Pictures and Update

Ok, so these pictures don't look like much, but that is because there is not much to look at. Everything is way behind where it should be this time of the year. But hopefully things will be improving very soon. Of coarse we started off with all of almost continuous rain which pushed planting way back. Then about 2 weeks after planted had started I began to realize that things were just not growing like they should, and many plants were showing signs of soil deficiencies, I did a soil test and discovered the soil was very much depleted of nitrogen and phosphorus, not good. After finding out how bad this soil was I had really wished I would have sent in a soil sample (or even just tested it myself) before I had began planting. Anyhow, it is too late to worry about it. I fertilized everything and plan to fertilize again either tomorrow or Friday, depending on when the weather allows me. After the first time I fertilized I did see some improvements and hope to see lots of improvements after I fertilize again. And I have already been thinking about how to improve the soil for next year with manure and organic matter and possibly cover crop.

I am going to have to take some better, up close pictures of things once the get growing really well. But for now I just wanted to post some pictures, so these will have to do.

If you look closely you can just barely see some scallions up front and row of greens (kale, swiss chard, kohlrabi, and collards) behind them.

Rows of beans and to the left some sweet peppers.
This picture is about a week old so everything is bigger now, I will have to get a new better picture soon.

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The Valley City Farmers Market should actually be starting this Saturday June 25th. Unfortunately as of today it does not look like we will be attending it. I hate missing a market day but we just do not have much to make it worth attending. I am thinking and really hoping that we should be able to attend the next market, and I will be sure to let everyone know.

What a terrible year, unable to attend a June 25th farmers market day because we just do not have anything to sell, so sad.

No More Rain Please

Sadly the area pictured above is actually where my lettuce needs to get planted. A little wet wouldn't you say? I am really starting to wonder if I am ever going to be able to get my lettuce seeds planted. It better stop raining before the end of the month so I can get them seeds in the ground without worrying about the seeds rotting or washing away. Of coarse first of all it has to dry out enough to be able to get tilled.

My Christmas Gifts

Don't worry everyone I have not fallen off the face of the earth, yet anyhow. December is always a really crazy month, and I usually do not post much during that month, but apparently this year I decided I was not going to post anything at all. So now I guess I have to make up for it.

Anyhow on to my Christmas gifts. I got two things this year that I have wanted for a while and could really use, but have never actually purchased myself. One is a halogen light, which I am so excited about. In the past I have used a bunch of other forms of lighting to help me get some extra work and picking done at night. But nothing ever really seemed to be bright enough. So I have really been wanting to get a halogen light since they are so much brighter than anything else I have used before. I am not sure why I have not just bought one myself before, after all they are not that expensive, and are far worth the investment. But it does not matter because I now have one and know it will for sure come in handy. I did not get to take a picture of my halogen light because it is currently out in the hoophouse, since I just came in to take a break from working out there. And since I am taking a break I did not feel like going out there to get a picture of it.

My second Christmas gift that I got which I am very excited about is a really nice big dehydrator. I usually dehydrate a lot of vegetables and have always wanted a nice big dehydrator that can dehydrate tomatoes faster than 4 or 5 days with a lot of rotating.

My New Dehydrator

I have always wanted to dehydrate vegetables and herbs to sell. I just have never been able to dry enough in my old dehydrator with no fan or temperature settings to be able to sell. I can also very easily dry my homemade noodle in it much easier than my old one.

There are so many things that can be dried in this dehydrator! On the top of the dehydrator there a bunch of things listed with their drying temperatures, which include: Herbs, Living Foods (not exactly sure I want to know what living foods are, but I can assure you I will not be drying anything living in my dehydrator), Raising Bread, Making Yogurt, Vegetables, Fruits/Fruit Rolls, Meats/Fish, and Jerky. I can hardly wait to really get to use it and see how quickly I can dry things that would take me forever before.

