Hello Folks!

We finally did it – we set a date for the farm tour!  We hope you can join us on Sunday, September 11 for a Pekarek’s Produce Farm Tour.  The tour will run from 2 – 5 pm.  We will have hay rack rides leaving from the packing shed at 2:20 and 3:20.  We will also take you on a tour through the greenhouse, high tunnels, and packing shed.  Bring your family, bring a couple friends, or make a new friend – this is your chance to see how your produce is grown, where it comes from and meet the crew. Be sure to wear your “farm clothes” – even if you think you can stay clean, you won’t.  Trust me on this one.

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Announcing – Pekarek’s Produce Fall CSA!  This year we will be offering a fall CSA during the months of November and December.  The CSA will include four delivery dates which we tried to schedule to go along with the holidays: November 8^th & 22^nd, and December 6^th & 20^th.  The cost for the fall CSA will be $100.  The produce you receive in the box will be somewhat dependent on successful cropping and weather, just as it is in the current CSA and will primarily include vegetables that will store well.

 

Although we will focus on giving you crops that will store well, I thought it might help to know what produce we had available during these months last year.  So often, people think the produce stops sometime in September, but our goal is to have produce through the end of the year into January of the following year.

 

November offerings from 2015 included cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, radishes, salad mix, spinach, bell peppers, kohlrabi, orange and red beets, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, and winter squash. December offerings from 2015 included broccoli, spinach, salad mix, turnips, red & orange beets, carrots, potatoes, and winter squash.

 

The number of fall CSA shares will be limited, with the first availability going to current CSA members who sign up.  Sign up forms will be included with your CSA box next week and available online at pekaresproduce.wordpress.com

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What’s in this week’s CSA box?

• Cantaloupe
• Sweet Peppers
• Yellow Onion
• Red Onion*
• Eggplant
• Sweet Corn
• Cucumbers*
• Potatoes*
•      *Only in the Full Share

Your Farmers,

Ryan, Katie, and Crew

 

Hello Folks!

This week we have been having some “fun” with machines.  We have two four wheelers on the farm that are essential to all of our humdrum daily operations like picking squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and almost anything with a small crew.  We also use them for pulling trailers, using small equipment and general gophering – which doesn’t sound very exciting, but is very important to keep things moving smoothly.

Well last week we had one four wheeler that we had to take to Beatrice to get a starter fixed and last night we spent much of the evening trying to figure out what to do with the other four wheeler that suddenly won’t start – we still have no answer.

In addition to that we are trying to get a new potato digger running.  It’s a giant piece of machinery that is probably 15 feet tall, 20+ feet long, and 10 feet wide.  Currently we use a horse drawn potato digger that we modified to use with a tractor.  It digs the potatoes, dumps them on the ground, and then we walk, or crawl, behind to pick them up.  The new digger, in theory, digs the potatoes, shakes of some of the vines and dirt and then puts them into a bin so that we don’t have to crawl behind the machine on our hands and knees.  Well, we got it running this week, but this machine from the 70s needs a bit of work – hammers, chains, straps, and blow torches…. Looks like it should work, but apparently we are going to need a new belt too.  Needless to say, we’ve felt more like mechanics than farmers lately. Ryan says “I feel like a lousy mechanic.”

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Most of our crew starts school tomorrow, so they have been getting ready for school this week and we already miss them.  On a plus note, we are starting to pick vegetables for the elementary, middle, and high schools with college not far behind.  There’s something rewarding about seeing a bunch of kiddos who like veggies.

Much of this week includes all the things that go with farming, but not the actual farming itself.  So in farming news… we’ve no-till seeded some zucchini and cucumbers for the fall, we had a great watermelon and cantaloupe harvest this week, tomatoes are producing like we hope for this time of year, and we’ve had some great sweet corn growth and are really liking this variety.  The greenhouse fan motor that died in the storms last week got fixed yesterday.

Your Farmers,

Ryan, Katie, and Crew

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What’s in this Week’s CSA Box?

• Sweet Corn
• Watermelon
• Tomatoes
• Eggplant
• Yellow Onion
• Jalapenos

Hello Folks!

