In Praise of Mature Squash

  Question: (asked by me of a tiny 85 year-old woman who had just purchased a huge Hubbard squash)  "Do you need a hand to cut that into smaller pieces?"

  Answer:  "Oh my dear, no thank-you. I live on the eighth floor!"

We have grown and harvested hundreds of tonnes of squash over the past few decades including:

  Butternut Squash: The Alfa Romeo of squash that appears as though God was handed a french curve set. With its small seed cavity, it is easy to process. Terrific for baking or steaming.  Sublime in soup.

  Acorn or Pepper Squash: The Toyota Camry of squash that doesn't look anything like an acorn. Reliable and pleasant, although it can be stringy if unripe. Best baked with a dash of brown sugar. Early maturing.

  Hubbard Squash: The Hummer of squash with a hard shell that can be a challenge to cut open. Has a small core of devoted fans. Excellent for pies (similar to pumpkin.)

 In all we grow about a dozen different varieties, but of that dozen, I admit to having a huge bias towards one variety in particular:

  Buttercup Squash. The Dodge Caravan of squash that does look like an acorn.  A Dodge Caravan with a lumpy, warty exterior and flat green paint job.

  But the inside is pure, unalloyed squash soul. When mature, the Buttercup has a somewhat dry, nutty, sweet flavor that just begs for a little butter to carry you home to the promised land of squash perfection. It needs no brown sugar; it will be chock full of  sweetness from all those days spent on the vine soaking up sunlight.

  "Mature" is the operative word for squash. Like that small print on the 8th page of that divorce settlement; the devil is in the details. Allow me to digress for just a moment...

  Squash, which was grown by the native people long before the appearance of any white man on this continent, has always enjoyed a place of honor at Thanksgiving.

  Every year North Americans celebrate Thanksgiving in either October or November. The original idea was to celebrate the blessings of a bountiful harvest.

  Squash requires every frost-free day it can find in our latitudes to mature. It and many other crops are simply not ready for harvest until late September in most years, which is the reason why we don't celebrate Thanksgiving on Labor Day or earlier in the year.

  However, the chain stores and other merchants insist on stocking and selling squash right after Labor Day. I have even seen local squash for sale in late August. Some local farmers are more than happy to fill this niche; the wholesale price for squash in early September is much higher than it will be later in the month.

  Why? Because after a winter of high priced American imports, squash lovers are looking for more reasonably priced local product. We are besieged by requests starting in August every year.

  Part of the problem is the squash fruit itself. Although it has reached full size in the field by mid August and certainly looks mature, it requires several more weeks on the vine in the field to fully develop the natural sugars and full complement of Vitamins C, A and B6.

  Ditto thiamine, magnesium, iron and calcium; all will be present, but in diminished amounts.

  It will never mature off the plant if it is picked green in this way, and it will never taste remotely like the delicious vegetable that it can and should be.

   Look for a dark yellow to orange ground spot to determine the maturity. If it's light green or pale white, choose another one or wait until you can buy mature squash.

  Due to the cool wet summer of 2014, we had to wait until the second week of October to harvest our squash; our latest harvest ever. It was a major source of frustration for us and our customers.

  But, it was (finally!) mature and it was so worth the wait.....

  We have just picked our squash for this year and will have them available for the next several weeks.

  Patiently,

  Guy





































                          

Season of Mists

  " Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness"
            John Keats  "Ode to Autumn"  September 1819

  " It's wet tractor seat season!" 
               John Deere flyer      September 1999

  What's not to love about September?  Typically, September is the love child of  August and October, although it has been uncharacteristically July-like for much of the first half of the 2015 version.

  Our fields in September are bursting with the bounty of the harvest. It catches me by surprise every year; those spindly transplants that we have been coddling over the past few months are suddenly robust and fulsome.

  We go from wondering how to fill our market up in August to wondering where we can put all that fresh produce. Our market tables are groaning under the bounty of this year's harvest for a few short, hectic weeks.

  John Keats might not have had the chops to make it as a John Deere copywriter, but both quotes make the same point: September is a month of heavy dews and morning mists.