BA Farm Thanksgiving

I am very proud to say that everything that was part of our Thanksgiving diner was grown by us, except for the turkey. Here is what we had:

Pumpkin Bread Stuffing
(I made my stuffing a little different this year I will post exactly how I made it soon)

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Our Frozen Bi-color Sweet Corn

Our Frozen Green and Yellow Beans

Mixed Colors Candy Carrots

Butternut Squash and Apples

Beets

Even our centerpiece was grown by us. I made it using a one of our pumpkins (as a candle holder), and everything else I cut from outside. I love making centerpieces, and can not wait to start making my Christmas center pieces out of our many different varieties of pine trees that we have everywhere.

I hope everyone had a very wonderful
Happy Thanksgiving!

Radishes, Radishes, Radishes

I have lots and lots of radishes right now that are ready to harvest.
So here are the varieties of radishes that I have right now.

Saxa II Radishes

I think that these are my favorite regular red radishes. They are a very gorgeous red color. The reason why I got the seeds for these radishes is because they are suppose to mature earlier than other radish varieties, and they were the first to mature out of all the varieties.

Crimson Giant Radishes
I do not think this variety is at its full size yet, at least it better not be at full size yet. They are suppose to be giant radishes, but they are actually the smallest out of all my radishes. Obviously they must take longer to reach maturity than other varieties.


Sparkler Radishes
These are cute little radishes with similar coloration as the French Breakfast
Radishes, except instead of being long they are round.


French Breakfast Radishes
I grew these radishes last year and sold them at Valley City Farmers Market, and everyone really seemed to love them. They can still get a little larger yet, but are already really tasty right now at this size.

Now all I need is for my lettuce in the hoop house to be ready for harvest so i can have some beautiful salads with my lettuce, greens, and radishes!

Homemade Pasta

I recently bought some homemade pasta, and it was way better than store bought. So of course it got me thinking, the ingredients were so simple, flour and eggs. I had to make my own. So I did, and of coarse I could not just make plain old pasta. The first kind that I made was garlic pasta, and this past weekend I made a lemon balm pasta.

The lemon balm really did make the pasta very beautiful. Once it was cooked it lost a lot of the lemony taste though. Next time I make this pasta or any kind of herb pasta, I plan on making the noodles a little thinner, they should not need to be cooked as long and then hopefully will keep more of its flavor.

Homemade Lemon Balm Pasta

I also plan to make beet pasta, possibly some type of tomato pasta, a pepper pasta, swiss chard pasta, a kale pasta once my kale is ready to harvest, a mustard green pasta, and maybe even a carrot pasta. I wish I had some fresh basil right now to use in a pasta. I could just imagine a pasta made out of both purple basil and regular green basil, what a beautiful pasta that would be. Although if I make a swiss chard pasta that should be colorful also with both the green and red leaves.

I think the next type of pasta that I make will be made with mustard greens. I am just so curious as to what that would taste like. Will be sure to let everyone know how they all turn out.

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Everything in the hoop house is starting to come along pretty good now. I am hoping to be able to begin harvesting as soon as next week, if not it should be the week after. I should have been picking everything awhile ago now, if I would have actually planted everything when I was suppose to, oh well. I will have to post some pictures very soon.

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I tried to take a picture of a very amazing sun set, and since my camera does not take the greatest pictures at night (or if it does I have no idea how to take one) the picture ended up looking kind of wild. Yes the sky was very orange, but not quite as orange as it appears in the picture, but still it kind of a cool picture.

Farmers Market Pictures

Ok so I just realized that it has been a long time since my last blog post. It has been kind of busy lately. So I just thought that I would post some pictures from Saturdays farmers market in Valley City.

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

A bunch of round zucchini and some other things.

Since we had so much left after market we decided to set up our roadside stand.

Zucchini Bread is Finally Here!

Today's market will be the first market this year that I will have zucchini bread available. It is a lot later than normal, but that is because we are just now starting to harvest zucchini. Every year at the start of the market we have people asking for our zucchini bread, so everyone should be happy to here it is finally available.

