Farm Day! our annual open house – everyone’s invited

Tomato Madness – peak of the season

Heirloom tomatoes at season’s peak

With names like Podland Pink, Gold Medal, Black Cherry, Opalka, Green Grape, Zelta Gaelis, Matt’s Wild Cherry, Lime Green Salad, Cherokee Purple, Homestead 24, Chocolate Stripes….my mouth waters when I gaze upon these beauties. It’s peak of season for these old-fashioned heirloom tomatoes. We have over 60 varieties planted out on the farm – many of our tried and true favorites, and always a few new ones to explore.

Come to our booth at the Pinecrest Gardens Farmers market tomorrow (9-3). Buy yourself an assortment. Enjoy the amazing variety of colors, sizes, shapes and flavors. Take note of which ones you’d like to grow for yourself next fall. We’ll be selling the starts in October at our second annual GrowFest! event at the Redland Fruit & Spice Park.

In the meantime, munch upon these yummy jewels now, because pretty soon they’ll be done for the season.

See you at the market!

…around the farm the past few weeks

Preparing the rows for planting – after we form the beds with the tractor, we add fertilizer and level off the tops. If our soil was a couple of inches deeper, the bedder attachment would have done this for us – it almost does it in some of the deeper soil areas (6″-8″ mounded). Pretty good for our “shallow, Krome gravelly soils”, as the USGS labels them.

Here I’m documenting what’s being planted in the rows. This is good farming practice, and is required recordkeeping for organic certification. Why? These kinds of records allow the farmer to keep track of what’s planted where, so s/he can maintain a rotation plan for the crops, helping to keep crop-specific pests and diseases minimized, and prevent excessive soil nutrient depletion.

The baby Lacinato Kale plants are coming right along, with their drip irrigation delivering water right to the root zone of the plant, where it is needed.

These D’Avignon French Breakfast radishes are popping out of the ground, ready to be harvested. Yummy!

Just a few weeks later, here’s those kale plants last week, nearly ready for first harvest as bunches. Look for some at the market on Sunday, and soon in the CSA shares.

farm pictures courtesy of Marian Wertlka-RedlandRambles.com

 

Missed GrowFest! 2012? Here’s a second chance to get your seedlings…

What: Heirloom tomato (and other) seedlings for sale, and a few other goodies plus Rachel’s eggs, smoked eggs, Fruits of Summer dried fruit mix, honey, the new book Field to Feast, feed for your plants…

When:  THIS Saturday, November 3rd

Hours: 10am-2pm

Where: at the farm  (note the farm is not normally open to the public, so if you miss out, please don’t come another day-your next chance will be Dec 2nd when we return to Pinecrest Gardens market)

Directions to the farm: go West on Bauer Drive (SW 264th St) to Redland Road (187th Ave). CONTINUE on Bauer Drive across the intersection, for 1/3 mile.  Look for the flags and signs. Watch for a 7′ coral rock pyramid on your left (driver’s) side. You’re here! You’ll see our farm sign hanging on the fence. Park along the swale, and enter by the West gate, on the gravel driveway. Proceed all the way to the big metal building at the rear. (don’t bother asking for the address-you won’t get here with it-trust me-just follow the directions above. For you GPS addicts, look for zip code 33031-1787, and FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ABOVE!

See you there!

…aaaand, we’re BACK!

After a dormancy approaching 2 years (really? really!! time flies!), I realized it’s time to crank up this blog again – just in time for the new season.  We didn’t REALLY fall off the face of the earth. We’ve continued to send out emails, and have been active on Facebook, with some Tweeting thrown in from time to time, but I know that a number of our fans don’t “do” Facebook, not everyone is on our email list, and many don’t appreciate being bombarded with constant emails. So, I’m brushing off the rust, oiling the gears…ready to blog it!

Lots of things have happened in the intervening months. It’s the cycle of  life on a farm – preparing, planting crops, weeding, harvesting, selling, delivering, removing, recharging, then starting all over again. And in between each one, there’s weeding, dealing with unexpected stuff – sometimes good, sometimes not – more weeding, and in the summer, mowing and mowing and mowing – oh, and weeding! Then somewhere in the mix, throw in a crop of baby chicks to replenish the flock, after decimation by coyote and feral dogs… yep, life on the farm is NEVER boring.

Last year on the farm

We saw new markets start, and others die out. The Homestead Market at Losner Park and the Overtown Market on 10th Street did not return in 2011-2012, and were sorely missed. But the slightly less hectic pace let us concentrate on the Pinecrest Gardens Green Market, where we had a great season. We’ll be back in Pinecrest in December.

