Join us next weekend for Sensational Tomatoes: A Slow Food Upstate Tasting! Proceeds will benefit Slow Food Upstate's new grants program.

Date: Sunday, July 25, 2010
Time: 6:30 pm
Location: Ristorante Bergamo, 100 North Main St. Greenville, SC 29601
Cost: $35.00 per person. For tickets, order online or call (864) 289-0103.

Sink your teeth into a Black Cherry tomato, drenched by the summer sun, sweetly rich and intricately complex, and allow the juices to roll onto the tongue in a swirl of irresistible delicious pleasure. Tomatoes, the golden red pearls and oysters of the garden, burst with tangy goodness in your mouth. So many diverse variations to taste, so much flavor to discover, you won't want to miss this!

Sensational Tomatoes, the first in a series of tastings presented by Slow Food Upstate, and sponsored by OrangeCoat gourmet web design and Parson Organic Produce, takes a leisurely stroll through the world of distinct tastes to delight and educate your sophisticated palette.

The tasting will be a discovery of the individual qualities of some of the freshest organically grown gems, prepared by chef Nello Gioia at Ristorante Bergamo in downtown Greenville. The menu will be a full dinner, based on the tomato. Tasting of the food alone, naked and bare, striped of sauce, or other food partners, will be an essential element in all of the "Sensational" series, in order to teach the tongue about the unique qualities of each of the particular foods selected.

We hope you'll be able to join us next weekend for this exciting event that will benefit a local organization dedicated to preserving and perpetuating delicious traditional foods.

Summer really is in full swing on the farm, and it's keeping us all terribly busy! It seems like there aren't enough hours in the day to plant as much as we would like, much less keep on top of the weeds. One thing that is vital, however, is watering - with no rain in weeks and only scattered thunderstorms in the forecast, we're all prone to wandering around the garden with a moisture meter on a daily basis. The intense heat at the end of June prevented the tomatoes from setting fruit for a while, but it seems like they've gotten back on track now that we're not pushing 100 degrees on a daily basis.

The market traffic has been relatively light the past three weeks, so we've been focused on preserving what we end up not selling on Saturdays - blueberry jam and jelly, zucchini bread, tomato sauce, and pesto are the big ones right now. I took a couple of pounds of basil home last night and started processing it. As you can see, I like my pesto a little on the chunky side:

Freezing the pesto in ice cube trays is absolutely the way to go, and a lot of the folks who stop by our booth at the market agree! It's very easy to make - I made three batches last night, and I would have made more but I ran out of olive oil.

So what happens when you have an abundance of herbs, but you can't use them all in one day? Well, here are some tips for storing what you buy from us at the market to maximize its lifespan:

Basil: Along with tomatoes and garlic, basil is something you should NEVER REFRIGERATE. Basil is one of the most fragile herbs and refrigeration destroys the plant's cells, leading to brown, mushy leaves. Instead of refrigeration, set your basil stems in a little jar of water and simply leave the jar out on the counter (and away from direct sunlight). The basil will stay nice and fresh for up to a week. If it starts to look sad, spritz it with some room temperature water in a spray bottle - basil likes foliar watering.

Parsley: Set parsley stem ends in a jar or glass of water. Cover the glass and parsley with a plastic bag and place in the fridge, where it will keep up to two weeks. The plastic bag traps moisture, which will keep the parsley leaves firm and green.

Thyme: Set thyme stem ends in water and refrigerate. A small plastic bag will increase the thyme's shelf life, but it's not as vital as it is for the parsley. Lasts one week easily, sometimes as long as two.

Rosemary: Same as thyme, including projected shelf life.

Mint: Set stem ends in water, cover with a plastic bag and refrigerate. Lasts up to one week.

Sage: Sage should NOT be placed in water - it will rot very quickly. Make sure your sage is completely dry, then store it in the fridge in a small plastic bag. Lasts up to one week.

Dill: Same as sage. Lasts 3-4 days.

Garlic: NEVER REFRIGERATE EATING GARLIC. Without going into too much detail, refrigeration will actually reduce the shelf life of garlic because it prompts the cloves to sprout. Store your garlic at room temperature, either on the kitchen counter or on a shelf in your pantry - whichever has better air circulation. Store the garlic in a single layer in an open bowl or basket or in a plastic or ceramic keeper with multiple ventilation holes. Garlic stored this way will last about 6 months, depending on its variety.

That's all I have time for now, but I'll definitely be posting more about post-harvest handling in the future!

