Lida Farm

Last Saturday at the Deep Roots Festival we had a nice turnout – about 150 people – but the thing that most amazed me was that everybody came for the farm tours.

I have been giving little tours of Lida Farm for years, but this is by far the biggest group I’ve ever had. After our place we stuffed 78 people into a school bus to go to three other locations, including North Circle Seeds, Anderson Apple Orchard, and Twin Oaks Organic Dairy.

I was reflecting a bit on this yesterday. Why the farm tour? Why didn’t 100 people show up for the mushroom or kombucha class or music in the evening? I’m thinking it may have to do with the need to ground ourselves. I’m stuck on a farm all the time, so I’m pretty well grounded, but, for others, the experience may get them into fall and onto the earth. It seems easy today to be lost in cyberspace or issues in the news or a constant running around from activities we create for ourselves and our families. A walk on a farm where the food we eat is produced creates an tangible connection to the season and our sustenance. Or at least I hope that this dose of feet on the farm had this effect.

• Yellow Potatoes
• Buttercup Squash
• Delicata Squash
• Cilantro
• Radishes
• Cantaloupe
• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Onions
• Salad mix

I lived like a slob in college. But I still jumped into action the day before my parents came to visit. I didn’t want them to get the appearance that I had devolved or forgot all standards of my upbringing.

In the past couple of days I’ve been looking around and I think the farm’s fallen into the same sorry state as my dorm room. Like college when all details of tidiness and hygiene fall to the wayside, the farm just gets more and more disorganized and shabby as the season progresses. When busy reading and writing papers, those pizza boxes get left and clothes pile up. In the same way, I leave little piles of tools where a project happened, only to be lost in foot-high grass. Heck, the cultivating tractor is still sitting in the yard where it ran out of gas two months ago. The immediate tasks of harvesting for CSA and filling a farm stand forever take precedent and everything else is just forgotten and ignored as we careen down the road, duct-taping and wiring together to get ourselves to the end of the season.

Normally I’d try to piece the place together next month, but we have invited the whole world to the Deep Roots Festival this Saturday. I’ve started to restart the rusty cleanup machinery of Lida Farm. Willem on the mower, Graham sweeping the barn loft, me picking up my many forgotten tools. Come this Saturday and see if we actually pulled it off. And, bring a friend. Anyone and everyone can attend the festival. For details and to pre-register, go to www.deep-roots-festival.com or just show up and pay at the door.

• Sweet Corn: This is the bitter end – these Montauk ears are not big or pretty due to thistle that took over that part of the field. Still good flavor from this late season corn.
• Yellow Potatoes
• Cucumbers: Either a couple standard ones or a Suyu Long – it’s a bit weird looking (long and curly) but please give it a try…I’ve found them good.
• Cilantro
• Summer Squash: Either zucchini or yellow patty pan – use patty pan in same way as you use zuccini.
• Leeks
• Radishes
• Tomatoes
• Beets
• Jalapenos
• Green Pepper
• Italia Sweet Pepper: The long, red and green peppers…there’s not hot, but sweet.
• Cantaloupe

It’s been a pretty wet year. That has its influence on produce-cue the cracks in the top of tomatoes and nice growth on the tops of these beets in the box-but it also impacts the creepy, crawly things around here.

In the course of just 5 minutes, I had run-ins with this cute frog in the packing shed, a snake in the tall grass by the corn, and a whole host of mosquitos hell-bent on devouring me. The mosquitos were the most pressing critter yesterday. I had to suit up to harvest in one of those ski masks that can be sinched up tight so only my eyes were showing. That’s all well and good when subzero, but a bit warm on an August afternoon. I was picking cases of things in shifts. In contrast, due to last year’s drought, a person could have stood out naked in garden day and night and not have had a bite. Last year it was always 90-something, so, honestly, I’d prefer to put up with some mosquito pressure.

The reptiles and amphibians, on the other hand, are a positive sign of the health of the farm. I take joy when a toad or frog surprises me when I’m out in the potatoes or reaching down to pull carrots. Snakes. I don’t appreciate their surprise appearance nearly as much. Archer had to hear me scream like a girl when one slithered into the packing shed last week. I’m glad they are out there eating mice or whatever good things they do, but I wish they would do it away from me.

