On Tuesday evening, the littlest baker and I went to a Sustainable Living class at UMass and gave an hour-long talk about running a sustainable business, local food security, and all things yummy.  I didn’t realize until I was on my way that it was a class of 300, lol.  It was great fun, and hopefully we passed on the good word about organic vs conventional food and the challenges of running a sustainable business in a world focused primarily on making money no matter what the true cost.

 

Have you started your seeds yet?  Time to plant tomatoes (indoors) and get your pea seeds in the ground!  We’re dreaming of how one day these little tomato seeds will be big, juicy tomatoes on our grilled sandwiches.  Oh, so yummy . . .

Speaking of beginnings, it’s hard to believe that we’ve gone from these first trial wheat fields, to working with a group of local farmers to bring over 10,000 pounds of local grains to your tables!  Signups for the 2012 CSA shares are now open.

From our farm . . .

 

to your plate.

Sometimes, we imagine that our customers must wonder, why grow vegetables ourselves, when we can (and do) buy such wonderful organic, local produce?  We are amazingly blessed here in the Pioneer Valley with so many incredible growers.

The reason we grow our own as much as possible is because everything we’ve grown here has an intense vitality, freshness, and flavor, like no other food we’ve experienced.

No farm as small as ours wholesales, and food grown on such a small scale, with so much care, has a very noticeably better flavor and nutrient quality.  In the past few years, we’ve grown 5-10% of the vegetables used at the bakery.  In future years, we hope to grow more.  Our own milk-fed lamb has been blowing our minds here at home, and we hope soon to share it with you.  From salad greens, heirloom tomatoes, and heirloom squash, we are so excited to start growing our own Wheatberry lamb, pork, and beef in the coming years.  We know you’ll taste the difference, too.

Happy Monday morning everyone! We’re hoping you might help us spread some love by hopping over to our Yelp page and writing a review for Wheatberry. It’ll only take a few minutes, and if you leave a comment here telling us you wrote one, we’ll enter you in a giveaway for a $50 gift certificate to Wheatberry. That’s a lot of scones! 
Thanks everyone, and I hope you know how much we truly love serving you delicious food.

On our date this week, Ben and I sat down to write out a garden/farm calender for the year. We wanted to have dates for all our plantings, etc written out. So often in the thick of the growing season it’s easy to forget about the second planting of carrots, or when to get the potatoes in, or for one of us but not the other to know what needs to happen this week . . . I thought I’d share it here for all of you to see. A few notes – a “tray” of soil blocks equals 72 plants, and we usually plant more than one seed in each, then thin out the weaker ones. A “bed foot” means one foot long in a 30 inch-wide bed.  I didn’t include chores like watering and weeding, since those are nonstop but I did include mulching and cover crop planting, since we’re hoping to do much better with those this year.  And remember that we’re growing for our family, plus the bakery, plus some crops that if they do well, will go to the CSA. (Oh, and I’m sure you’ll notice that so far we only planned through September – after working on the calender for an hour, we called it good for now and printed it out to post on the wall.  It’s helping already!)
Ginny mentioned that she’s going to be doing garden journal posts on Saturdays, and I plan to join her. I was so thrilled by your responses to my seed starting post, and I’d love to talk more about growing. Yesterday, my heart heavy with thoughts of the tar sands, I went out and planted some seeds. And I felt a bit better.

Blessings on your weekend friends, and on your seeds!

Farm Calender 2012

February

First Week:
- organize seeds, order new seeds, organize workspace, create farm plan for the year

Second & Third Week:
plant indoors:
8-12 trays storage onions, 2 trays cioppini onions, 2 trays red onions
2 trays kale,
half tray of parsley, 1 tray celery

in hoophouse:
prep beds
sow peas and parsley

Fourth Week:
plant indoors:
1 tray celeriac
tray of lettuce, tray of arugula

in hoophouse:
2 bed ft radishes
1 row carrots
½ row beets
peas

March

First Week:
plant indoors:
1 tray thyme

in hoophouse:
transplant kale starts
¼ row swiss chard
sow peas
potatoes

Second Week:

in hoophouse:
transplant lettuce & arugula
sow peas
2 bed ft radishes

in fields:
tilling, cultivating, bed prep

Third Week:

indoors:
start 20 tomato plants in 6 inch pots

in fields:
transplant raspberry canes,
cultivate & disc orchard spot
drill grain in small field & Rogers field

Fourth Week:
plant indoors:
tray of oregano, tray of marjoram, half tray dill, half tray chervil, half tray tarragon, half tray sage
tray of mixed peppers

in hoophouse:
2 bed ft radishes

in fields:
plant 20 bed ft lettuces & arugula in lower garden, under row cover
plant 15 bed ft kale, under row cover
set up irrigation in beds

April

First Week
in fields:
plant 40-50 bed ft carrots
plant 40-50 bed ft beets
drill grain in small field & Rogers field