  When a warm, clear day is followed by a cloudless, cool night (typical September weather), dew is formed. Because the cooler night air cannot hold as much humidity as the warmer daytime air, it condenses on the plant leaves.

  This fact can be both a blessing and a curse to farmers:

  A series of heavy dews with light daytime winds creates a situation where a plant's leaves are wet for most of the day. This creates an ideal environment for the growth and spread of certain fungal diseases.

  We try to pick tomatoes, beans and melons when the foliage is dry to help limit any diseases that may be present. All these crops are highly sensitive to foliar diseases.

  The silver lining to dew is the fact that it can compensate for a lack of rain. It is not uncommon to receive an inch or slightly more of precipitation in  the form of dew per week, which can help bring a crop to maturity in a dry fall.

  If you look at the base of a corn plant after a heavy dew, you will see an area of wet soil around the base of the plant. Corn, and many other plants, have a unique leaf design that allows the collected dew to be channeled to the stalk of the plant and then down to the roots through gravity.

  This wonderful time of year is all too brief. Why not come on out to the farm and help us enjoy all the blessings of a bountiful harvest?

  Best,

  Guy













   

Watermelon thumping

When one has tasted watermelon, he knows what the angels eat.
                                                                    Mark Twain

  Watermelon are the perfect late summer treat, deliciously sweet and crunchy underneath their garish striped rinds. To me, they evoke memories of checkered table cloths laid out on the lawn, brimming with all the fixings for a summer picnic. No watermelon; no picnic. Simple as that.

 Although they are 92% water, they do contain significant amounts of Vitamin A, B6 and C in addition to lycopene, antioxidants, amino acids and a modest amount of potassium.

  I love growing them. We harvest thousands every year, to rave reviews. I prefer cultivating seeded varieties; they are more reliably sweet in our increasingly unreliable Southern Ontario summers.

  The appearance of watermelons in our market marks the beginning of a ritual that has become so predictable to us as to be almost comical: the watermelon thump. We have several weeks ahead during which our market will reverberate with the sound of watermelon thumping.

  It doesn't seem to matter where in the world our customers come from. Everyone seems to know this ritual, or has inherited it from a parent or grandparent.

  The idea of rapping a melon with your knuckles is, of course, to determine whether it is ripe or not. There is a modicum of science to the practice, the fact that a ripe melon has a more hollow sound than an unripe one. It takes a skilled practitioner and the sound does vary between melon varieties.

 My advice to die-hard thumpers: the sound that you make rapping on your head denotes an unripe melon; the sound that you make by thumping on your chest approximates that of a ripe melon.

   Okay, it's an inexact science, but it does enhance the comic effect.

  Realistically, thumping a watermelon to determine ripeness is about as effective as kicking the tires on a car to determine if it is mechanically fit.

  A more effective method, and the one we use in the field, is to roll the melon until you find where it lay while growing and ripening in the field (the "ground spot" or "belly spot".) This spot should be creamy white or yellow. If it is light green or you can see stripes running through the belly spot, then the melon is immature.

  Watermelons will not mature any further after they are picked! We are extremely careful when harvesting our melons to try and avoid immature fruit for this reason.

  Mature melons also have a faded appearance on the top that you will easily recognize.

  Believe it or not, there is a new Melon Meter app for your smartphone to determine whether it is ripe or not:

  http://www.cnet.com/news/melon-meter-ios-app-listens-for-ripe-watermelons/

  Call me a Luddite, but we have resisted that one so far. It is clearly not as much fun as thumping.

  Come and get them while you can; it's a short and sweet season!

  Best,

  Guy



 

Bug Busting

  "Alright you two; break it up!"
     
  Geoff Farintosh, Age 8, squishing two mating potato beetles.

  Anyone who grows potatoes or eggplant already knows way more than they care to about Colorado Potato Beatles.

 Beneath their handsome striped shells lurks a stone cold killer with the ability to strip the leaves off a potato crop almost overnight.They create millions of dollars in damage every year.

  What makes them so singularly successful is their legendary ability to develop resistance to any insecticide thrown at them. Starting with DDT in 1952, there is a long list of failed chemicals that are no longer effective.

