Kale, beet, chard, lettuce, spinach microgreens growing in a window box here at the farm in December.
When the weather here in New Hampshire keeps us from growing food in the ground, we turn to the window sills. With the current setup, we don’t get a lot of food from it, but it helps us evade the winter blues that come from totally being cut off from our agricultural bent.
These are our Yorkshire pigs at around 16 weeks old enjoying a treat of some lettuce and kale. It’s hard to say how much they weigh, but to give you an idea of their size, these transport boxes they’re standing in are 5 feet long and 4 feet high.
(Don’t worry, these are just transport boxes.. They have a nice big swath of woods out back surrounded with electric fence to root around in.)
Their diet is 95% grain and forage so they are solid and dense, with very little fat. Hope they still fit in these boxes 8 weeks from now!
The dew on these salad greens is a welcome site this morning. It’s been an unusually dry spring here in New England and we were happy to have a thunder storm hit here last night.
This salad bed is a mix of kale, spinach, chard, lettuce. beets, radishes and bok choy I started indoors in a tray at the end of March.
We transplanted them into a cold frame 4 weeks later, where they’ve been ever since. The frame protected them from the frost, bugs and critters very well. Now that all danger of frost is passed, I’ve kept the frame on them, leaving the top off, just to reduce the likelihood of the plants getting eaten by pests.
We get 3 – 5 healthy salads a week from this 2×3′ frame built from scrap wood and shrink wrap. Because of the wide row, dense planting, there is no weeding and the soil retains moisture very well.
For very little effort, and a very tiny space, we can enjoy fresh organic greens for salads and brazing from April to November. (Withought the cold frame, these greens would only survive from late May to late August)
Tip: If you want to enjoy the full flavor of your freshly grown greens, pick them a few hours prior to eating, wash them well, shake off excess water and place them on a cookie sheet in the refrigerator for at least an hour, but not more than four hours. Allowing them to cool off like this will make them sweeter and more flavorful than eating greens right after picking.
Perhaps it was the stress of traveling all the way from Pennsylvania to New Hampshire, or maybe we’re just a very boring farm – but these three have been laid out prone, sleeping soundly for more than 12 hours now.
Eventually, boredom or hunger will surely awaken them. Then the fun begins!
Beer can chicken made with one of our local farm-raised broilers. All I can say is I wish I had a way to transmit the aroma on the internet. (iSmell?) The beer basically steams the meat from the inside while the oven roasts the outside, keeping it moist and juicy, and all the fat drains off below and away from the bird.
Anyway, we raised 50 of these this year. If you are interested (and I know some of you are) here’s the pricing:
5.5 lb whole broilers – $15.95 ea
7.0 lb whole broilers – $19.95 ea
While supplies last, so get clucking!
Call us at 1-603-569-7701 to arrange pickup.
PS: Stay tuned for pork, bacon and ham. (not beer can pork)
We used to take our food supply for granted, picking it from a waste-high case in a grocery aisle, giving little thought to where it came from, who grew it and what it took to do that. It wasn’t until we started harvesting our own broccoli that I realized it is actually an edible flower. In fact, there are many edible flowers; nasturtium, bachelor’s buttons, dandelions, clovers, chives, lavender to name a few. To see a longer list, click here.
I don’t know if I’d put this broccoli in a vase on the table, but it sure is pretty to look at as I pick it for an afternoon meal.
Aside from the nutritional benefits of freshly grown organic vegetables, it does something for the soul to walk around in the garden and see the plants a little bigger than the day before, reaching for the sun, so hopeful and full of life.
Whatever is going on today for you, I suspect it will be a little better if you stop to pick some flowers, maybe even eat them once you’re done enjoying looking at them and enjoying their fragrance a while!
This is our first celery grown here at Mercy Hill Farm. We’re very excited. Here’s why: Celery contains antioxidants, vitamins, anti-inflammatory support unparalleled by other edible plants, but only if it’s fresh and organically grown.
Find out more about how to buy, store and consume this amazing vegetable here: The World’s Healthiest Foods
06/27/14 – These beauties are Brandywine heirloom variety plants, about 8 weeks old and loving these warm nights we’ve been having lately. The distinctive leaves are a lot like a potato plant. Brandywines are a large tomato, some as large a 1 1/2 lbs each. Great slicing tomato for sandwiches, or if you need an organic doorstop.
Give them another 5 or 6 weeks and we should have some on the farm table for sale. Go tomato power!