I made it back safely from Arkansas and Ryan survived a full week on his own.  I’m not totally certain that, given his 6 am to 10 pm work schedule, he would have noticed we were gone if it weren’t for the CSA J  I’ve had several reports that everything ran smoothly with the CSA while I was gone, so I’m thinking maybe I should leave more often.  If you are asking why I left in the middle of summer, I also work for UNL Extension in the School of Natural Resources and I went to Arkansas to participate in a National Ag Extension conference where received an Achievement Award and gave a presentation.

So now, back to what’s been happening on the farm.  The big news is that in the last week we’ve received almost 2.5 inches of rain.  This is wonderful, as it gives us a little breathing room and we can hold off on irrigating for a little while!  It was a nice rain, no hail, but unfortunately, the fan motor on the greenhouse burned up in the storm as a result of lightening, so we are working on getting that fixed.  The nice rains also mean that it is time to cultivate… rain means everything grows, including weeds!

This week we cleaned out the greenhouse.  Those cucumber plants that have been growing on a trellis in the greenhouse are done producing fruits, but we picked an amazing 3,051 cucumbers off of just 60 plants in there, so we are extremely pleased!

We also transplanted all of the broccoli and cauliflower from the greenhouse.  That is the last batch of broccoli and cauliflower that will go into the field this year.  It’s a bit of a sign that fall is coming.  The other sign fall is coming is that we are losing all of our high school help next week.  We’ve been very fortunate to get a great crop of high school help this year and will be sad to see them go, but look forward to the returning and new fall help.

 

Tomatoes have gone into full swing of production over the last couple of weeks.  They were a very slow start for us this year, but we tend to think of ourselves as if we are in a marathon, not a sprint.  Our veggies may not be the first, but they will have a long season.

We have started picking on the watermelons in the last couple of weeks and will still be planting several crops in the coming months.  Just this week we seeded beets, carrots, green beans, and cabbage.

Be sure to take a cantaloupe this week!

Your Farmers,

Ryan, Katie, and Crew

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What’s in this week’s bag?

• Sweet Corn
• Cantaloupe
• Green Beans
• Cucumber(s)
• Bell Pepper(s)
• Tomatoes

Hello Folks!

The hot summer sun has been brutal on our tender vegetables – and our people too. We’ve had as much sun and blistering heat this year as any year since we’ve began growing vegetables.  We’ve gone to an earlier start in the mornings to try to avoid some of the heat for the people.  But, in this constant sun, plants and vegetables can literally become sunburned and dryout, especially in a greenhouse or high tunnel, where all of the moisture is coming from drip irrigation near the root system.

So, almost a month ago I told you that we put shade cloth on the greenhouse.  It’s been great to have that reprieve from the sun in the greenhouse. Shade cloth is a simple knit or woven fabric designed to reduce the amount of sun that reaches the vegetable bed. Although shade cloths come in many colors, materials, and thicknesses, our shade cloth is a nice black woven mesh.  And as of this week, we have put shade cloth on the remaining 5 high tunnels.  It’s the first time these tunnels have had shade cloth and we were amazed at how quickly it went on.

This week we’ve also been working hard to get more plants in the field.  We planted nearly 12,500 plants in a single day. Whew! We were thankful to get some good planting conditions with just a little moisture in the ground from the last 0.30 in of rain.

We’ve also spent a large amount of time harvesting this week. The zucchini, yellow squash, and cucumbers need to be harvested nearly every day.  It looks like the tomato production may start to pick up soon, but they’ve been pretty slow for so far.

We’ve got a few crops this week that haven’t been in the CSA yet this year.  Although most of you have probably seen these vegetables before, this may be the first time many of you are cooking eggplants. Here’s a big tip: Before cooking the eggplant, be sure to “sweat” the eggplant. “Sweating” an eggplant means to get out any bitterness that may have developed by making it sweat. Begin by slicing the eggplants into 1/4 inch thick slices and liberally sprinkle salt on both sides. Set the salted, sliced eggplant into a colander and let it rest for about 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the eggplant should begin to sweat (droplets of moisture being extracted by salt).  Rinse the eggplant. Then remove the excess moisture before cooking.  There are many of recipes out there, so pick one to enjoy or check out what I made for supper last night on pekareksproduce.wordpress.com.

Your Farmers,

Ryan, Katie, and Crew

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What’s in this week’s CSA?

• Sweet Corn
• Muskmelon*
• Eggplant
• Green Beans
• Bell Pepper(s)
• Cucumber(s)
• Zucchini
• *Full share only