An interesting article from the New York Times: At Monticello, Jefferson's Methods Endure. I didn't know that staggering your plants in rows, like we do and Jefferson did, qualified as a quincunx pattern (an example of the pattern is the way five pips are arranged on the face of a die) or that it was an ancient Roman practice. We visited Monticello as a family way when my brother and I were kids, and even though I wasn't interested in gardening at the time, it was an impressive space!

I'm afraid I've been horribly remiss in my blogging duties the past few weeks - things have been busy in the garden and at my off-farm job, and the heat puts a damper on everything. It's a simple thing to block out the sensation of runnels of sweat coursing down your face, but working in the heat requires constant hydration and frequent breaks - each longer than the last as the heat saps your energy! And that's just at 9 o'clock in the morning.

But even though the hot weather makes it miserable for us, it's prime growing time for all of the summer crops in the garden. The tomatoes are making nicely; I managed to get out Sunday morning to weed around the cages (where I didn't have the chance to mulch heavily) and prune back the jungle-like growth at the bases of the plants. It was a little like a treasure hunt - as the stems came off, I caught sight of bright pops of color nestled in the greenery. There are maybe half a dozen slicers ripening as I type, but there are so many more to come! The Juliets in particular are going absolutely bonkers - I'm 5'7" and there are two plants that are at least a foot taller than me.

So far we're staying ahead of the squash bugs, our perpetual foes in the battle for the cucurbits, although the tide of war could change at any moment. After a very strange (but still delicious) start, the Zephyr squash is exhibiting the proper coloration and the 8-Balls and 1-Balls are doing well. Our new favorite dinner is zucchini "linguine" with pasta, homemade alfredo sauce, and some fresh seafood from the market. We've been using a recipe from Fast, Fresh & Green that involves brown butter and almonds, and it's pretty much to die for. It's quickly becoming our go-to cookbook for simple, quick, and tasty veggie recipies.

I planted a lot of beans and peas a little over a week ago, and just about all of them are up and going already - the only variety that failed to germinate was the Marrow Fat dry bush bean. Everything else, from the family favorite Mississippi Silver peas to the Yellow Wax beans, came up very quickly.

In the meantime, the garlic is still curing in the potting shed:

Here's the deal with the garlic. This year, it didn't yield nearly as well as I had hoped and the harsh truth is that that is partly my fault. Growing techniques that worked for the garlic on a smaller scale did not translate to this year's larger planting. Dealing with failure is a painful process, but it's a necessary one - unless we fail, we don't really learn. I could launch into an extraordinarily long-winded discussion of that process, fueled by my experiences as a designer and artist and now farmer, but it just boils down to the fact that when you fail, you suck it up, figure out what you did wrong, and figure out what you can do better next time.

It also helps if you take failure as a personal insult. I've got a plan for next year - we're going to plant about 30% less garlic, but we're (well, I'm) going to get really scientific about it. I'm talking "mad scientist" level here, y'all. Because the last thing I'm going to do is let one year's worth of mistakes keep me from figuring out how to grow the best garlic possible.

So what does all this mean for the short term? It means that although we have less garlic than we thought we would, we still have more for sale than we did last year, and that is progress. And of course, nothing beats the taste of fresh, organic garlic! The Spanish Roja has been hanging for two weeks so far and the rest for a little over a week, so we're getting close to having it cured enough to bring to market. I'll be assessing it later in the week and making a decision then - if not this weekend, we'll definitely have it for the 4th of July weekend market! Curing is important because it allows the garlic's flavor to concentrate while the bulb wrappers dry out and essentially seal the tender cloves in to protect from spoilage when stored. Not that any of this garlic is going to be stored long-term...I'm pretty sure it'll all be eaten by the end of the summer!

And speaking of summer...Happy Summer Solstice!

Hello friends,

Everyone who signed up for the mailing list during the Farm Tour should now be added. Our thanks go out to all of you - not only those who were able to come out to support sustainable agriculture in South Carolina this past weekend but also those of you who were only able to be with us in spirit! We'll be in touch with market updates and other farm-related news throughout the summer. The market emails go out between 5 and 8 p.m. on Fridays so you'll know what we have available at the market the following morning.

In the meantime, we hope to see you at the Carolina First Saturday Market this summer, held every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. And as always, please don't hesitate to contact us with any questions!

Meredith Mizell
Red Fern Farm

Contact us:
(864) 876-2392
katherine@redfernfarms.com

If you wrote your email address down on our sign-up sheet last weekend but did not receive the above email, please contact me at katherine@redfernfarms.com with your name and email address, or sign up for the mailing list online here.