Don’t forget the farm fresh eggs! It’s a great way to start the day. This is a chive omelet getting ready to power a whole lot of mowing, digging, planting and whatnot around the farm. Yes, those purple thingies are the chive flower buds. Mmm.. Buds. 😀
Garlic is very easy to grow and stores well most of the year. It also provides a heavenly scent that actually deters many pests from being interested in your garden. Garlic is a biennial, meaning that it’s growth from planting to harvest spans two calendar years. Most of the work raising garlic is in the fall. Yield is high on garlic: one bulb gets split into cloves and each clove becomes a whole other bulb!
1. We recommend chosing a variety of garlic that suits your taste and lifestyle. We like German stiff-neck garlic because it has medium cloves, stores very well and has a strong taste.
2. Order seed garlic mid-summer in order to plant that fall. (It’s expensive to start, but you won’t need to buy it ever again.)
3. Chose a growing spot that has full sun for at least 8 hours a day. Garlic likes well drained soil with a PH of about 6.5.
4. We plant in 30″ wide rows, a foot in length for every eight plants. (details on planting pattern later)
5. Work a few inches of well rotted manure or compost into the soil a month to a few weeks prior to planting.
6. Prepare some wooden posts 1’x2″ or so and 20″ long to drive into the four corners of each row. Get a roll of 12″ shrink wrap or kitchen cellophane, enough to circle all the rows 3 times. Also get enough straw or mulch hay to cover the rows. Plan on a bale for every 40 feet of row.
1. Garlic should go in the ground about a month to two months prior to the first frost date in fall. Here in central NH, we plant at the end of October and that’s worked well in hardiness zone 4/5. Garlic will lay dormant most of winter, but doing it this way allows the plant to put down a good root system during the fall and spring months.
2. Start at one end of the row, measure in 6 inches from the edge and use a dibble or stick to poke holes 2″ deep using the pattern above. This allows 6 inches between plants, and maximizes the planting row space.
3. Break apart bulbs into cloves, placing one clove per hole, root side down. Don’t cover the cloves with soil until later.
4. Stop short six inches from the end of the row. Once you can see that your row is full, cover lightly with soil. Keeping six inches of composted row around every side will allow each plant to have sufficient nutrients and room for roots to spread.
5. Drive posts at the corners of each row leaving 10-12″ above ground and 8″ from the planted cloves. This will allow the mulch to properly cover all the cloves.
6. Wrap the cellophane around the posts (If your rows are longer than 15 feet, you may need to add additional posts in the middle.)
7. Fluff the straw, spreading it evenly and gently over the rows, keeping it inside the cellophane, which will help maintain the soil temperature better and keep it from being disturbed by wind.
8. Start planning where you will cure your garlic next year.
1. When other bulb plants like daffodils and crocuses start poking out of the ground, so will the garlic. Remove the straw and plastic.
2. Keep garlic weed free with shallow cultivation. Wide rows make weeding very easy as the soil not compacted and lets go of weeds easily.
3. Do not water garlic unless you go weeks without rain. It needs very little water.
1. Along in June or July the garlic will put of shoots (scapes) that curl over and look like they are going to flower. Cutting the scapes off allows the plant to put more energy into larger bulbs. Cut the scape with tullens or snips right above the top leaves. Scapes are great for sautee or pesto. Not much good raw.
2. Monitor garlic plants closely. When three or so leaves begin to turn yellow on all the plants (usually around end of August here,) it’s time to harvest. Carefully lift the soil from 6 inches away from the plant with a pitchfork and shake the bulbs free, stalk and all. Gently brush excess dirt from the bulbs.
Garlic must be cured in order to store well. Place the plants in a dry sunny area for (about 2 weeks). If it rains, move the plants to a covered area. Inspect the bulbs carefully every few days because too much sun can scald the bulbs. When the skins are dry and the necks are tight the garlic is properly cured and it’s time to store it in a cool, dry place out of the sun.
If you have room, you can let the stalks remain, but we usually cut the stalk, trim the roots and lightly brush more of the dirt free. Then the bulbs go in our pantry in an open basket. Beware putting garlic in a sealed container. It does better if it can breath. Garlic cured well keeps for 5 months or more before sprouting. You can still eat sprouted garlic, but it’s generally not as good.
This sounds strange at first, but we set aside about 25-33% of the largest clove bulbs and eat mostly the smaller ones. These larger cloves will be your seed garlic for next fall. The reason is that grown year after year, garlic will adapt to your region and soil. If you eat the little ones and replant the big ones, you will have more fine, large cloves next time!