I just thought I would tell everyone exactly where I got my recipe for the zucchini bread from. It is actually my grandmothers recipe. I can remember eating this bread when I was a kid and I always loved it! I actually never made it myself till after my grandmother passed away. I was going through her recipes and I came across the recipe, just thinking about it brought back memories from my childhood, I had to make it. I just wish my grandmother could see how popular her zucchini bread has become.

Zucchini Bread in the oven

Believe it or not the zucchini bread is just now in the oven as I am typing this. I rarely ever start making it before midnight on Friday night. I am just to busy before that picking and getting market things together. I have even made it in the past about 4 hours before market.

Zucchini Bread just out of the oven

Colored Carrots!

Baby Colored Carrots

So today I decided I would weed the carrot beds. I really have not looked closely at them since the last time I weeded them, and I was very happy to see how much they have grown since then. They still have a way to go but are getting there. I should have orange bunches, white bunches, purple bunches, and mixed bunches of yellow, red, orange, purple, and white. I am hoping that we will have some available sometime around either early or mid August.


There are many interesting facts about colored carrots, here are some of them:

~ Just one full size carrot will fulfill your daily quotient of the essential vitamin A.

~ Each color of carrot has a different health benefit of its own:

*Orange carrots - contain beta carotene pigments - essential for well-being, healthy eyes
*Red carrots - contain lycopene pigments - believed to guard against heart disease and cancers
*Yellow carrots - contain xanthophylls pigments - support good eye health, fight aginst macular degeneration, may prevent lung and other cancers, and reduce the risk of hardening of the arteries
*White carrots - lack pigments - but contain substances called phytomchemicals - can protect against disease
*Purple carrots - contain anthocyanins pigments - act as powerful antioxidants, can prevent heart disease by slowing blood clotting and are good anti inflammatory agents

~ Colored carrots may be new to some people but purple and yellow carrots were actually eaten more than 1,000 years ago.

~ In fact orange carrots are actually the "mutant" carrot, carrots were originally purple and yellow.

~ Carrots are a member of the parsley family, along with dill, caraway, cumin, chervil, coriander, fennel, anise, parsley, parsnip, and celery.

~ There are so many different carrot varieties that there is actually a variety for every letter of the alphabet.

~ Carrots could be used as a bio fuel, you would need approximately 6,000 carrots to drive one mile. (That is a lot of carrots, sounds to me like the idea needs some work).

Some New Veggies For This Year

Since I was sitting here early this morning with not much to do since we are not going to market, I figured I would take the time to post some pictures of a couple of new vegetables we grew this year, that we should have available very soon.

Jimmy Nardello Italian Sweet Pepper

Yes that's right this is not a hot pepper but actually a sweet pepper. And I think it is one of the sweetest sweet peppers I have ever tasted. It is great for just snacking on. I had a hard time controling myself from eating all of the ones that I picked right away. I wanted to save some of them for a stir fry, but instead I think I am going to use them for my vegetable pancakes this morning. These peppers have a very mild pepper taste and can be eaten seeds and all, just take a bite!

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Dragon Tongue Beans

This is another one that I am really excited about. They are Dragon Tongue Beans, and they have got to be the tastiest, juiciest beans I have ever tasted. Well, raw that is I have not actually tasted them cooked yet, but will be soon. I only grew a small area of these since it was my first time growing them. But I am going to be putting in another seed order for the spring, for some things that I ran out of, and will for sure be ordering more of these. Should be able to get some more plantings in once I get the seeds.

These beans can also be used for shelling as dried beans. In fact if I have a large area where one of my summer crops have failed (which it looks like I will) I may plant a bunch of these for drying.

The only down side to these beautiful beans is they loose their purple color when cooked, which is ok because they still end up a beautiful yellow which is still different than the common green.

