House In The Woods CSA Blog

Welcome, little calves

Posted on 16. May 2009 by ilene

An exciting week on the farm. We are very inexperienced with livestock birthing. We are learning! Good thing that these cows like to birth on their own, and don’t want our help. You see she is missing from the herd, you go find her, and there she is, with a calf at her feet. The calf is up and walking within an hour. We should have known Dancey was ready to birth too. We had decided she had another week or two to go…(yes, we know the signs of imminent birth, but we ignored them, OK?). She was mooing at us and Katie, and we thought it was all about the fuss with Katie. Everyone was mooing! While we were busy admiring Katie’s calf, Dancey slipped away to the farthest field and gave birth to a sweet little girl named Kaide (rhymes with Sky-day). Note to self: close off the back fields during birthing time. I hope our friend Kate will be honored that a calf shares her name, and that of her daughter, Kaide. I am sure I chose a different spelling, but that’s where the name comes from. Its a Japanese name which means Maple Leaf. My kids have always liked Kaide’s name, so they chose it eagerly for the calf. Noah chose Kate for the first calf, because its Katie’s calf, so of course. Do not explain to him that these are the same names. Because they are not. Here are some photos.

Kate

The boys visit Kate and Katie.

Now both calves are out on the fields with their mamas. Here is Kaide and then one with her mama, Dancey.

Katie and Kate in the woods, keeping cool.

Here is Clover, Dancey’s calf from last year. A year old. A Heifer, Noah says. Clover is used to getting all the attention, so she spent some time licking the salt off our hands and arms.

Noah waters the Kids Snack Garden. Whenever I was busy in the greenhouse, he would select a few plants to transplant into bigger pots, and he collected them in a couple trays for his snack garden. He would watch over them, fuss with them, water them, add to them. Now it was time to plant the spot. Here is Noah watering his plants. Kids will enjoy snacking from the Kids Garden when they come for CSA veggie pickups.

Posted in Animals, On the Farm | Leave a comment

Happy Mother’s Day on the Farm

Posted on 10. May 2009 by ilene

Birth on the farm just in time for Mother’s Day. This sweet little calf arrived yesterday (Saturday) afternoon during the Tomato Sale. Katie didn’t even tell me! She wasn’t with the herd at the end of the day, so Phil and the kids went to check on her and there they were. We saw the babe take its first wobbly step and fall over. It gets around fine now. Happy Mother’s Day, Katie! More photos of mom and babe to come. These are Dexter cows, a small heritage breed.

Posted in Animals, On the Farm | Leave a comment

Heirloom Tomato Varieties

Posted on 4. May 2009 by ilene

Thanks everyone, for a fabulous tomato sale! We cleared out the first planting of tomato plants, I still have a few Brandywine and that’s it. I have a second planting of lots of varieties for sale, ready around Memorial Day weekend. All these varieties are available again for the second planting. For sale by appointment.

ORGANIC HEIRLOOM TOMATO VARIETIES FOR SALE. $4/each

REDS AND PINKS————————————

Black Krim–Dark red beefsteak with rich sweet taste from Black Sea of Russia

Arkansas Traveler–One hundred year old heirloom from the south, Arkansas to North Carolina. A lovely round tomato, resistant to cracking and disease. A favorite of ours.

Brandywine–Pinkish red, most popular heirloom originated in 1889. One pounders! I have tons of Brandywine plants!

Carmello–The French Carmello is popular in Europe for its exceptionally fine flavor. Very productive plants. The grower de-hybridized this seed from the original hybrid.

Cherokee Purple–Deep red beefsteak with dark shoulders, originated in Tennessee by the Cherokee tribe. Rich flavor.

Prudens Purple–Beautiful deep pink-red and rich taste like Brandywine. A mainstay slicer on our farm.

Giant Belgium–The name may warn youthis tomato averages 2 pounds but can reach 5 pounds! Great for cooking, canning, or showing off.

UNIQUE COLORS————————————-

Valencia-Beautiful round bright orange tomato, mild, fruity sweet like a Valencia orange. From Maine.

Persimmon–Rose-orange like a persimmon, big, sweet. Fruit up to 2 pounds! Vigorous and prolific plants.

Striped German–A fruity sweet treat! This tomato will show you what heirlooms have to offera big sweet tomato with red-yellow stripes with streaked red and yellow juicy flesh.

PineappleJust like a Striped German. Pineapple fruity sweet, streaky red-yellow, yummy tomato.

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.

PASTES————————————————–

Long Tom–Especially long red paste tomatoes with few seeds and thick walls. Great sauces, good in salads.

Speckled Roma–Paste tomato, Red with a hint of orange and wavy yellow streaks, a beauty!

Amish GoldPaste cross between Amish Paste and the beloved Sungold, a sweet idea.

Black Plum–Russian plum variety, Two-inch elongated plum-shaped dark red fruit. Close to a paste but thinner walls. Sweet and tangy.

CHERRIES————————————————

Matts Wild Cherry–Mini red wild cherry tomatoes, prolific. Cute little stems with six bite-size tomatoes on each.

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. Kids love ’em!

We have a few kinds of peppers and eggplant. We have thyme, sage, and chamomile. Sold out of basil.

Posted in Greenhouse, Heirloom Tomatoes | 2 Comments

It’s Tomato Seedling Sale Week!

