5pm

***USE OUR NEW FARM LANE ON SALE DAY, on PARK MILLS ROAD*** for GPS purposes but there is no mailbox: 2225 Park Mills Rd, Adamstown, MD.
Take 270 to Rte 80 West, go two miles, take a left on Park Mills Road, go about three miles, pass Mt Ephraim Rd and Bear Branch Road. Watch on your left side–you will cross over Bennett Creek, pass a house, then immediately look for our new farm lane with a big “House in the Woods” billboard on sale day. Drive up the lane and follow signs for parking. Gone too far if you get to Lilypons Road.

Our tomato plants are now also available at The Common Market (www.commonmarket.com).
We may have more plants available later in May as well.
Contact: ilene@houseinthewoods.com or 301-607-4048

House in the Woods Farm 2011 Organic Heirloom Plant Sale

$4.50 per tomato plant. Ask about other plants for sale.
Bring a box for your plants. Return pots to our mailbox, we’ll re-use them!

May 6/7, 2011. More info–ilene@houseinthewoods.com    301-607-4048

REDS AND PINKS, PURPLES AND BLACKS (ie dark red)————————————
____ Black Krim–Dark red beefsteak with rich sweet taste from Black Sea of Russia
____ Brandywine–Pinkish red, most popular heirloom originated in 1889.
____ Cherokee Purple—A favorite, from Tennessee cultivated by the Cherokee Tribe.  Plants loaded with beefsteak tomatoes. Deep red interior flesh, rich, complex flavor.
____ Rutgers– From 1934 “the Jersey tomato”, red tomatoes great taste for fresh slicing or cooking.
____ Cosmonaut Volkov– From the Ukraine named for the famous Russian cosmonaut. Red slightly flattened fruit with good acid-sweetness balance.
____ Black Prince– From Siberia, one of the most popular black tomatoes. Rich taste for cooking or fresh. Smaller fruit.

UNIQUE COLORS————————————-
____ Old German/Pineapple—a mild sweet fruity tomato, with red-yellow streaks to skin and flesh. Low acid, as are most yellow, orange and green tomatoes.
____ Green Zebra–A magic tomato, green with dark green stripes, skin blushes yellow when ripe. Green salsa or even green sauce! A hit for contrast on a potluck platter. Also have some Cherokee Green.
____ Valencia– Beautiful round bright orange tomato—mild, fruity sweet that might remind you of a Valencia orange. From Maine.
____ Garden Peach–Yellow blushing pink, fruity sweet and juicy, with a slightly fuzzy skin. Just like a peach! Cute little 2 inch tomatoes.

PASTES for cooking and saucing————————————————
____ Speckled Roma–Paste tomato, Red with a hint of orange and wavy yellow
streaks, a beauty! And sweet, you’ll want to cut some for the salad too.
____ Orange Banana –another unique paste, this one is orange! Plum-shaped orange paste with pointed ends and a good sweet-tart flavor.  An all-purpose plum tomato with good disease resistance.
____ Amish Paste–reliable traditional red roma with thick skin and less juice, ideal for cooking and canning, but sweet enough to eat fresh.
____ Heinz– Red plum tomato 2 oz firm fruit ideal for cooking.

CHERRY TOMATOES————————————————
____ Matt’s Wild Cherry–Mini red wild cherry tomatoes, prolific. Cute little stems
with six bite-size tomatoes on each. Kids love ‘em!
____ Sungold Cherry–Orange, super sweet mini tomato. A rare exception to our
heirloom rule in our tomato collection, this hybrid is worth it. Our CSA members
eat them all up on the car-ride home.

PERENNIAL HERBS—————————————————-

Chamomile—beautiful little daisy-like flowers, dry them for tea

Sweet Basil and Thai Basil—great culinary herbs for any herb garden.

