A little weeding...

Last year, the farm was aesthetically pleasing for most of the season. The rows were (mostly) neat and tidy, and we were proud to show it off. This year, it’s quite aesthetically displeasing. Yet, despite the weeds, it’s been a good year so far, so we’re just not going to worry about what it looks like this season.

We did, however, need to clear out one spot, or risk losing our celery, which Jason started from seed in February and tended to for weeks before we transplanted it in June.

This was the sitch on Sunday morning:

Believe it or not, there were four rows of tiny celery in this mess, as well as rosemary.

We pulled a few weeds by lunchtime. Haha!

Getting better. The celery looks droopy because it literally hasn’t experienced full sun in weeks.

Way in the back, there was a section of celery that was a lost cause. Some kind of grass that was nearly impossible to pull had taken hold (and was no joke 4 feet tall!). We salvaged any celery we could from that section and transplanted it. Then, we mowed the grass down. The celery and rosemary are tucked all snug in straw and getting a long watering. On the far left, you see heirloom tomatoes.

Here’s proof that we do crawl out from under the weeds every now and then. Fingernails mostly clean. We had my best friend and her children stay with us last week, and she took Silas and her boys on an adventure day. We declared that we were wrapping up farm work in the morning and doing something fun — just the two of us. We checked out Davenport Fruit Farm Cidery and Winery — what a cool place! It was so nice to relax for a few peaceful hours. And, yes, we spent much of that time talking about… the farm!

And I’ll close things out with a tomato photo because we’re elbows deep in tomatoes right now. Enjoy the rest of your August. Nights are getting cooler. School’s about to start and we’re half way through the CSA season.

~ Stella

The plan for Season 8 - continue to be frugal, start setting limits on work hours

We’re now eight work days out from Jason leaving his full-time job. It might seem like a time for radical rethinking of farm revenue, but for two reasons this December isn’t much different than past years.

For one, the farm’s functioned for seven years now, and Jason’s meticulously tracked our yearly progress. Because of this, the adjustments we need to make on paper to prepare for the season are predictable. We’ll fill in details over the next few weeks, then it’s time to order seeds and start indoor seeding by late January.

The second reason we aren’t in a frenzied restructuring mode is that the farm will not be our sole source of income. Initially, our plan was to ramp the CSA back up to 75 members, as it was in Season 5, and attend three farmers markets a week. We also laid the groundwork with another regional retailer and planned to stock our produce there.

Over the summer, our plans for Season 8 shifted significantly when Jason started his grant-writing/project managing business, Spark Community Capital. This venture uses his decade of knowledge in this field, and lets him control his own schedule. It also provides a new income stream for our family and shifts pressure off the farm.

With this change, we decided to continue with an approximately 50-member CSA (this will once again include several free shares in our Give & Grown program). We’ll also be applying to attend one farmers market this year - the Meadville Market House on Saturdays.

Prior to the pandemic, we attended three farmers markets a week with the help of a part-time employee. In those days, we set up two days a week at the Titusville Open Air Market, and one day at the Market House. The Titusville market is wonderful, and helped us tremendously in our earliest years. But for the time being, we’re cutting back to the one market for two reasons.

The first reason is time. The day before any farmers market is spent harvesting, washing, and packing everything we plan to sell. In order to harvest enough to make the market worth our while, this process takes a whole day. Our goal is a table with a minimum of $300 of produce. A table with $400 of produce that we sell in about four hours would be a good day. More than that would be a great day. Then, of course, we spend a good portion of the following day actually at the market, setting up, selling, and closing down.

So a trip to the farmers market is about a day and a half of labor. The more markets we attend, the less time we have in the field or doing something entirely different, which brings me to the second reason.

We’ve decided that we no longer want our family going in different directions on Saturdays. We want to enjoy Saturdays during the growing season together. To make this happen, we’ll make all CSA deliveries on Thursdays (in the late afternoon/early evening), and then we can all be at the farmers market together.

We’re excited about this because the farmers market is a lot of fun, and so is downtown Meadville on a Saturday morning. Visiting with people who value local, no-spray produce, and the rainbow of foods NW Pa. provides, is rewarding for a farmer. It’s also good for a gardener’s soul to chat with fellow farmers. When much of your weekly conversation is the overheard humming of bees, the social connection is much appreciated.

Jason’s looking forward to it because he hasn’t had the opportunity to work a market regularly in all his years farming. He and Silas used to pop in to visit me as they passed through on CSA deliveries, and I know neither one of them ever wanted to get back on the road again.

