  It Takes a Village! Some great and exciting things are happening on the farm! The new roof to one of our greenhouses is up, which is no small feat in Nebraska wind. Our entire crew assisted in getting a 42’x100′ piece of weaved plastic secured and of course, Nebraska weather always likes to make things a little more challenging. In addition to the greenhouse, new construction on a tractor/equipment barn is under way! This will allow us to have more covered space for vehicles, and even plants ready to be transplanted to be stored safely when bad weather arises. This will also us to make future improvements on the packing and washing area of the farm! Ryan is very excited about the new construction. On The Farm We have been seeding fall crops in our climate-controlled greenhouse this week. We will plant these in a few weeks for harvest in October. Weed control becomes very important in the dog days of summer – it’s like a lot of other things in life, if you keep up with it, it’s pretty manageable, but if you get behind- woah nelly, it can get a little crazy. Luckily the crew has done a great job with weeds this year and they will be enjoying a fair amount of hoeing in the coming weeks! Tomatoes and raspberries are coming along, and we have a few but not quite enough yet to put into everybody’s CSA.  Don’t be afraid of turnips! I want to encourage you all to try them, even if you have bad memories of them from your childhood. Ryan has the best turnips! They are creamy and sweet. In our house, we eat them raw – we don’t peel them, but some people prefer to peel them. They are also delicious in stir fry, roasted and on salads. |
Farm Update 6/21/2022
 On the Farm- Some Bad News & Some Good News Unfortunately, we at Pekarek’s have some bad news; strawberry season is officially over. We know that strawberries are something that a lot of you look forward to as do we. The crop this year, however, just did not want to produce. After flowering, which was a sea of white, the strawberry plants just went kaput. We were hoping for a few thousand quarts this year and we were lucky to get over 150 quarts. While that may be some bad news, we also have good news! The rest of the farm is chugging right along, our sweet corn is tasseling (which means corn is coming!) and our friends Juan, Eduardo and Julio are up from Mexico, and we are so excited to have them! Raspberry season is just getting started and is a generally longer season! We are now seeing both shelling and snap peas come in, with green beans not far behind. We also have started the broccoli harvest for the year. – we do several plantings of this, so we’ll have broccoli for most of the time between now and October. Week 5: Vegetable Subscription Broccoli Radish Popcorn Kohlrabi Cucumber  Other crops are coming along nicely – potatoes are looking good. I’m hoping we get the first ones of the year dug around mid-July. Little baby cantaloupe and watermelon are appearing on their vines. These are some of Ryan’s favorite crops. The sweet potatoes we transplanted a few weeks ago look nice and should be on track for an early fall harvest. Add Produce to Your Weekly Subscription   Rain versus Irrigation On Thursday last week, we got a little over 2.5 inches of rain at the farm, in about 10 hours). To say it was a little muddy is an understatement. Still, things needed to be harvested and we got it done. This heat has been really nice in drying things out quickly. If we do not have rain here soon whilst temperatures stay high, we will have to get into irrigating our crops. While it’s a little nice to not have mud everywhere, irrigation is hard on the crew. Everything on the farm is drip irrigated, meaning we have black, blue, and red hoses going everywhere around the farm. We have irrigation running to all of our many crops and they get hours and hours of irrigation. It’s an efficient system for the plants and promotes less disease, but it also means we have alarms set for all times of the day to go move irrigation water from one crop to the other!  Online Ordering – Additions to your Weekly Subscription If you would like to add produce to your weekly vegetable subscription tomorrow, you can go online to pekareksproduce.com/shop and place your order by 10am tomorrow. We will add it to your regular bag for tomorrow. Have Questions? We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please text or call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305 or Michael McCray at (303) 912- 0095 Your Farmers, Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, Grace, and Crew Forward to a Friend |
Weekly Vegetable Subscription- June 14th, 2022, Update
 Hey Folks! Hope you all are staying cool in this extra warm weather! Some of the workers find it necessary to go into the walk-in cooler on days like this week to cool off!  Week 4: Vegetable Subscription Radish Kale Cucumber Salad Mix Kohlrabi Warm weather Hopefully this June “Strawberry Moon” will turn the tide for our strawberry plants. The winter led to big losses for this year’s strawberry crop. Combined with the wonky spring we had, warm weather on the farm can put an early end to certain crops like strawberries. It also means that the start time on the farm changes from 8 o’clock to 7 AM. This will likely continue through this week and into next, with some days STARTING at 6 AM. Warm weather like this is typically good news for most crops on the farm, it also means irrigating our vegetables takes more time. On the Farm Strawberry season will be short this year – the inconsistent weather in months previous combined with this heat is hard on the blossoms (which turn into strawberries). While we have some produce available online; strawberries, at least for this week, will be available for purchase at the local farmer’s markets (Hub & Haymarket). Soon, we will have snow peas and sugar snap peas, followed by shelling peas in another week or two. Yellow squash and zucchini are coming along nicely and should be producing here in the next week or so. Raspberries are slow this year. We hope to be picking them before June is over. They also had a tough winter and some loss. But, unlike the strawberries which have a short season, raspberries start producing in June and last for a couple of months. They have a long life in the field, but because of the fresh eating variety we grow, they are only meant to be stored a few days. That means, just like the strawberries, they are picked and in your hands in a matter of a day or two. Come Check Out The Store!  