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Well I do have more pictures to share but I think that is going to be all for now.

About the Header Photo

Do you know what this is a picture of? It is actually a type of cherry tomato, in a way, actually I am not sure exactly what kind of tomato it is considered. This tomato is like a whole bunch of cherry tomatoes fused together, that are suppose to easily pull apart without a problem. I was so excited to see these tomatoes start to develop, this is the first time I have grown this variety, and I think it is going to be pretty cool.

A little bit about the Reisetomate Tomato
Also called "Traveler Tomato" ("reise" is German for "travel" or "journey") for the ability to tear it apart a piece at a time, with no need for a knife. This type of tomato traces its roots to Central America where the native people would carry traveler tomatoes on trips, to eat as they walked. Bright red tomatoes taste-well, rather sour, strong and acid. The perfect tomato for those who love raw lemons, but who cares? They are still far-out and groovy.
-From Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds Catalog

Bad part is these tomatoes, and all my tomatoes, are really far behind. The weather has had a big impact on almost all of our warm weather crops. Well, that is the way it goes, sometimes you win, sometimes you loose, but better late than never, right?

That being said, the new header picture pretty much sums up what is going on here at BA Farm. Things are coming along, but are way behind.

Reisetomate Tomato

Basil Varieties

I am very excited about all the different varieties of basil I have available this year. The varieties are: Sweet Basil, Lemon Basil, Licorice Basil, Cinnamon Basil, Opal Basil, and Blue Spice Basil.

Sweet Basil

Lemon Basil
I just made chicken and pasta with this basil an also some lemon balm. It was wonderful. I will be posting the recipe very soon.

Licorice Basil

Cinnamon Basil
Looks very very similar to Licorice Basil, in fact I apologize to anyone ahead of time just in case I mix up the two when tagging them in the bunches. My sense of smell is not the greatest to I have a hard time telling the two apart.

Opal Basil

Blue Spice Basil
I have not gotten a chance to cook with this one at all yet, but it smells really beautiful. I think it is my favorite smelling basil.


The above varieties of basil will be available in bunches.
I have one more variety of basil that I also grew this year called Pistou Basil. It is a very small, very cute basil that is perfect for pinching off individual leaves and throwing them in a salad or cooking in your favorite dish. These basils are sold in pots.

Pistou Basil

While looking up some information on basils I came across a really good site with a lot, and I mean a lot of information on what must be every type of basil that there is. I would love to grow them all, of coarse that would take a very long time, but there are definitely a bunch of different kinds that I would like to try next year. The site is: romanasbasilgarden.com/basil-list

Micro Greens Coming Soon

Micro Greens

I have been meaning to start a bunch of micro greens for some time now, but have not gotten to it. Well yesterday I finally started a bunch of them. I am hoping to have them ready for this Saturdays market for in my salad mixes and for selling in the containers they are grown in.

Arugula Micro Greens Just Sprouting

I stared many different varieties for in my spicy salad mix such as: broccoli, radishes, a large red mustard, and arugula. I also started two types of onions, one red and one white. Last week I did not have any greens for in my Greens and Lettuce Salad Mix, since my hoop house has now become too hot for the greens. Well this Saturday I should have the Greens and Lettuce Salad Mix available again thanks to my micro greens, since I planted collards and three types of kale. I think I will be starting some swiss chard soon also for in the mix. I also started some Sweet Basil, which will be a good addition to my Herb and Lettuce Salad Mix.

Radish Micro Greens Just Sprouting

I also started a mix of arugula, radishes, mustards, and broccoli in the same container, that I should have available for sale, in the container, as a spicy micro green mix.

Salad Mixes

This past Saturdays market we had a very good variety of different salad mixes available. We should have all the different mixes and maybe even some more mixes available for this coming Saturdays market.

You can see pictures and information about all the different mixes at our website, salad mixes page.