There’s something special in the air at a farmers market. The ones in this area are small, not the endless stretches that sprout in larger cities. While I’m sure big markets are wonders to behold, little markets are cozy. Everyone knows everyone, and they’re easy to navigate. You’re doing right by your health and your community when you visit a market, big or small.

In 2022, we plan to continue selling to Core Goods, in Oil City, and Edinboro Market. These unique shops fill their shelves with local products and are important to small farms like ours.

We also plan to continue selling online via our website.

While our circumstances will change dramatically in 2022, our goal is not to push ourselves to our limits. We’ve done that for seven years. We also spent the last few years paying off our debts and developing a frugal lifestyle anchored by minimalist tenets. We did all this to essentially gain our freedom from the traditional work model, which structures a life around working for someone else and often leaves only crumbs of time (if that, even) for your family, your life, and your community.*

While this year feels experimental, it does not feel scary. Like any experiment, it could fail. But we believe in our hypothesis and we’ll tinker with it as needed. Our method includes living debt free and on a budget; cherishing people and experiences over material things; and working hard, but smart, as needed. We hope the conclusion to this experiment is a life with our loved ones and our own well-being at its core.

~ Stella

* If you’re new to this idea and it intrigues you, may I suggest, “Your Money or Your Life,” by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, and “The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy,” by Cait Flanders. You may also be interested in the excellent blog, “Frugalwoods.com.”

Keeping it weird

It’s been a great tomato year on the farm. These are different varieties of artisan tomatoes. The bucket on the far right is chocolate cherry. The name comes from the dusky purple color, not the taste. They have a low-acid, earthy flavor.

A woman at the farmers market once said we were the farm with all the “weird stuff.” We’re proudly living up to that reputation this year, with dragon’s tongue beans, and purple beans that do a little hocus-pocus when cooking in the pot. We’ve got curious-looking black radishes and watermelon radishes. And the tomatoes around here are totally freaky. Chocolate cherry, metallic pink, neon yellow, green, black and orange and yellow cherry tomatoes dangle like ornaments on the twisting vines.

Weird seems to work for us. In total this week, we’ll haul about 600 pounds of tomatoes (normal and weird) out of the gardens. It’s been a few years since we’ve had this kind of tomato harvest. The new deer fence, combined with the lean and lower method, landscape fabric, and straw all contributed to a great tomato year.

Now, if you’re picturing pristine, weed-free high tunnels and neatly-trellised outdoor rows, you must be thinking of a different farm. Things got wild again this season. Not as wild as in the past, thanks to the fabric and straw, but still, the casual observer would probably see a mess. Weird, wild mess or not, that plot is producing truckload after truckload of produce right now.

~ Stella

Tomato season is here!

It’s. Tomato. Season. Woooohoooo!

After deer debacles of days of yore, we’re pretty darn excited around here. And the lean and lower system in the Big Tunnel is working so well that the vines are climbing for the ceiling! It made this short farmer snort in puzzled amusement as to how she was going to get them down.

Click here to see what we have now. We’ll continuously add varieties as summer marches on. (Our Romas are not ready yet.)

We LOVE fresh tomatoes with balsamic and ranch, and a crumble of feta. How do you like them?

Here’s where to find all of the produce we have to offer each week. Orders are ready any time after noon on Mondays. Click here to order.

The season is short - let’s enjoy it!

~ Stella

Pick & sort

It’s August, and that means harvest, harvest, harvest, and sort, sort, sort. What a difference from last year, thanks to the deer fence. And we’re LOVING the lean and lower system for the tomatoes in the high tunnels.

The easiest veggies to freeze

We freeze the farm’s “seconds,” meaning produce that’s damaged in some way. These peppers all had holes. Usually, the pepper is completely fine inside after nixing one little part and washing. Other times, it’s an insect palace, and you have to sprint to the back porch to chuck it in the woods as fast as you can.

A fridge we ordered almost half a year ago arrived last week. We keep two fridges, which is a lot of fridges for little old minimalist me, but Fridge No. 2 lives in the basement and stores seeds. It’s also what we use for winter produce when we shut the walk-in cooler off in late fall. When No. 2 conked out last winter, it was sorely missed.

When its replacement arrived, I’d forgotten we’d ordered a bigger size, which meant more freezer space. So I bought a new box of quart freezer bags and just by George went to town last weekend on peppers, green beans, and blueberries. And we now have more than enough cherry tomatoes and slicers for the CSA, so I can start marching those into the freezer.