The potatoes are growing nicely and will be available in July. Sweet corn season is a bit late for us this year…probably not until the second week of July. Popcorn, despite last year having some ground squirrel problems, it seems nearly every seed came up. Kohlrabi I tend to forget that not everyone is familiar with Kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is that little green alien looking ball in your vegetable bag. In our house we eat this raw often. You peel the outer green layer and then slice it into thin strips. Then you eat it like a carrot. Margret loves kohlrabi with cream cheese and some of our workers prefer it with some ranch. It’s also great in stir fry, soups, and baked like to chip in the oven. Try incorporating kohlrabi into an Asian Cuisine and its sure to be a hit.  Housekeeping We hope you are enjoying your weekly vegetable bag. If you know you are going to be gone, send us a text and we will get your produce donated immediately. If you don’t pick up your produce bag, we will take it back to the farm and hold it for 1 to 2 days. If it’s not picked up at that time, we will donate it – we really want you to enjoy your produce, so we will work with you as much as possible! Online Ordering – Additions to your Weekly Subscription If you would like to add produce to your weekly vegetable subscription tomorrow, you can go online to pekareksproduce.com/shop and place your order by 9am tomorrow. We will add it to your regular bag for tomorrow. Have Questions? We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please text or call Katie at (402) 560-3110 Ryan at (402) 641-3305 or Michael McCray at (303) 912-0095 Your Farmers, (Written by Michael McCray) on behalf of Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, Grace, and Crew Forward to a Friend |
Early April Update
Hello Friends!
It’s starting to feel like spring around here! Ryan set up the delivery date in late April for more strawberries and asparagus plants. Six thousand strawberry plants will go in the field around May 1. They won’t produce strawberries until 2023 and 2024. The strawberries you eat from us in 2022 (hopefully!) were planted in 2020. Our matted row strawberries are a three-year crop with harvests of berries in the second and third years.
The 3000 asparagus roots will go in the field in late April. They won’t be ready for a full harvest until 2024 or 2025! Sometimes farming is a long-term proposition. For contrast, radishes planted outside at the same time would be ready to eat in 35 days.
Field Work
| We had some nice cold days last week that Ryan thought would be perfect to spend the day outside! Ryan was out on the tractor prepping beds for spring planting. |
| This land was in vegetables and soybeans last fall. Back in October it was disked, bedded, and seeded with a cover crop of rye and oats and harrowed. The disk stirs up the soil and cuts old plant residue. The bedder creates a big fluffy row that is easy to plant in. The harrow gets the rye and oats seed covered with a small amount of soil. Next, we wait all winter while the rye grows; the oats grew and died last fall. Next a pass with the big 6 ft rototiller on the tractor. Next a pass with the bedder to form a rough bed and install 2 or 3 lines of drip tape to irrigate the crop. |
| FINALLY, a last pass with the bedder to refine and smooth the bed. If all goes right, we have a flat smooth surface with three marks on it to plant seeds or set plants. The moral of the story — it took 7 passes with a tractor to get a bed ready for planting. Oh, and, it was so windy on the day of final bed shaping that coffee was literally blown out of Ryan’s mouth while he was trying to get a drink to warm up! |
Weekly Vegetable Subscription
| Did you know that in a typical year, there are more 30 different vegetables in the Pekarek’s Produce Vegetable Subscription? This includes tomatoes, watermelon, broccoli, butternut squash, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, cauliflower, peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, red & golden beets, green beans, green onions, jalapeños, kohlrabi, onions, potatoes, radishes, salad mix, snow & sugar snap peas, spaghetti squash, spinach, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, cherry & roma tomatoes, turnips, cantaloupe, yellow squash, and zucchini! Be sure to check out the weekly vegetable subscription at pekareksproduce.com/csa and share with your friends. Sign up by May 17. |
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please text or call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, and Grace
March Update – On the Farm
Hello friends! As we gear up for another fun produce season, we’d like to bring you a farm update. We will again be sending out email updates, so be sure to forward to a friend or encourage them to sign up. We hope to remember how to use facebook/instagram/twitter – so watch for fun pictures. We’ve also been making updates to our online ordering page and we are in the beginning stages of signups for the Weekly Vegetable Subscription! We can’t wait to see you all soon. |
Pekarek’s Produce Farm Update
Ryan is getting the itch. The weather has finally turned. Radishes, lettuce, spinach, turnips, carrots, beets are all up in the tunnels and look good. The greenhouse is about half full of little plants that will find another home in a couple weeks. These plants include tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kohlrabi, cucumbers, chives, sage, rosemary, thyme. Ryan is dealing with a fertilizer issue—many years of college and still he makes a goof every once in a while.