A brief post before I hit the showers and then the sack: thank you so much to each and every one of you who came out during the CFSA Upstate Farm Tour this weekend, and special thanks to Mary and Anna, the two volunteers who were with us handling check-in! We wish we'd had more time to speak with everyone individually, but there was such a fabulous turnout that we kept busy pretty much the entire weekend. But we hope that you were able to learn more about our farm and as always, if you have any questions we didn't have a chance to answer, don't hesitate to contact us!

Also, if you visit us at the market, we'll probably remember your faces (and even topics of conversation) but might not remember all the names that go with them - so please do remind us because we want to make sure we know!

I'm working on getting the recipes from this weekend typed up to post on the website, and I'll also be entering names and email addresses in our mailing list database. In the meantime, we'll continue to harvest garlic to have at the Carolina First Saturday Market as soon as it's cured, and of course get all those peppers in the greenhouse in the ground! And after the amazing response to the herbal snowcones this weekend, we'll absolutely be working to develop more flavors (my brother is lobbying heavily for "blueberry-thyme" - pun intended) and figure out what we need to do facilities-wise to begin offering those at the market. We may need to rent out a certified kitchen to make the syrups, but if we don't get it all lined up this summer, we'll have it all squared away and ready to go for next summer!

Again, it was so wonderful to see so many familiar faces and make so many new friends - we had a blast and we hope you did too! We can't wait to do it again next year.

I've been talking with a lot of folks at the market about growing conditions for the herb and vegetable starts that we sell and they'll often mention to me that in previous years, they haven't had good luck with certain crops - particularly basil. Upon hearing this, my first question is: are you growing in the ground or in containers? And if the answer is in containers, my second question is: how often are you fertilizing? Nine times out of ten, I get a shocked look and a hesitant admission of "...Never?" The answer I should be hearing is "Once every week or two!"

Forget container size, forget different potting soils, even forget hours of sunlight: in my opinion, the most important element of successful container gardening is FERTILIZER!

Commercial potting soils are sterilized to eliminate weed seeds, fungal spores, plant-borne diseases, and insect eggs, which is of tremendous benefit when starting seeds. However, sterile potting soil lacks the nutrients that you would find in fertile soil. So for plants to thrive and eventually bear fruit in containers, they need the nutrients they would find in nature - primarily, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (or NPK). Fertilizers contain these three primary nutrients, along with others, in varying concentrations.

I won't get into an analysis of the different kinds of fertilizers available commercially - and there are many - because for us, only one will do: fish emulsion. Sometimes called "liquid fish," fish emulsion is a natural fertilizer created from the unusued parts of fish after they've been processed for oil or meat. In addition to NPK, fish emulsion also contains micronutrients that plants need - you've heard about how beneficial cod liver oil can be for humans? Well, plants love fish too. Think too about those stories about Native American planting techniques that we all learned in elementary school, and how they taught the Pilgrims to bury dead fish in the soil when they sowed their crops. Nevermind that said fish (and fish emulsion) can get pretty ripe...the plants don't mind, and you can just breathe through your mouth for the minute it takes to mix up a watering can of fertilizer.

Fish emulsion is a water-soluble fertilizer - that is, you pour a "glob" of it (that's the technical term, by the way) into your watering can, fill with water, and swish it around to dissolve the fertilizer in the water. Once that's done, you can water your plants normally. Aside from the natural benefits of the fish emulsion, we prefer a liquid fertilizer because it's quickly absorbed by the roots of the plants, making the nutrients readily available. It's best to give the plants a drink of water about 10 minutes before you fertilize to minimize the chance of the fertilizer "burning" the roots. (But I freely admit that I rarely follow this dictum because the fish emulsion I use is pretty mild to begin with.)

Be sure to read the instructions on your particular bottle of fish emulsion, since different brands come at different strengths. (The lower the NPK number, the milder the fertilizer - for instance, 1-1-1 is very mild, but 5-5-5 is much stronger and should be used more sparingly & less frequently.)

I fertilize my container-grown plants (basil, tomatoes, chard, elephant ears, zucchini, etc.) with fish emulsion once a week. Perennial herbs in containers should be fertilized only every month or so - their growing requirements are not nearly as intense as those of annuals. With such a regular fertilizing schedule, I'm careful to avoid over-fertilizing - I go a little easy on my "glob" of fish emulsion and dilute it thoroughly in a 2-gallon watering can. In my experience, it's hard to over-fertilize basil and tomatoes with fish emulsion, but I'm sure it is possible. Peppers are a little more sensitive, and herbs like parsley and dill really don't need to be fertilized more often than every two weeks. (Again, I freely admit that I sometimes fertilize the herbs more often than that and they're perfectly happy and rather on the gargantuan side of things.) But the basil? Whack it regularly and fertilize it weekly and you're set. I harvested half a pound of basil from only 3 plants the other night after following that regimen for a while.