  Chemical control typically involves several applications of insecticide every growing season.

  Their kryptonite, however, is what they call "mechanical control", or in layman's terms, hand-picking-and -squishing-them. It is 100% guaranteed and there is absolutely no chance of their developing resistance.

  It is slow and tedious work. Not only do the adult beetles have to be squashed, there is also the matter of larvae and egg masses to deal with.

 Given that an adult beetle can lay up to 800 eggs, times a couple of generations per year, that's a lot of sons and daughters of anarchy wreaking havoc on your crop.

  We only grow about one acre of eggplants, so it is within our means to practice mechanical control, which we do when the plants are small, typically within the first couple of weeks after transplanting, when they are most vulnerable to insect damage.

  This is when my son wishes he was 8 again, rather than  6'5".

  Our other ace in the hole is the use of predatory beneficial insects, or biological control. This is sheer serendipity, but about the time that the second generation of potato beetles is laying eggs, lady beetles (lady bugs ) appear in great numbers, usually attracted by aphids on other crops.

  Potato beetle eggs are chocolate truffles to lady beetles, who typically destroy about 60% of the egg masses.

  By then, the host eggplant is usually big enough to fend for itself without any chemical intervention from us.

  We grow a dozen or so different kinds of eggplant, all using the same system. They are picked every morning at the height of their creamy goodness. Sicilian, Asian and the more usual purple varieties are all on offer.

  So look up your favorite recipe and stop by the farm. We will have them ready for Pick Your Own later on in September.

  Best,

  Guy









  

Home field advantage

  " Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

                                               Oscar Wilde

  The big Plymouth pulled over on to the gravel shoulder beside where I was selling sweet corn off the back of a pickup truck. It was a hot, steamy day in late August with not a whisper of a breeze.

  " How much is your corn?", the woman asked.
  " Sixty five cents a dozen. It's Seneca Chief and it was just picked this morning", I said, brightly.
  " It's fifty cents a dozen in Windsor" she replied, unimpressed. Emphasis on the "fifty".

   Windsor; 240 miles to the southwest from where we were; in the heart of corn-growing country.

  " That would be the place to buy it then", I answered, helpfully.

  She pinned the accelerator, putting up a rooster-tail of gravel and dust that enveloped my truck and I, as she fishtailed back into traffic.

  Sigh. Another satisfied customer.

  Local food was a tough sell in 1975. Price was the number one concern of most shoppers; the cheaper, the better. The whole notion of local food actually tasting better or being more nutritious was appreciated by few consumers.

  Whole Foods wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in 1975 in our area. Knob Hill Farms ( a deep discount chain) was king.

  So why is it a lot easier for me to sell that fresh corn today?

  A better informed  population, with its increased interest in health and well-being has really propelled the local food movement to the fore. They get the fact that fresh food is more tasty and nutritious than produce that has traveled further to get to their supermarket shelf than they did on their last vacation.

  This is where smaller growers, like myself, enjoy a distinct advantage. A local chain advertises "if it was any fresher, it would still be in the field." Well, as a matter of fact, it probably is still in our field, and will be until a few hours (or minutes, even) before it is sold.

  We are far more nimble at managing our fresh inventory because we can delay our harvest until the last possible moment to ensure peak ripeness, flavour and nutrition.

  There is an ever increasing body of scientific evidence that directly links the freshness of certain vegetables  to their health benefits. While a potato can be stored for several months without compromising its nutritional benefit, broccoli begins to lose its cancer-fighting compounds within 24 hours of harvest.

  The book "Eating on the Wild Side" by Jo Robinson discusses many different fruits and vegetables through this lens.

   For the ultimate fresh local food experience, why not try picking some of the many different vegetables at our farm yourself. We are sure that once you have tasted the difference, you will be back for more!

  Outstanding in his field,

  Guy

Whatever happened to real carrots?

"Sowe carrets in your gardens, and humbly praise God for them, as for a singular and great blessing"
                                   
                                                   Richard Gardiner  1599

  
  So what was the best carrot that you ever tasted?