Spring maintenance is being done. Over the winter, bolts rattle out of greenhouse frames. The wind is tough in Nebraska! Nothing a little time with a wrench can’t fix. Spring maintenance also means oil and filters and checking tires and such. We have close to a dozen machines that all need vital fluids changed and little check ups every spring! Each of these machines makes our life easier on the farm.
Field Work
It’s dry in the field, but we didn’t have to push any snow, yet. Later this week, we will start working ground to get ready to plant in the field. Early plantings include beets, carrots, peas, radishes, lettuce, spinach, dill, and probably something forgotten. Anything that can handle the cold can go out pretty quick. Often these early plantings get snowed on, but it generally doesn’t hurt. It’s just solid moisture.
Cutting raspberries and burning asparagus are two of the first things that happen in the field. Cutting raspberries involves hands, knees, pruners, and thorns. The thorns are bad, but they let you know they are there. In the summer, the raspberries make up for the thorns with their red fruit, but its just prickles in the winter. When the weather dampens a bit, we will burn off our asparagus patch. Last year’s ferny growth helps to catch snow and insulate the crowns from cold weather. Now they must go to make way for this year’s growth. They are dry as kindling, about head high, and make a great fire. Ryan enjoys burning!
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please text or call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, and Grace
2021 Weekly Vegetable Subscription – Week 13
Last Week for Peaches?
This will likely be the last week for peaches from Pekarek’s Produce. If you are interested in canning or freezing peaches, be sure to get them this week!
On The Farm
| In the weekend’s storm, we received 2.75″ of rain. As you know, rain makes life a little easier in some ways and a little harder in others. We were able to take a few days off from irrigating crops and focus on cleaning up some things on the farm. We also have been having fun tromping through the mud to pick this week! Even things like cantaloupe are getting washed before entering the packing shed and then run through the wash line before they get sent out the door. One crop of green beans is coming to an end, so we had a simple harvest where we pulled the entire plant and pulled green beans off. Typically we will get two or three pickings before we pull the plant out of the ground. We will continue to have green beans for a long time! As we pulled these plants out of the ground, Ryan planted more for down the road! |
Canning, Freezing, and Pickling
Now is the time of year to get some canning, freezing and pickling done. We have a full supply of tomatoes, peppers, onions, pickling cucumbers, dill, beets, green beans, and corn. All of these are available in bulk quantities (and pricing) if you want to make some spaghetti sauce or homemade pickles!
Online Ordering – Additions to your Weekly Subscription
If you would like to add produce to your weekly vegetable subscription tomorrow, you can go online to pekareksproduce.com/shop and place your order by 11:59pm tonight. We will add it to your regular bag for tomorrow.
Week 10: Vegetable Subscription
Kale
Onion
Broccoli
Peppers
Cucumbers
Kohlrabi
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, Grace, and Crew
2021 Weekly Vegetable Subscription – Week 10
| It’s Week 10 of the Weekly Vegetable Subscription and we are officially past the half way mark! We hope you are enjoying your produce to this point and looking forward to some of the late summer, early fall crops for the next few weeks. |
On The Farm
We always try our best on the farm, but sometimes farming is less about perfection and more about deciding how to improve something that went wrong. We start off every year with a planting plan and follow it closely, but sometimes the weather just doesn’t cooperate. Today, Ryan, Ben, and Lukas were pulling out drip tape (irrigation) in a turnip patch that just didn’t produce the way it was supposed to! Later, Ryan will disc the turnips and get ready to plant something new. It’s not really enjoyable, but it’s time to give the ground a chance to produce something else.
Most of the week has been about trying to keep up with harvesting and irrigation. As new crops are producing, we’ll keep you posted! This is the carrot harvest crew in action! You’ll see that most of what we do involves hands and knees, and maybe a bucket or too!
