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First off, last week I mentioned that this weekend was supposed to be beautiful--sunny and mild. On Friday most forecasters changed the forecast to rain both Saturday and Sunday, although they kept the mild temperature forecast in place. Well, the only real rain that fell was before dawn on Sunday. Saturday had a few very light showers in mid-day and Sunday had some hazy sunshine and quite mild. Next weekend the forecast is again for sun and mild temperatures (at least mild for Halloween). We will see.
Also last week I neglected to mention how my radio interview with Jodi from Living the Country Life Magazine went. (See my boss's corner from October 10 for details here.) Well it went fine and it is expected to be on their website in the next month or so. www.livingthecountrylife.com However, the interview won't be on dandelions but rather some of the struggles we go through at Magicland Farms. Jodi asked me to talk about Magicland Farms, in addition to dandelions, and I did-for 20 minutes, which is twice as long as she planned. She then edited the interview and placed the focus on some of the struggles we experienced this year like our complete loss of our apple crop and how we responded (One example was planting more watermelons than ever and for the first time in several years planting muskmelon for sale.)
Last year tomatoes, because of late blight, were a real challenge. This year they were a real blessing-and believe it or not they still are! We started picking our delectable SunSugar cherry tomatoes that were in our high tunnel in mid June and then our famous delicious little red tomatoes that were in our low tunnels in late June. We then went into our heirloom and slicing tomatoes that were planted without protection in mid and late July. Nearly all of our of SunSugar tomatoes were trellised - some inside the high tunnel and some outside in a rather sandy area. We think that the high tunnel SunSugar tomatoes are a bit sweeter than the outside grown ones-but they are both delicious!
This year we did something a bit different-we planted about 300 plants of late ripening varieties-like Primetime and Mountain Fresh-very late (late June). When late September came around we had picked most of our other tomatoes and were just starting picking this late patch. Then when frost approached on October 2 we covered most of this late patch with some of our low tunnels. They escaped the frost and continued to ripen in October. The real surprising thing is this. While we usually pick tomatoes that are ripe in July, August and September when they are red and ready to eat, we picked these October tomatoes when they were just turning and some even still all green. We then put them in our ripening room where it was kept at about 73F. The tomatoes slowly turned AND they were very good tasting-almost as good as an August ripened tomato! I was surprised since I felt they would taste like your average supermarket tomato-but they were much better! I'm not sure why, perhaps it's our slow ripening without using ethylene gas. Here is a fact that may be helpful. Don't keep tomatoes below 50F for more than 24 hours. If you do they won't ripen right. You might notice when it is cloudy and cold out we try to keep our tomatoes inside under an infrared heater. While we do have some tomatoes left in the ripening room, at times someone comes along and buys 10 to 15 pounds of them for salsa or something. Our supply then quickly dwindles and isn't replenished until the next morning when we again go and check the ripening room.
We are thinking this week of making a vegetarian vegetable soup using the vegetables we grow (which is about everything). I remember reading, when I was real little, the Box Car Children series of books. In the books I remember the hungry box car children making their own soup. At first, the soup didn't sound too yummy and apparently they (the box car children) weren't thrilled with it. Then they were given a bunch of carrots by someone. Then the kids raved about how tasty the soup was. I guess I was impressed by their ravings and planted carrots, for several years after that, in my little garden in Chicago. While I don't remember the carrots getting very large, I thought they were tasty and I shared them with all the kids in the neighborhood! If we do go ahead with this soup I will let you know how it was. If it is good, I'll give the recipe.
Nashle!
Tom
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