Do you grow a garden at home? Treat yourself to the rich flavor and unique colors of heirloom tomatoes. There is no comparison to most standard hybrid varieties, even homegrown, to these delicious varieties that have been cultivated for over fifty years, sometimes 150 years.

What are Heirlooms Tomatoes? Heirlooms are old, pure varieties known for their unique colors and wonderful flavor. More than hundreds of these family-heirloom varieties exist, seeds passed down and treasured for generations. Hybrid tomatoes were developed by industry in the fifties for red color and thick skin for transport to grocery stores. You won’t find tomatoes this good in the grocery store, and you won’t find these seedlings at a megastore garden shop.

These varieties are indeterminate. That means they set their fruit continuously, for a longer harvest than determinate plants. Determinate plants set their fruit all at once, so they will ripen about all at once. If you are growing especially to can your tomatoes, and want to harvest them all in a concentrated few weeks, a hybrid determinate variety might be a good choice for you. That would match the needs of big big farm businesses that pull up whole plants on a combine machine to harvest all the fruit at once. Way different needs than the average homegrower, but we’ve been marketed the same varieties. Time to re-educate and take back the old varieties!

House in the Woods Farm raises over twenty unique heirloom tomato varieties, seedlings for purchase in May by home gardeners. Certified organic and sustainably grown. The plants start from seed in our greenhouse, grown in our own compost mixture and all natural organic ingredients. When you plant, pour all the great compost in with the plant.

~~~~~~~~Planting timing and tips~~~~~~~~

When to plant? Plan to plant your tomatoes between May 5-20. The old wisdom of planting tomatoes and flowers Mother’s Day weekend is a good one. Some people plant early (with some extra risk of frost damage) and some wait until early June. We have risk of a night frost through May, so watch the forecast if you plant early. You can even rig up a sheet or row cover over some t-posts, chairs or tomato cages for a cold night!

How to plant? Dig a hole deep enough to bury the lowest leaves. You can even bury a couple sets of leaves if the stem is that long. Tomatoes like it that way. They are really vines and will grow quite tall. Put the compost from your pot, and extra if you have it, into the hole too, or pour it around the plant. Pour a couple cups of water around the stem area, to melt the soil around the plant. Sometimes the leaves look sad for a couple days but then they perk up. In a week the leaves will deepen green and be happy. Put a sturdy tomato cage over each plant, right away or within a week before the plants get too big.

Transition time– Your plants would benefit from a couple days of protection, if you can offer it. You can keep them in the pots on the sunny side of the porch for a couple days, bringing them in on colder nights. Next to your house, they will have some wind protection.

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27. March 2011 by admin.

Spring is the most popular time to showcase CSAs, so here are some places to see our faces:

* The cover of The Common Market newsletter for March-April has some familiar faces on it (Ilene, Noah and Jonah), as well as a nice write-up about the Crop Mob event they are sponsoring at the farm for Earth Day. The newsletter is available by quick download on their website, you can go to www.commonmarket.com and click on March-April newsletter. Or go shopping at the co-op and pick up your free copy

* The March edition of The Frederick Magazine has a nice article about CSA in it, featuring two farms including House in the Woods. The feature article is called Farmville: Community Supported Agriculture Brings Consumers Closer to Their Food, Even if it Means Getting Their Hands a Little Dirty.  We are highlighted for the participation component of our CSA, members getting involved in where their food comes from and how it grows. There is a photo of one of our adorable young members pulling sweet potatoes at our Sweet Potato Dig. You can find this magazine at book stores, maybe grocery stores, definitely at The Common Market. www.fredmag.com

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6. February 2011 by admin.

Some highlights from the PASA conference. There were lots of notables at the conference, here are a few.

Here’s director Andrew Kimbrell of The Center for Food Safety