Online Ordering – Additions to your Weekly Subscription
If you would like to add produce to your weekly vegetable subscription tomorrow, you can go online to pekareksproduce.com/shop and place your order by 11:59pm tonight. We will add it to your regular bag for tomorrow.
Week 10: Vegetable Subscription
Kale
Onion
Broccoli
Peppers
Cucumbers
Kohlrabi
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, Grace, and Crew
2021 Weekly Vegetable Subscription – Week 9
| Wow – it’s been a fun week at the Pekarek’s. We had almost 2 inches of rain, lots of wind, school shopping and a baseball tournament! |
On The Farm
| Ryan picked the first few ears of sweet corn this week and ate them for lunch. A couple of them were a little young, so he’s thinking we’ll pick the first few dozen on Wednesday or Thursday! We are also enjoying the first two cantaloupe of the season in our house… it won’t be long before we are swimming in them! We’ve also started picking pickling cucumbers, so get ready for canning season 😊 |
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| I can’t say enough for the rain around here. We’ve been blessed to get a few really nice shots of rain that take the pressure off irrigating. It also means we are able to do a few more maintenance type things. We hope to “skin” this greenhouse today – meaning we are going to put plastic on it so we can use it again. The downside of this week’s rain was that it came with wind – so the raspberries got pretty beat up, some of the corn went down, and whole eggplant plants got tossed around! |
Fridays in the Field
| Ryan was on “Fridays in the Field” with Alex Voichoskie on KRVN talking about everything it takes to get ready for a farmer’s market – including picking seven days each week. They were here on a Wednesday, so there was even some footage of packing your weekly vegetable subscription bags! You can check it out on pekareksproduce.com or click on the picture below to go to the youtube video. |
Online Ordering – Additions to your Weekly Subscription
If you would like to add produce to your weekly vegetable subscription tomorrow, you can go online to pekareksproduce.com/shop and place your order by 11:59pm tonight. We will add it to your regular bag for tomorrow.
Week 9: Vegetable Subscription
Broccoli
Cucumber
Onion
Carrot
Cabbage
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, Grace, and Crew
Check out Friday’s in the Field
We were lucky enough to have Alex Voichoskie with KRVN 880 visit Ryan in the field on July 6! She and Ryan had a nice chat about everything it takes to get ready for a farmer’s market. Check out the video…
2021 Weekly Vegetable Subscription – Week 5
| This week, we would like to invite you on a virtual tour of the farm! Check out the video below… |
| Warm weather Warm weather on the farm is great for most crops but can put an early end to certain crops like strawberries. It also means that the start time on the farm food from 8 o’clock to 7 AM. Last Friday, we saw a 6 AM start time, so we could get strawberries out of the field before the rain came.Friday morning we got 2.6 inches of rain. This was a much-needed rain and has taken pressure off irrigating for a couple of days. Unfortunately our rain came with some wind and a little bit of hail. Most things survived, but it will slow them down a bit. On the FarmStrawberry season will be short this year – this heat is hard on the blossoms (which turn into strawberries). Soon, we will have snow peas, and sugar snap peas. Yellow squash and zucchini are starting to produce and we ate the first few in our house this week. Raspberries are just starting to bear fruit, so we will be harvesting the first few berries within the week.Unlike the strawberries, which have a short season, raspberries start producing in June and last for a couple of months. They have a long life in the field, but because of the fresh eating variety we grow, they are only meant to be stored a few days. That means, just like the strawberries, they are picked and in your hands in a a matter of a day or two. |
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| The potatoes are growing nicely and will be available in July. Sweet corn season is a bit late for us this year…probably nut until the second week of July. Michael has had a ground squirrel problem in the popcorn, so he will be patching some in the holes this week. KohlrabiI tend to forget that not everyone is familiar with Kohlrabi. Kohlrabi isthat little green alien looking ball in your vegetable bag. In our house we eat this raw often. You peel the outer green layer and then slice it into thin strips. Then you eat it like a carrot. It’s also great in stir fry, soups, and baked like to chip in the oven |
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Online Ordering – Additions to your Weekly Subscription
If you would like to add produce to your weekly vegetable subscription tomorrow, you can go online to pekareksproduce.com/shop and place your order by 11:59pm tonight. We will add it to your regular bag for tomorrow.
Week 5: Vegetable Subscription
Strawberries
Cucumber
Kohrabi
Spinach
Radishes
Have Questions?
We can’t wait to see you! If you have questions, please call Katie at (402) 560-3110 or Ryan at (402) 641-3305.
Your Farmers,
Ryan, Katie, Jacob, Margret, Michael, Lukas, Grace, and Crew