Our salad mixes are:
~ Just Lettuce Salad Mix
~ Looseleaf Lettuce Salad Mix
~ Spicy Salad Mix
~ Lettuce and Greens Salad Mix
~ Lettuce and Romaine Salad Mix
~ Lettuce and Herb Salad Mix
~ Ark of Taste Salad Mix

Farmers Market Pictures

This Saturday was our third market of the year (at Valley City Farmers Market) and I finally got some pictures from the market to post, and here they are:

Bagged Salad Mixes (Just Lettuce Mix, Spicy Salad Mix, Lettuce and Greens Salad Mix, and Ark of Taste Lettuce Mix)

The Just Lettuce Mix contains only lettuce. This week the lettuce mixes included: Royal Red, Red Sails, Black Seeded Simpson, Grandpa Admire's, Speckled, Tennis Ball, Mascara, and Bronze Arrowhead Lettuce.

Spicy Salad Mix includes lettuce and mustard greens.

Lettuce and Greens Mix includes, lettuce such as: Black Seeded Simpson and Red Sails
Greens such as: Bulls Blood Beet Greens, Swiss Chard, Red Russian Kale, Dinosaur Kale,
and some others

Ark of Taste Lettuce Mix is a mix of four different varieties of lettuce that are on the Ark of Taste List. They are Grandpa Admire's Lettuce, Speckled Lettuce, Tennis Ball Lettuce, and Amish Deer Tongue Lettuce.

I will be posting again soon with more information and pictures of the different varieties of lettuce that we had available this Saturday.

Mustard Greens and a Bunch of Collards (in the middle)

This was our third week that we have had mustard greens available. We have five very different varieties available. The bunches are put together at market so you can choose which varieties you want or you can get a bunch with a mix of all the different varieties. We also had a salad mix available this week with mustard greens in it, this mix was our Spicy Salad Mix, "Spicy" because of the spicy taste of the mustard greens. The mustard greens add a very good flavor to the salad.

Mixed Kale Bunches and Swiss Chard Bunches

Kale bunches include three different varieties: Red Russian Kale, Dinosaur Kale, and Dwarf Blue Scotch Curled Kale. Swiss Chard bunches are made up of many mixed varieties and colors. Not only are the swiss chard beautiful but they are also very, very tender and tasty.

New Visitor to our Pond and Wildlife Pictures

Before we get to our pond visitor and the other pics, lets play a little game. Can you guess what this picture is? The answer is at the end of this post.

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Here is our most recent visitor and hopefully a permanent resident to our pond. I love turtles and have wished we had one at our pond for a while now. Although i have to admit, when i first saw him i got nervous. I got worried that he may be a snapper and did not really want a snapper living at our pond. But I was very relieved and excited when we found out he was not a snapper! He is kind of shy and takes off into the pond whenever he sees anyone. We are going to have to get a flat log and put it by his spot (yes he has a spot, in the sun, in a grass free area, with a gradual slope up from the water, this is where we always see him) so he can climb up out of the water onto it. I hope he sticks around!


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Baby Ducks

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A Chickadee Nest Inside the Tree

So I was waling around the back taking pictures when I thought I heard what sounded like Chickadees in on of the pear trees. I started looking around for a nest, when I realized that the Chickadee noises were indeed coming from in the tree. There are many holes in this particular pear tree. Sure enough when I was standing right there the mom Chickadee came to feed her babies. She went inside the hole that she is sitting in in the picture above. I took the picture when she was coming out of the hole.

I know we have lots of Chickadees around, they must like to nest in our old holey pear trees. Makes me feel bad for wanting to chop some of them down to replace them with new non-rotting trees.

Anyhow it seemed so funny to hear the little noises coming from down inside the tree.


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Answer:
No, it was not a picture of the lockness monster. Nor was it a picture of a beaver. It was actually a picture of three baby ducks diving under the water, below is the picture of them after they came back up, well that goes for two of them, the third still has its head under water.