What's On The Horizon?

We've been giving a lot of thought to the 2014 growing season in the past weeks. The 2013 season featured many successes. The collective efforts of a hardworking group of producers/growers yielded  a more vibrant Potter County Farmers' Market. We changed locations  - moving just a block to a county-owned lot across from the courthouse square. We have additional vendors and more products offered for sale. And we hosted our first-ever "Chef At The Market" event showcasing fresh produce from our regular vendors.

As positive as all of this sounds, I think all of our vendors will agree that going to the Farmers' Market each week is a lot of work. Every Friday we're up before the sun in a flurry of harvesting, cleaning, pricing, packaging, transporting and then setting up for a 1:00 p.m. start time. The goal is to bring enough produce to make it worthwhile but not bringing so much that it doesn't sell. I have also observed that there is no pattern in what appeals to the customer week in and week out. The beet greens that flew off the table one week will languish the next week and then the following week when we decide to let them stay in the field to grow into beets, everyone is looking for beet greens!

We continue to explore how we might more efficiently meet the food needs of our customers. For example, if you're interested in leafy head lettuce on a regular basis, would you consider setting up a standing order for a couple of heads each week during the growing season?

These little plants grow to become tasty heads of leaf lettuce.

Or maybe you really want to freeze snap beans when they're in season. Would you be willing to contract with us to grow them for you? We'd know how many seeds to plant - and when to plant them - to meet the specific needs of customers who are committed to buy when the harvest comes.

The concept could work for all the vegetables we might grow - from the first peas of summer to the luscious heirloom tomatoes to the fall crops of potatoes, squash and pumpkins. Would you have an interest in helping us plan what to grow this summer based on what you would buy? It's a bit like a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) 

...from Wikipedia: Community-Supported Agriculture (sometimes known as community-shared agriculture) is an alternative, locally-based  economic model of agriculture and food distribution.

Would our concept of growing produce for specific customers provide a stable base of support for our efforts while giving us a clearer picture of how much to plant knowing we have a market for that produce?
Would you be interested in a weekly box of produce, based on what's in season? Would you pay up front to support this effort?

On New Year's Day, I don't know what the 2014 growing season will look like. What will fill the raised beds in the prime high tunnel space? What will be planted in our fields and garden spaces?
I'm counting on hearing from you - potential customers - to let us know what you're looking for. Feel free to comment below. (Please note that all comments are reviewed by us before they're published on the blog so your comments needn't be published.) I hope to hear from you soon!

Who Needs Potatoes?

A trip to our cellar these days is like navigating an obstacle course for there are many boxes of potatoes stored in the cool darkness. The harvest of potatoes was much easier this year due to a new (to us, anyway) potato digger and a new storage system. Arthur built a series of these beautiful storage crates and each variety is neatly sorted and stacked in the coolness of our cellar.
I can almost understand why folks might choose to purchase conventionally-grown potatoes if one is shopping based only on price. But for folks making efforts to make food choices beneficial to their health, there are many experts who have targeted potatoes as one of the dirtiest of the dirty dozen. http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary.php
In 2006, the U.S.D.A. found 81 percent of potatoes tested still contained pesticides after being washed and peeled, and the potato has one of the the highest pesticide content of 43 fruits and vegetables tested.
But pesticides are only part of the picture in conventional potato production. Potatoes are treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting and after they're dug, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting.
Michael Pollan sums it all up in "Botany of Desire:
"The typical potato grower stands in the middle of a bright green circle of plants that have been doused with so much pesticide that their leaves wear a dull white chemical bloom and the soil they're rooted in is a lifeless gray powder."
How's your organic potato store this winter? We still have a nice supply of organic potatoes in many colors, tastes and textures. If you buy 20 lbs. or more, the price is now just 50 cents a pound. Call or send an email to metzgerfarm@gmail.com. We can also deliver.

Pausing...

Here on the farm, the short days and the frozen ground mean we're pulling gleaming jars off the pantry shelves and hearing that sound that happens when the lid is popped. It's a special pleasure to catch the first scent of whatever is preserved inside - the slightly tart tomato-y scent, sweet and spicy applesauce, the tang of salsa, and that particular canned bean smell.
There are also the delights buried in the freezer – roasted tomato sauce, peppers, bird egg beans, corn, peas – oh so good!
The peppers that occupied the dehydrator in the early fall have yielded fiery hot pepper flakes that have delighted friends and family alike.
The cellar holds our stores of potatoes, onions, shallots and sweet potatoes.
A good hunting season and connections with area meat producers (thanks Thompson Farm and Miles Farm Produce) provide a freezer full of meat.
I'm counting my many blessings on this day after Christmas, feeling truly thankful for living in a little space on this planet that allows us to grow our own food - while at the same time providing an opportunity for others to share those bounties as well. Thank you to all our customers for supporting our efforts and for taking steps to eat locally-grown food.