Posted on 3. May 2009 by ilene

Six weeks in the greenhouse and these plants are beauties. Over 20 varieties of heirloom tomato plants, for our garden and those of our plant customers. You can come by the farm this week on Friday May 8 or Saturday May 9, 10am-5pm, for tomato plants. Email me for directions.

We had a good Pre-sale day today, with some of the regulars stopping by for their tomatoes. Shannon came for her tomatoes, she has been a customer for years. She keeps a blog called Grown in Frederick. She went home and wrote this post about the sale, read all about it at her blog.

I have the greenhouse set up for the sale, with photos of the tomatoes whole and sliced, above each type of tomato plant. A few years ago we had a Tomato Tasting Festival, and took photos of each type of tomato on the tasting table. The event was fun, and I am still enjoying the ongoing benefit of it– helpful photos I get to use for the sale.

Perennial Chamomile plants for sale:

By early August, this will be our treat, we can hardly wait:

Posted in Greenhouse, Heirloom Tomatoes | 2 Comments

Chick Update

Posted on 3. May 2009 by ilene

The chicks are three weeks old, so its time for an update. In their first week, they had visitors come to admire the new hatches. Here are CSA members, Heather and Kelsey of the Schwartz family.

Then, with chicks one week old, Noah selected out six chicks for Hannah, put them carefully in a shoebox and we drove to Philadelphia. Here’s Hannah and Noah, on Hannah’s visit to our place in March:

Just shy of Phili, we made covert arrangements to meet on the side of the highway and deliver the contraband to Hannah and her sister Nora and father Chris. We rushed off to a family party in Phili and then met up that evening at Hannah’s house for an overnight visit with Hannah and her family.

Here’s Hannah with her new chicks:

Here’s Jonah and Norah, assistant chick keepers, visiting Norah’s bunny:

Five chicks went to another customer, Phil’s friend nearby. Four chicks were designated “Not for sale” by Jonah and Noah. They include two Naked Necks named Naked and Peckeron, and two yellow chicks named Max and George. Here they are at three weeks old:

Posted in On the Farm, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Chicks are here!

Posted on 14. April 2009 by ilene

All last year, Noah asked for an incubator. He got one for Chanukah! I’m not sure why that is funny, but it is. For three weeks we watched eggs in the incubator, wondering whether baby chicks were growing.

Waiting….

Auracana breed are known for their uniquely colored eggs–blue, green or pink. We love the blue-green eggs we get from our Auracana hens. We have an Auracana rooster now, so our hens’ eggs are fertilized and include this heritage. All our different varieties will create Auracana crosses, which are called Americana’s, or sometimes Rainbow Layers. Each cross-breed hen will lay eggs in one of the following colors–light or dark brown, white, or maybe the unusual and exciting light green, blue or pink.

On the 21st day, sure enough, the eggs began to crack. We were amazed! A pipp hole to begin, and then a line of holes around, until crack! Out pops a soggy limp chick. In no time, it is up wobbling around. When it is dry and fluffy, it goes out of the incubator into a cage with a warming light, ground grain, and water.

16 chicks by the end of the weekend.

See the one with a bare neck? Yep, its called a Naked Neck. Ugly as can be, but a hardy breed.

True love, eh? This one is Jonah’s favorite. He named it Max and says we are not selling this one…

I believe the chick on the right is the Auracana pure-breed. It came from the blue egg, so both its mother and father are Auracana’s. We hatched two of them. One is going to Philadelphia with us, a gift for Noah’s friends, Hannah and Nora, who already have three chickens in a backyard coop. The other will be for Noah’s first customer, Phil’s coworker Larry. I think there are still some chicks for sale, but you would have to ask Noah.

Observation.

Check out the nifty chick waterer–add marbles to a jar top so the babes don’t drown in their water.

Posted in On the Farm | 2 Comments

Greenhouse Thinnings Salad

Posted on 14. April 2009 by ilene

I thin the plants in the greenhouse trays. Here is my Greenhouse Thinnings Salad, a greenhouse by-product gourmet treat. When we are out in the garden, the kids know to come running in the greenhouse for “snacks”. I give them little handfuls of treats from the greenhouse–delicate micro-greens including cabbage, chard, spinach, beets, kale, tiny onions. I have also taken to planting a couple flats of lettuce and chard, designated as “greenhouse snack trays”.

Posted in Greenhouse | 1 Comment

Garlic Gifts

Posted on 9. April 2009 by ilene

Garlic shoots please me in April. They are the first green crop in the garden. Since they are planted in autumn, they please like daffodil bulbs, like a spring surprise gift.

Posted in Veggies | 1 Comment

Bee Happy on the Farm

Posted on 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 | 1 Comment

Spring on the farm

Posted on 18. March 2009 by ilene

I start to feel the approach of springtime on the farm in late February when we begin planting seedlings in the greenhouse. We start onions and scallions and slow-to-germinate parsley in February. In March we begin cool weather crops like cabbage and turnips and beets first. I just started planting tomato seeds and peppers and eggplant. The greenhouse is starting to feel busy. Starting up the greenhouse gives me spring fever, I get all itchy to play in the dirt again. It is the perfect place to play in the dirt in March, a pleasure to be under the protection of the plastic on blustery days.

Cabbage seedlings