If you're going a little heavy on the fertilizer, you'll see a lot of foliage growth but few flowers. If you're not fertilizing often enough, the plant will begin to turn yellow, slow its growth, and eventually die because it can't get the nutrients it needs to survive. As you might have surmised by now, I prefer to err on the side of more fertilizer. But fish emulsion is extremely forgiving because it's natural, mild, and balanced - I definitely couldn't get away with my current fertilization habits with synthetic super-powered fertilizers like MiracleGro with ratios of 18-18-21. (I just looked that up on their website and my eyes nearly bugged out of my head. That's overkill, folks, and synthetic overkill at that.)

There are a number of OMRI-listed brands of fish emulsion available that are approved for organic production - try your local garden center or a store like Lowe's or Home Depot to find bottles of the concentrate. If you don't have any luck in those places, there are a number of fish emulsion brands available online (and it's well worth it). We use enough of it both in the garden and on the pasture that we've graduated to 55-gallon barrels of the stuff. But a quart will go a long way unless you've got a substantial container garden!

I'll try to post some pictures of my container garden later in the week, as I've left my camera at the farm for now. Then you too can bask in the glory of my elephant ears, which impressed even my mother, the Master Gardener!

Just a reminder: next weekend is the 2010 CFSA Upstate Farm Tour! We're one of the stops this year and we couldn't be more excited (and a little bit freaked out by all the prep still to do!).

We'll have a couple of different areas of interest featured next weekend, and the first, of course, is the garden and greenhouse. You'll be able to purchase plants - we'll have plenty of basil, parsley, and heirloom tomatoes as usual - and produce as you would at the market. I'll also be on hand to explain how we use sustainable and organic production methods in the garden, answer gardening questions, and give a little explanation of our vermicomposting system for those interested. The worm compost we make is one of the two natural+organic fertilizers we use in the garden. I've been using it to top dress the tomatoes at planting and they are loving it. The San Marzanos are more like "Monster Marzanos" because they so insanely stocky this year.

We'll also be conducting hayrides out into the pasture at intervals so you can see our sheep and hear from my dad about the livestock operation. Donkeys, llamas, and cows are also out in the pasture in different areas so you'll see some of them as well!

And it just wouldn't be a party without some food and drinks - under the oak tree at the house, we'll have a spread of goodies for you to sample and learn more about cooking with our Tunis lamb and herbs from the garden. We're planning on having braised lamb shoulder and baked lamb meatballs to showcase two different cuts of lamb, herbed crackers and spreads, and of course some fresh-brewed sweet tea with mint! My mom will be on hand for some handspinning demonstrations and we'll have her wonderful handspun yarn and our Tunis wool blankets available for sale.

So we've got a lot going on, and we hope you'll be able to visit! In the meantime, we've got to get the garlic harvested over the next day or so AND start prep for all that delicious food, so it's going to be a busy week to say the least. But very much worth it in the end.

For more details about the Farm Tour, visit the CFSA website. You can also download the Farm Tour brochure here for the location map and descriptions of each stop on the tour.

After an extremely hot day in the garden yesterday, last night's thunderstorms and the associated inch of rainfall were quite welcome. The ground was too wet to plant more tomatoes and zucchini this morning, but we took care of some other farm chores instead. Now the cucumbers have been tied onto the trellises and mulched, both rows of tomatoes in the front garden have been mulched, and another five flats of Greco basil are freshly potted up. The back garden is looking nice and tidy now,

although there are still three or four more rows' worth of zucchini to be planted when the soil dries out a bit. The sugar snap peas are trying to make a vertical escape - some of the plants are over 6' tall now! I harvested over five pounds of peas on Saturday, and there are plenty more where that came from.

Also growing like crazy is our potato experiment:

We knew we weren't going to have room in the garden this year for any kind of potato patch, so, as we're wont to do, we decided to play mad scientist. One encounter with a saw later, this empty fish emulsion drum became two huge containers for seed potatoes. There's no way of knowing what kind of yield we'll get with this method, but the plants themselves certainly are happy! If this scheme bears fruit (har har har), I'm envisioning a whole row of drum halves lined up in the back garden for next year.