The Last Of The ...

As I mentioned in my last post, we had a killing freeze in our high tunnel on October 27 that marked the end of the tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and basil for 2013.
Today, Arthur sliced a tomato for our lunchtime sandwiches and remarked "That's the last of the tomatoes. Soon the bags of peppers in the vegetable crisper will prompt a similar comment "That's the last of the peppers" and so it goes.
I'm posting a photo of the last tomato/pepper harvest, taken just a few days before the freeze. Weren't they beautiful?

Grandkids On The Farm

Racing down the hill from the apple orchard

We have been entertaining our grandchildren (and their parents) for the past two weeks as family gathered from far and wide to celebrate the 90th Halloween birthday of my mother. Our friends at the Genesee Environmental Center helped us put on a great celebration to mark the occasion.

Here are a couple of pictures of my grandkids enjoying farm life ... because I just can't resist!

Sweet potatoes were great fun to harvest

We cooked these beauties for supper

The growing season is officially over here on Crandall Hill. The tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and tender herbs succumbed when the temperatures dipped to the mid-teens on October 27. This is ten days later than last year but it's always a bittersweet time.

Potter County Potatoes

The proud history of potato growing in Potter County was presented to a new audience recently as longtime potato farmer Everett "Sonny" Blass was a guest at the Coudersport Rotary Club.
At the Potter County Farmers' Market, there are three growers marketing naturally grown or organic potatoes – Wooleylot Farm, Miles Farm Produce and us - Metzger Heritage Farm. While our acreage cannot match the bigger growers, I know we're all proud of the potatoes we offer to folks interested in vegetables grown without chemical herbicides, pesticides and fungicides.
And speaking of potatoes, we were excited when two customers stopped by the farm to buy potatoes. We enjoyed lively discussions about GMOs, organic vs. conventional methods and the rhythm of weekly Farmers' Market trips.
Here's a photo of our new potato digger. We've experimented with two other diggers during our venture and this is, by far, the most efficient.

Chef At The Market!

I've always had a sense of how the rhythm of life on a farm rises to a fever pitch as the days begin to shorten. Perhaps it's because my extended family used to gather annually for a family reunion in nearby Allegany County (N.Y.) on a great-uncle's dairy farm with farmhands were busy in the fields and milking cows even as we enjoyed potato salad, hot dogs and hamburgers. Or maybe I recollect how my childhood friends who lived on farms were relieved to get back to school each fall, wearing their deep suntans as badges of honor.

These days, we're gaining a new appreciation of the busy-ness of farm life in August. In the midst of everyone's busiest season, the growers who comprise the Potter County Farmers' Market added another task to their to-do lists - orchestrating an outdoor cooking demonstration.
Chef At The Market came together with barrages of e-mails, telephone calls and hurried exchanges of information at the weekly Farmers' Market. This event was the brainchild of Alvie Fourness of Wooleylot Farm and his careful leadership is to be applauded!
As we all tended our tables at the Farmers' Market on Friday, our guests, Chef Butch Davis and Chef Colin Jack, demonstrated ways to use locally-grown vegetables and fruits and locally-made baked goods to concoct mock crab cakes (with zucchini) garnished with beet slaw and corn relish, brushetta (using some of our colorful heirloom tomatoes) and a delicious fruit compote served over pound cake for dessert.
Growing a local food movement is exciting to all of us who are setting up our canopies and tables on a grassy lot in downtown Coudersport each Friday afternoon. I delight in introducing a customer to a carefully-nurtured tomato that is yellow with red stripes or dark brown. And then we'll talk about the potatoes that are red and purple and blue and yellow inside!

It's very satisfying to see folks walk through the Market, making their selections at each canopy and I can only imagine the ways they'll enjoy local foods.
One of the stated goals of the Potter County Farmers' Market is to: 

Cultivate a community in which the values of eating locally are celebrated and promoted.

With our first "Chef At The Market" event, we've taken a giant step forward in realizing this goal for it truly was a celebration Friday afternoon.
Next week it will be business as usual at our Potter County Farmers' Market - Friday afternoon beginning at 1:00 o'clock. If you haven't come before, this is a perfect time to see what it's all about!

A riot of tomatoes - all colors, shapes and sizes!