Around here, Jason’s the good directions follower. I’m “bad” at directions, which is to say lazy. So Jason’s the canner. He mostly likes to can jam, and makes a nectarine and lime jam that’s summer on a spoon. It’s one of Marisa McClellan’s unique recipes from her Food in Jars book. She specializes in small batch recipes, which makes canning less of an all-day chore. Not that I’d know. I only freeze things. Here’s a couple of my favorites.

Note: I use quart freezer bags. After the first use, I wash and dry them for other purposes. I often do reuse them in the freezer, and haven’t had any problems. Sometimes I’ll double up reused bags.

• Cherry tomatoes: Rinse, let dry, and pop in freezer bags. After freezing, they aren’t fit for a salad or anything like that, but they have many uses, like cooked on pizza or in chili or pasta.

• Heirloom tomatoes & all slicer tomatoes: The easiest way is to cut in chunks and cook down to a sauce. I’m not talking about simmering on the stove for hours, this takes mere minutes. I don’t add anything - no sugar, no salt, nothing. That way, when you reheat the sauce six months from now, you don’t have to taste it to remember what’s in it. This yields a thin sauce, with lots of tomato pieces. It makes pasta in January that tastes fresh. It’s also great in chili and soups.

• Peppers: Rinse, dry, chop, and baggie. These freeze really well.

• Corn: Some people cook corn first, but I don’t find that necessary. I slice it from the cob and put it raw in the baggie.

• Green beans: Blanch green beans first, which means you cook them briefly in boiling water, then cool them in ice water. After letting the beans dry somewhat, freeze them in bags. (I once tried freezing green beans without blanching, and they tasted awful.)

• Blueberries: Funnel right into baggies.

• Strawberries: Chop in half and add to baggies.

Do you freeze fruits and veggies? Which ones, and what’s your method? Email plottwistfarm@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.

~ Stella

Today's pepper harvest

Today’s pepper harvest, all for CSA members. The high tunnels give us a jump on pepper season. A bucket of jalapeno peppers came out of a tunnel, too.

~ Stella

Tomato progress: High tunnel update & thoughts on fair pricing

Here’s a look at the Big Tunnel, July 3. Last week, we transitioned from almost entirely greens harvests, to picking peas and beans daily. Now, we’re on the verge of full-blown summer produce. It’s the time of year when our arms are constantly in motion from plant to bucket.

This shot doesn’t show it, but there’s a row of peppers along the wall, and we’re hoping to include them in the CSA next week.

Those are cucumber vines in the first row on the left. They’re just starting to produce. Silas cut some for the farmers market last week, and it felt good to set them on the table. We don’t hold back on what we charge for the earliest cukes of the season. Extra work went into having them early, and like everything on this farm, they’re zero spray.

I once overheard a comment at the farmers market that stayed with me. It came from a woman selling no-spray strawberries. When someone mumbled about the price, she said, “My knees told me how much to charge for these.” In other words, she’s paid the cost of weeding and harvesting those berries on her hands and knees. Now, she’s asking a fair price for her labor. I also remember her tone. It was said without a trace of meanness. It was simply a fact.

Her comment comes to mind when holding a half pint of red or black raspberries. They’re slow picking, and my final price decision is made after surveying the map of scratches up my arms and legs.

In our first few seasons, I experienced what many young farmers do: a complete disbelief that anyone will actually want to buy anything from us. Every item was priced with a big dose of trepidation. Like I was scared to sell my own produce! It was mostly me who suffered this complete lack of confidence. Jason was unsure at first, too, but he pushed us to go for a price that was fair to the farm and our family. There were times when I’d throw out a low number, an overly cautious amount, and he’d say, “Now, wait a minute.” And we’d talk about what went into that vegetable - that good, that product - in my hand.

All that said, let me say how grateful we are for all the people who understand what goes into a farm and choose to support local growers. If life came with merit badges, there’d be one for people who buy from local farms, and they could stick it right on their farmers market reusable tote bag.

Alright, let me get my stumpy little legs down from my soapbox. Back to the tunnel. We’re still looking at the photo above all this text. The strip of soil you see was previously lettuce under landscape fabric. The weedless earth beneath the fabric was a snap for Jason to work up with the wheel hoe and rake. He seeded carrots in that space.

The next row is tomatoes. Jason pruned them already, but they need it again. These are doing terrific. We’re so hopeful for a great tomato season!

