This Week’s Harvest
Heirloom Tomatoes
Slicer Tomatoes
Sungold Cherry Tomatoes
Red and Gold Beets
Cabbage
Sweet Onions
Italian Eggplant
Tomatillos (last of the season!)
Farm News
Hello! This is Ben writing the blog this week. I haven’t written a blog post in a couple of years (!?!), but Emily drafted me to do so this week because she wanted to write about equipment and that’s really my role on the farm. It probably comes as no surprise that we are very dependent upon equipment – from coolers, to greenhouses, tractors, trucks, etc. – to make the farm work. We’ve spent years acquiring, building, modifying and repairing the things that make it possible for us to grow, harvest, wash and distribute produce to you. Not surprisingly sometimes things go more smoothly than others, but for 12 years now we’ve made it work!
I’ve come to like the ebb and flow of problem solving that comes with acquiring and maintaining a diverse set of tools to match our growing operation. There are always things that we do to improve operations on the farm and there are always things to fix. So if, or rather when, things break on the farm it gives us a chance to evaluate our systems and figure out if we need to upgrade our tools or scale back what we are trying to do with them.
For example we use Allis Chalmers model G tractors to cultivate all of the crops that we grow on the farm. If you aren’t familiar with these tractors just take a look at these images and you can see that these tractors are strange little machines. They work great for an organic farm of our size, the only downside is that they are old! They are literally 70 year old technology that we use and depend on daily.
At the beginning of the season the engine went out on our G that we had been using for 10 years. Without time to rebuild the engine we went out and bought another tractor. This tractor had been updated with a modern engine. This modification was somewhat of a prototype, and it turns out that the design needs some work because this updated set up has destroyed two transmissions! So, the saga continues and today we are purchasing another G with the original engine to hopefully get us through the rest of this year.
The plan right now is to hopefully make it through next year with our fleet of old cultivating tractors while saving enough money to invest in something more modern and reliable. In the meantime if you should happen to have any questions about fixing/maintaining an Allis Chalmers G don’t hesitate to ask!
Recipes
Chicken with Tomatillos and Poblanos (use some shishito peppers in place of bell pepper)
Okonomiyaki (Japanese Pancake) you can use grated sweet onions in place of scallions and you can also add any other grated vegetable such as carrot, peppers, kohlrabi, zucchini)
Coming Up Next Week (Our Best Guess…..) Sweet Italian Peppers, Fairytale Eggplant, Cantaloupe, Tomatoes, Salad Mix, Potatoes, Poblano Peppers and more!