In the front garden, there are little baby tomatoes appearing on the plants we put in the ground two weeks ago:

It's easy to forget that it's still very early in the season. Last year we lost so much time trying to grow lettuce and greens that we were behind schedule when it came to the actual vegetable crops, and we were playing catch-up for the rest of the season. This year, we're right on schedule, but we still have to remind ourselves of that fact! I have a spectacular talent for worrying, particularly when it comes to the garlic: is it making bulbs? Is it getting enough water? Is it getting too much water? What about fertilizer? When is it going to be ready to harvest? Garlic is a crop that is a little more mysterious than most - with tomatoes, the answers to those questions are obvious. If the plants are nice and green, they have plenty of nutrients. If there are flowers and tomatoes forming, they're developing just fine. If the plants are looking wilted, they need some water. If the tomato is red/yellow/purple/etc. and firm but with a little give, it's ready to harvest.

Not so with garlic! The only obvious signs of development are plant size and scape production (but only on certain varieties) - to know more, you have to dig a plant, and that means one less plant to harvest! But the trade-off is that you gather information about what's going on below the surface. By digging a garlic plant at this point, I can tell how moist the soil is around the roots, how big the bulbs are, how many of the all-important wrappers are still intact, and so on. It's a small sacrifice, but at least I've got some fresh garlic for dinner tonight!

(And for the record: the Spanish Roja, at the very least, is putting on some very nice bulb development and is starting to throw out some scapes.)

The cabbage is looking good, and I feel bad that I haven't had time to fertilize it in the past week. Cabbage is a heavy feeder and it would no doubt be even happier with a dosing of fish emulsion. I can practically taste the cole slaw when I look at that photo!

Another monster plant right now is the culinary lavender right outside the greenhouse door. It's really taken off this year and is about ready to flower:

I'm thinking lavender-infused sugar, or maybe some lavender simple syrup to pour over some freshly shaved ice for an afternoon treat.

And now I need to go whip up a couple of batches of garlic scape pesto! Scapes are hands down my favorite taste of spring.

We've had our first garlic scape sighting! I ran out of time this morning, so the photo above is from last year's market, where our garlic scapes were a hot ticket item. A scape is the flowering stalk of a garlic plant and emerges a few weeks before the bulb is mature. At first they curl in on themselves and look totally alien and rather whimsical; as the bulbil containing the garlic "seeds" grows, the scape thickens and eventually unfurls to stand straight up. Or at least that's what would happen without human intervention - it turns out that garlic scapes are delicious and cutting them before they unfurl also contributes to bulb growth since the developing bulbil shunts energy from the rest of the plant.

Garlic scapes are fantastic sauteed in butter or as part of stir fry, but the preparation that really gets my mouth watering is garlic scape pesto spooned over a bowl of hot pasta and garnished with grated Parmigiano. We offered the pesto recipe at the market last year and will do so again this year (and of course I'll be posting it on the website too). It's a great recipe to make and freeze in ice cube trays for later in the year when you need a little taste of spring.

The shearers arrived this past Wednesday to shear the sheep, throwing our garden schedule into chaos, but at least that's one more task we can check off of the list! Having the shearers here is always fun because even though the work is hot and dirty, everyone knows there's a huge dinner and good conversation to look forward once night falls. Now it falls to me and Mom to skirt the wool before we can send it off for processing - another hot and dirty task, but the results are well worth it since it means roving for her to spin and yarn for me to knit when the garden winds down in the fall.

I ate the first few sugar snap peas out of the garden this morning, and they were so sweet and crunchy. The pea plants have summited the cattle panel trellises and show no signs of stopping, so of course I went ahead and fertilized them this weekend for kicks. We've experimented with a lot of different types of makeshift trellises over the years from bamboo poles to chicken wire, but the cattle panels are by far the best we've tried so far.

The onions and cabbage are still looking good, and I managed to get another 60 or so Big Italy plants in the ground this morning before starting in on the zucchini. We've got some interesting varieties this year, including one called "Eight Ball" which is shaped like - you guessed it - an eight ball and is good for stuffing. Mom and I are thinking a ricotta and ground lamb mixture would be pretty tasty...

This weekend at the market I picked up a container of "Summer Garden" chevre from the Spinning Spider Creamery booth, and it is delicious. I just finished baking some homemade crackers to use as a vehicle for that creamy goat cheese goodness; it's a perfect light summer dinner. Buying from other vendors is one of my favorite aspects of the market, and I'm especially looking forward to the blackberries and sweet corn later in the summer!

One last thing before I go fix another batch of that pasta with green garlic sauce we've got posted on the website (this time with black olives and prosciutto!): we now have a facebook page, so check it out!