It looks like he’s running away from a 10-pound vole here, but actually he’s using the wheel hoe.

Above, is the view from the other side of the tunnel. You can see the peppers now a little on the far left.

On the far right, is an empty row that I just cleared. This was lettuce without row cover. Since this photo was taken, Jay prepped the bed and seeded more carrots.

Next up, is a row of celery. The empty spaces between the celery supported Asian greens up until the other day. What a mess those ended up being. Asian greens grow super fast, and they tend to get away from you. I wanted to use them for last week’s CSA recipe, but they were too huge. I spent a hot, humid morning yanking them out and turning them into basically loose leaf Asian greens. Hardly an ideal situation. One of those farm tasks that makes you say, “Whew, glad that’s over.”

After the celery row, is a row of cherry tomatoes. These have just started to turn color. Our fingers are crossed for at least a few tomatoes for the shares next week. Jason just finished pruning and clipping those plants.

We have more tomatoes in one of the Cat tunnels. Those aren’t the kind that need pruning. The other night, I worked on clipping them to the string so Jay could do a little weed trimming in that tunnel. There were hundreds of garden spiders in their webs. They had me on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But after awhile, there were so many, I got used to them and forgot about them … kind of … It was another task joyfully complete.

~ Stella

Celery harvest

People are surprised to learn celery grows here. It does quite well. We transplanted celery in early spring in the Big Tunnel.

Celery sold in grocery stores has a reputation for being sprayed. Whatever insects plague farmers on big celery farms have apparently not discovered our tiny celery patch. We have plenty of insects here that gravitate to other produce, but the celery barely had a mark.

We harvested the outer stalks and left the small shoots to grow. This week’s celery harvest is bound for our CSA members.

~ Stella

Tomato progress & seeing things through

On any given day, on any given farm, and probably in your day, too, there’s a list of things to do that just never quite seems to shorten. The curse of the list. You may be familiar with barreling from one task to the other, and getting nothing done well, or completed fully. I say “you” because here at the farm, we’ve checked off our to-do list and have our feet up on the porch railing, drink in hand, by 6 p.m. Ha! If you’ll buy that, I’ve got some oceanfront property in Arizona for you. (Hi there, fellow George Strait fans.)

On Thursday evening, after a round of CSA deliveries, we headed up to the farm to squeak in another hour or so of work. The tomatoes in the high tunnels were getting unruly, and while Jason was most certainly aware of this on his own, I made sure to repeatedly mention it in casual conversation. “Boy, those tomatoes. Really taking off. Whew.” “Have you seen those tomatoes? Wow.”

Jason is very good at graciously ignoring my annoying habit of stating the obvious of what needs done around the farm. So while he was working on the cucumbers in the Big Tunnel, he glanced over at the tomatoes and said, “I suppose you want me to prune those?”

“Oh, well, you know, if you’ve got time…”

While Jason has a farm to-do list that stretches from the tips of his fingers to his toes, he knew the time had come to push those things aside in his mind, and tend to the tomatoes. We’ve already invested hours and dollars into these rows, and with continued proper care, each plant should be worth a lot. So while he could go in a thousand directions, he needed to just sit in the tomato row with the clippers and a bucket. It can be so hard to remain relatively still on the farm, taking care of a task that’s so slow going. It feels like there’s a marathon going on all around you, and you’re just sitting in the middle of the pavement. But when he was done, the tomatoes looked healthy and cared for. The time he spends pruning will have a huge ROI.

We’re both learning to take the time to see tasks through. After weeding the high tunnel peppers the other night, my first impulse was to spring up and head to the other peppers in one of the caterpillar tunnels. Those are in need of serious care before it’s too late. But I stopped myself, literally, mid stride. Wait. You just crawled along on your hands and knees, weeding this whole bed. It wasn’t very fun. Take the time to get straw and lay it down on that row. Then walk away from it for good until you’re carrying a harvest bin and collecting peppers from it.

So, I did, and that meant I didn’t have time to get to those other peppers that night. But right now, one pepper row is fully cared for. I can check it off my mental list and truly move on to something else.

This is tomato tar. When you handle tomato greens a lot, it builds up on your fingers, arms, and clothes. Tomato tar is what makes a tomato plant smell like a tomato plant. The plants have hair-like structures called trichomes that secrete this oil. When you wash your hands, this black residue turns the sink yellow.

Silas and Jay, in the thick of it.

Clipping a tomato plant to the string.

One row pruned. This is in the Big Tunnel, June 17, 2021.

~ Stella