Second Week

in fields:
transplant onions in hilltop garden
mulch beds with straw or leaves
undersow clover in grain fields & everywhere else

in hoophouse:
2 bed ft radishes

Third Week

plant indoors:
4 cucumbers, 4 summer squash, 30 melons in 4 inch pots

Fourth Week

in fields:
plant 15 bed ft of kale
plant 15 bed ft lettuces & arugula, mixed greens
transplant celery & celeriac

mulch beds with straw or leaves

May

First Week
plant indoors:
10 eggplants, 1 tray basil

in fields:
potatoes
set out herbs under row covers in herb garden (next to house)

Second Week

in hoophouse:
transplant tomatoes, melons, cukes, summer squash
direct seed basil

mulch beds with straw or leaves

Fourth Week
mulch beds with straw or leaves

June

First & Second Week
in fields:
plant ¼  small field in beans
plant ¼ small field in corn
plant ¼ small field in winter squash
plant ½ Rogers field in corn

mulch beds with straw or leaves

Fourth Week
15 bed ft of kale
10 bed ft of lettuces & mixed greens

mulch beds with straw or leaves

August

Fourth Week

in fields:
40 bed ft carrots
10 bed ft swiss chard
15 bed ft kale
20 bed ft beets

September

Second Week:
in hoophouse:
mixed greens, kale

After loads of fun educating and hoola hooping at the Garlic and Arts Festival we are filled with fall fun and food(Ella had her face painted as a frog with glasses) and can’t wait to cook a storm of fall goodness and bounty for you!

Our greenhouse is filling with winter hardy greens that will be featured on our menu for the next couple months. From heirloom Sylvetta arugula to mizuna, tatsoi, and french lettuces we are entering our first season of winter hardy greens production inspired by the work of one of our favorite growers Elliot Coleman.  He pioneered the system we are using which involves the selection of cold hardy greens(hardy to 28 degrees) and the use of zero supplemental heat. This technique utilizes the solar gain from a simple “hoop house” structure with the addition of an internal covering of agricultural fabric and in doing so utilizes the heat stored in the soil to keep things from getting “too frozen”. Most folks don’t think of winter as anytime to grow anything let alone a “good time” to grow things but for cold loving salad greens it is the best season and produces the most succulent and sweet salads.Also the new “Roy’s Burger” %100 grass fed and local has been a huge hit. We can hardly cook ‘em fast enough and it suits us just fine so bring it on and come try a “Roy’s” if you haven’t yet…they are every bit as good folks are saying.

Of course with fall comes menu items like Heirloom Squash Soup, Borscht, and a new side salad of Crispy Sauteed Kale with Sesame Seeds. Yum!

Also Our Classic Butternut Squash Brownie with Cream Cheese Frosting is back and some new treats in the works! Stayed tuned and we’ll keep it fired up.

(I am all the way to the bottom right…)

Folks,

The number one threat to the future of human life on this planet has been laid before us on our presidents desk in the form of the proposed Keystone tars sands pipeline. Barack Obama alone will sign off or on. As our lead scientist at NASA, James Hansen says “this would be “”Game Over”" for climate change”. Hansen explains if the tar sands resource is exploited it will put atmospheric carbon over 600ppm. The International Panel on Climate Change has declared 350ppm as a “safe level” and our current “Carbon tab” is unfortunately already at 394ppm. We have been seeing the effects of this already through extreme storms, drought, snow, rising sea levels etc…This doesn’t even touch on the 91 estimated tar sands spills destroying watersheds and ecosystems all across the heartland of our country and the destruction of 740,000 acres of boreal forest underneath which resides the tar!

If this isn’t a global, national, and local emergency nothing is.  This is what the worlds leading scientists have been warning us about for 30 years now. Will America and the rest of the world(particularly those spewing large amounts of carbon) Listen or will we all be the frog in gradually warming water, waiting until it is too late to jump out?

Climate change or global warming as it is known are  not the words we need to describe the actuality.  Climate Chaos or pending global genocide would be more fitting. The current rate of and increases in species extinction is shocking. Our train is coming off the tracks and a cliff is not far ahead. We must act now. I will not leave this environmental atrocity for my children to suffer from without putting up a huge fucking fight. Speak out. Be outraged. talk with your friends and neighbors and call The White House and your congress men and women. This coming year or two is our chance to take a stand and gather our collective power to enact unprecedented change in how humans understand and respect the world in which we depend on for our very survival. I know you are with me and I know you will act. Social and environmental justice are no longer two separate issues. There is no freedom or justice in a world that is dying.

If you haven’t already, please call and e-mail the White House to let them know you vehemently oppose the Trans Canada proposed Keystone tars sands pipeline and you want us off fossil fuels. You want the 100′s of trillions of dollars that have been funneled into oil wars, weapons manufacturers, and big oil interests put back into the clean energy revolution. We need our government to tax these greed mongers instead of subsidizing them with middle class American tax dollars. The time has come to take a stand and gather control to protect the future for our children.  Go to www.tarsandaction.org to learn more and Please call 202-456-1111 to reach the the White house comments line.