If you want to help fuel an organization that is taking on the battle with Monsanto with success, in the courts and in DC… send your monetary contribution to The Center for Food Safety . They are working hard right now, in a time when the President just approved GMO alfalfa permits without an Environmental Impact Statement. But Food Safety was responsible for leading a win against GMO sugar beets and a list of other successful GMO slow-downs and shut-downs.

For the record, PASA hosts an excellent regional conference (with attendees representing 30 states and a few countries!) in State College, PA. PASA is the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture and they have a website. Under the guidance of Brian Snyder for the past 10 years or so, and with such hot items on the legislative table from raw milk policy in PA to the Food Safety Act in DC, PASA has become a leading organization in advocacy for family farms.

Jonah took most of these photos. I am proud of my six year old photographer.
Here I am with the big wig, Brian Snyder:

It was good to see again CSA farmer and author, Elizabeth Henderson. She co-authored the book, Sharing the Harvest, which was my primary resource 12 years ago when we were starting up the CSA. And what’s cooler, is that she is one of the very first farmers to start a CSA in the USA, in the mid-80s. I’ve always enjoyed her workshops at PASA. This one was about her new organizing efforts to establish a code of ethic for social justice on farms in the USA, a living wage for the farmer including farm employees.

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18. August 2010 by admin.

Each August I host a hands-on canning demo day for CSA members. We collect split tomatoes from the plants and can them up in the barn, our impromptu outdoor kitchen right next to the garden.  Now that’s fresh! Here’s Jackie posing with the goods, jars of tomato puree.

The outdoor kitchen stove:

I find it completely satisfying to take split tomatoes from the garden and can a batch of tomato puree for winter use. Its a bit like taking lemons and making lemonade. Sour turns sweet. Split tomatoes or tomato bounty hanging on the vine, you are going to have waste. But add some hard work and you have tomato puree. Wait, its not hard work, but its focused and time-consuming. I’m getting into the zen of canning this month. I think after a few years of it, its an easy process for me. I don’t have to pour over the Ball Book anymore, getting overwhelmed by the choices, the step-by-step details of canning, and the fear paragraphs about germs and botulism. Which, by the way, you can’t taste or see or smell, but enjoy your canning experience, you’ll be fine…

I’ve tried a variety of techniques and products over the past few years, and now I know what I like to do. I like to make tomato puree, a straight tomato base. It can be a soup base. It can simmer longer on the stovetop and become pizza sauce or ketchup. It can be thickened with garlic and onions and other veggies for a pasta sauce or lasagna sauce. I keep it pure and simple when I can it, and then I can add all those goodies later when I’m cooking. Did you know tomatoes are on the edge of acidity? 4.0-4.6, and 4.6 is the limit to safe water-bath canning. Add some lemon juice and you throw it over the edge into higher acidity, where botulism can’t thrive. Add anything else to tomatoes–like herbs and vegetables–and you  could throw it over the other edge, where botulism can survive. So I play it safe, and keep my tomatoes as plain puree. (I know tons of people who add things and continue to live, just sayin’)

I don’t mess around with peeling tomatoes. That process drives me crazy. I quarter them unpeeled, and stew them a bit in a big pot. Then I pour off the water from the tomatoes. This  saves hours of evaporation time during thickening. The stewed, drained-off tomatoes go to Victoria, and come out a bit watery. It takes more simmer time to thicken this way (improved by pouring off the water) but I just saved loads of time and patience by not peeling tomatoes.  So I don’t mind simmer-time. One day I made my puree and left it simmering on the stove (with Phil home to monitor) and I went to yoga. Came home in a couple hours to a nice thick puree ready to can. [Of course, if I don’t have time to thicken it, I’ll can it anyway. It takes more cans and is much more watery, but it’ll still be useful. I’ve also skipped the Victoria and blended the stewed quartered and poured-off tomatoes with skins and all, with an immersion blender. That works too. ]