In the box:

• A couple ears of corn: This is the end of the line for the corn. Even with two plantings and three varieties of differing maturity times, they really matured about the same time.
• Melons: Most everybody is getting a pink Crimson Sweet watermelon, but a few will receive a cantaloupe and everyone gets a little Torpedo melon (yellow one with white stripes).
• Green onions
• Tomatoes
• Jalapenos
• Parsley
• Colored Sweet Pepper: We’re starting to see some color out there, but nothing too consistent, so I got a mix of types turning color. You may have an orange or red bell or an Italia type. These are also sweet (not hot) but are long in shape and red/green in color.
• A couple onions
• Beets: One or two with some nice greens if you’d like to use them, otherwise I topped them.
• A couple cucumbers

Lots of talk of inflation lately. Prices getting pushed up all over the place, but how does this happen? Even little Lida Farm is not immune from the pressures – we’re just one example of how this is coming about.

For over the last 10 years I’ve sold sweet corn at 50 cents an ear ($6 per dozen). Before that we were at 3 ears/dollar or $4 per dozen…that was around 2004-2008. I liked 50 cents an ear. I could more easily do the math at a farmers market and people weren’t locked into a dozen pricing. It was simple, straightforward, easy math. Now I’m back to making change with quarters and doing math in my head at the Pelican Market on Fridays – I’d like to think it keeps my brain healthy like doing crosswords. So, why would I want to make my life difficult?

Well, as a producer, prices jumped on me. At the farm we’re just as affected as anybody by the price of fuel, but we also saw a doubling of fertilizer costs, seeds go up by a third, and other inputs like compost go up together with the shipping necessary to get it here. Something had to budge and so we upped prices.

I think there’s some psychology to why we moved prices now, not unlike others. Because all other food prices were increasing around us, it became much easier to increase our own prices. Snickers bars have now broken $2. I’d like to think a person is getting more from an ear of fresh corn, which, if you put into head-to-head comparison with the Snickers is a downright bargain at 75 cents!

Where will it end? I don’t know for others, but for Lida Farm there’s nothing that will push a price higher this season – we’re not incurring any new price hikes that would affect us.

In the box:

• Sweet Corn
• Sweet Onions
• Salad mix
• Carrots
• Melon – farmers choice: There’s a mix of melons getting ripe, so many will get a Torpedo Korean Melon (yellow with white stripes), but some will get a cantaloupe or yellow watermelon.
• Mint
• Cucumber
• Tomatoes
• Green Pepper

I’m sure it was an exciting day when that first prospector found gold at Sutter’s Mill in California. Likewise, Archer and I were in a veggie fever yesterday after finding a deep vein of tomatoes in the field. “Man, they just keep coming…” I thought as we waded through all 16 rows in the back field. We have about a dozen varieties to stretch out the season and give variety in the tomato department. Some rows were nothing but rock hard green globes, but others yielded some real bounty. Some of the early tomatoes coming in include a mix of Moskvich, Oregon Spring, Glacier, and Mountain Fresh Plus, a real mainstay on the Eastern Seaboard. The bigger Celebrity-types are holding off.

And that’s the excitement of vegetable farming, kids! When a crop comes in nicely, there’s nothing more satisfying than pulling in the harvest. I imagine this the elation felt by fishermen pulling in a big catch or hunters at the luck of coming across a great herd of prey. Now I’m getting overly dramatic.

Still, there is certainly a charge to this work. My mentor, Paul Burkhouse, once said that most veggie farmers are adrenaline-junkies and I think that’s true, at least for me. I need a little bump, whether at a busy farmers market or good harvest – it keeps the season exciting!

• Sweet Corn
• Red Potatoes
• Salad Mix
• Sweet Onion
• Fresh Thyme: Some ideas on how to put that thyme to work: https://insanelygoodrecipes.com/thyme-recipes/
• Carrots
• Tomatoes
• ‘Sunshine’ Yellow Watermelon