Last year we started using Farmigo’s  CSA software system. We’ve fully automated our CSA enrollment process and are now able to offer more flexibility with share options and payment plans. In the summertime, when the CSA isn’t running and we don’t sell at the farmers market, we’ve always had a prepaid system (open to anyone) to order seasonal summer items – mainly tropical fruit. We implemented Farmigo’s webstore functions for this, and expanded our summer pickup locations to include the Upper Eastside Market, where our more northerly customers could pick up their orders without having to schlep down to Joanna’s Marketplace in the Dadeland area or to the farm in Redland. That’s worked out really well!

Our CSA options expanded last year, with the discovery of locally-grown Sem-Chi certified organic rice right in the Clewiston area barely 100 miles from the farm, and the debut of local salt farmers Midge & Tom with their Florida Keys Sea Salt. As more local organic (or pesticide-free) producers come online, we continue to develop additional stability and more variety in the shares.  We’re always looking for new crops, too. We have an amazing opportunity in South Florida to explore tropical food crops not available in the rest of mainland USA, and we’re all about that! Of course, Mother Nature always has the last word.

…see you around!

Come see us at the market…

Farmers market season is in full swing now. Here’s our market schedule:

Sundays 9-2 at the Pinecrest Gardens Farmers Market, corner of Killian Dr & SW Red Road. Dec 5 & 12, then skip 19th (Farm Day!), skip 26th, return Jan 2 every Sunday for the rest of the season

Mondays 2-6 at Homestead Farmers Market, Losner Park, Main Street, Homestead

Wednesdays 1-4 at Overtown Roots in the City Market, corner of NW 2nd Avenue & 10th Street

December 19 is Farm Day! at Bee Heaven Farm 11:30-3:30. This is a day of fun on the farm, with live music, hay rides, a farm market, & great food (Can you say, FOOD TRUCK!?). Full details to follow. Plan on coming and bring $$.

Amble to the RAMBLE!

Visit our booth at Fairchild’s 70th annual Ramble. We’ll have our full farmers market display with plenty of goodies, such as dandelion, callaloo, arugula, and assorted other greens, salad mix, first harvest local green beans!, head lettuces, squash & zucs & cukes, turnips, bok choy, cherry tomatoes, fennel and assorted herbs, betel leaf and hoja santa, avocados, carambolas, jakfruit, passionfruit, sugarcane and persimmons. Everything is certified organic or pesticide-free, AND locally-grown!

We’ll also have our awesome Antidema Butter, Guava Shells, our Fruits of Summer dried tropical fruit mix, and assorted other goodies.

So, come on out – we won’t be at Pinecrest on Sunday, only at RAMBLE!

Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden

We’ll be at the 70th Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Ramble festival this weekend! Come enjoy arts, music, food, shopping, amazing scenery, cooking demos, kids activities, and shop for your organic goodies all in one place.

Fill up on fresh, local, organic veggies, herbs and fruits, our own guava shells (yum), (dried)Fruits of Summer, and, doing a test run, brine pickles & ferments. Pick up some starter plants too (some tomatoes, some veggies, some flowers)-all certified organic! And we’ll have items you’ll see used in some of the demos – allspice and roselle (Jamaican sorrel)

We’ll hold your purchases for you until you’re ready to go home. And, we’re proud to announce that we now take credit & debit (MC,Visa,Discover), and EBT/SNAP benefits! Of course, we do love cash!

Look for our booth in the GreenMarket area. See you there!

PS: If you’re not a Fairchild member, you may think admission is too expensive. It’s worth springing for it, since, once you’re a member, you get in free to ALL their events for an entire year (except for the moonlight tours)

To Market! To Market!

      It’s the start of market season! 

Come see us Sunday Nov 7, 
at  Pinecrest Gardens Farmers Market,

Killian Drive (SW 112th St) and Red Road (SW 57th Ave)
from 9am-2pm

 Here’s a partial list of what we’ll have this weekend:

 From our own Redland farms: Choquette Avocados, persimmons!, Carambola (sweet and tart), curryleaf, garlic chives, Thai basil, lemongrass, jakfruit, mamey sapote, passionfruit, Rangpur limes. We’ll also have our local Wildflower and Tropical Fruit Honey, fresh pollen!

From our Punta Gorda partner Worden Farm and other area farms: Cukes (picklers, Asian, slicers), squash (patty pan and zucchinis), radishes, turnips, dandelions, bok choy, fennel, eggplant, Lettuce!, Savoy Spinach!, bok choy, arugula, salad mix, grape tomatoes, and more… 

Come early for the best selection!

NEWS FLASH: We now accept credit, debit, and SNAP/EBT cards!
(Visa, MasterCard, and Discover)

Behind the scenes…

I was going through the market signs when my daughter walked in. “That’s slightly terrifying!” she said. Here’s what she saw…

a jumble of signs

…that’s my desktop…there’s a keyboard under there…somewhere… 🙂