Meet Victoria (Victoria Mill, that is). She helps us squash tomatoes into juice and puree, spitting out the skins and such.

Elaine and Victoria.

The Super Canner: this baby can fit almost 20 jars at a time. Simply constructed with cinder blocks, a half-barrel (that’s not what its called?) and a blow torch. I need to credit our friends the Horsts at Jehovah-Jireh Farm with this idea. Phil dug a hole to set the blow torch in, the Horsts put an elbow on theirs to shoot it upward, I believe. And they had a sink base. Different ways to do it.

Thirty minutes boiling in Super Canner, and we’re done. Phil’s taking out jars with the Jar Taker Outer. (ok, tongs)

Let those jars rest for a day, so as not to bump them (dare I say…jar them?) before they cool and seal.  Gaze at them. Revel with them. Label them and put them in a pantry or other dark ideally cool-ish space.

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1. April 2009 by ilene.

Phil took a Bee Keeping Class this winter, taught by Steve Collins at LilyPons. The class met at our farm to pick up their bees and learn how to settle the bees in their new home. We had a potluck lunch together while people “painted” a dot on the queen so they can easily detect her. Pretty neat stuff. Here are the whole classes bees in Steve’s van. Look closely to find the stragglers, who missed the box when they were being dumped into boxes. They travelled to the farm, clinging to the boxes mostly, wanted to get in with the rest of the bees.

This is Steve with a little box special for the queen. Classmates look on.

David observes the bees.

Phil is ready to install the bees.

Phil did a good job installing the bees and giving them a good start. Wish our bees luck!

Hope they will BEE HAPPY on our farm…

Posted in Events, On the Farm | 2 Comments »

20. February 2009 by ilene.

We are feeling very “eastern shore”…we are building a high tunnel hoophouse on our farm this year. Wow, how great this will be! Imagine…tomatoes go straight in the ground as younger plants in April instead of being repotted for another month in the greenhouse. That cuts out a step for us. Early tomatoes ripen in June! And when it rains, the skins of the tomatoes won’t split, because they are protected in the hoophouse. That’s a lot less rot. Watering is done by the drip tape irrigation that we already rely on. And I think we will be able to keep greens growing almost year-round in the hoop for our family, without ever heating this thing.

And a thing it is…30 feet across and 100 feet long. The tractor will fit right inside to work the soil. Its high too, maybe 12 feet? That’s a lot of metal…over 4000 pounds of metal tubing. Lucky us, Phil got an email about a used hoophouse for sale in St Mary’s County last fall. So we bought our hoophouse third hand and for a deal (they are $5-8K new).

So here’s how “shipping” it went–Phil and my dad drove to St Mary’s County (about two hours+ away from Frederick), and rented a U-Haul one way. They drove to the seller’s house, where there were neat little piles of metal pipe, all taken apart by the seller’s teenage son and friend. Paid the kids for disassembly time (what a great offer that was!). Met my uncle there too, he lives near the seller. The three of them (yes, Phil and two hard-working men over 70) loaded the truck with 4000 pounds of pipe. Phil drove the truck home, avoiding the weigh station, and Dad followed in the car. Noah, Dad, Phil unloaded the U-Haul…its still 4000 pounds of piping, again, Phil said.

We had a couple CSA Hoophouse Raising days. Thanks to all who helped move the pipes around! Those were fun days and very productive. Pipes were categorized by length and type (see Hoop Art photos), pipes were balanced on shoulders and relocated to the garden, pipes were inserted in other pipes and then you have the graceful arches of the hoophouse. I went out to the garden one windy day and heard these ghosty whistle sounds, they had a ring to them…the wind was whistling through the pipes like blowing into a bottle!

And yet, there are still piles of pipes on the ground, albeit much less poundage. Lots of reinforcing trusses still need to go up before the end of March. That project is resting while a few other projects take center stage–a trip to Florida (done), delivery of a new Veggie Shed (done, see New Veggie Shed post), prepping the greenhouse for spring seedlings (just finished). And we just started planting early spring seedlings in the greenhouse, so spring is coming soon, I know it.

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