 Most people I ask remember it as that one they pulled out of the garden themselves, wiped on their sleeve and popped into their mouth. There it was: earthy, crisp and sweetly delicious.

  So why do so many carrots taste so "meh" these days?   It's a very good question.

  The first issue to address is the varieties of carrots grown today:

 For a large scale carrot grower, the goal is to harvest and store the maximum tonnage that can be coaxed out of his land. Obviously the money for commercial seed houses and plant breeders is to address the needs of these high volume producers, which is only fair.

   Commercial seed catalog carrot descriptions will include "good interior color", "strong tops", "good shipper", "good storeability"or "excellent yields". Flavor and sweetness are mentioned, but they are secondary concerns for most large commercial growers.

  The appearance of "baby carrots" several years ago was a canary in a coal mine about the disappearing taste. It was a tacit admission by the industry that, okay, our cello-pack carrots have no flavor, but how about these cute baby carrots with bunnies on the package!

  Then the truth came out that these were merely large carrots that had been mechanically shaped to resemble baby carrots. It was all an elaborate ruse.

  So, what about bunched carrots, sold with the tops on?

  California accounts for about 80% of the bunched market every year, due to their year-round growing season. Ask any farm market operator what the sweetest carrot type is, and they will tell you: Nantes, which is the only type that we grow.

 California doesn't grow Nantes carrots for bunching; preferring long, thin types to the generally shorter and less uniform Nantes varieties.

  The second contributing factor to the sweetness of carrots is the soil in which they are grown.

  Most commercial carrot growing areas have sand or muck soils to aid with seedling emergence and the development of long straight roots. Clay soils are anathema to commercial growers, tricky to work with and difficult to harvest from due to their "sticky" quality.

  Those of you familiar with wine may have heard the word "terroir",which, although it literally means soil, actually refers to the specificity of a place. This includes the soil, rainfall, climate, etc.  Bordeaux and Burgundy are well known examples of wine regions where the superior flavor is inextricably linked to their terroir.

  I don't think that it's much of a stretch to apply the word to vegetables as well. We find that the more complex that we can make our soil's biology ahead of carrots, the better they taste.

  This means using cover crops and growing diverse species of green manures to incorporate into our clay loam soils. A clay fraction in soil seems to confer a better taste to vegetables for reasons that are not fully understood, but may be due to its ability to hang onto more minerals such as Magnesium and Potassium.

  A less subjective and more quantifiable method that we employ is to measure the degrees of Brix or sugar, found in our carrots.  Vegetable farmers have stolen the idea from those savvy wine growers again, who have measured Brix readings for years to help determine the optimum timing for harvest.

 We may have readings of 9 early in the summer, climbing to 12 with the cooler weather of fall, which, again helps make sweeter carrots.

  Obviously, I have simplified the whole issue, but you now have enough information to make you dangerous at any discussion involving the taste of carrots.

  We have been digging some great tasting carrots lately, with brix readings of about 12; unusually high for this time of year. Stop by and catch them while you can!

   Guy

What are those red striped beans?

" I did not read books the first summer. I hoed beans."
         
          Henry David Thoreau       Walden Pond


We grow acres of snap beans every year, both green and yellow. We pick them every morning from late July until frost, weather permitting.

  Snap bean varieties grown for shipping are specifically bred to have added fiber to help them withstand the rigors of being loaded on and off trucks on their way to the supermarket. We have all tasted those beans. I'm sure that is why they used to be called "string" beans.

  The bean varieties we grow are bred to have less fiber, making them much more tender. We stagger our plantings over the course of the season to give us a steady supply of young, tender beans.

  Weather clearly sets the agenda, but 2014, with its cool, wet growing season was about as close to perfect a bean growing season as one could ask for. The quality and flavor were both excellent. Our 2015 beans have been great as well thus far.

  Most people are familiar with how to handle a green bean in the kitchen, but the appearance of those plump beans with their gorgeous splashes of pink, red and white marks the reappearance in our market of that perennial question:

  "What are those red striped beans and what do I do with them?"

  Romano beans is what we call them here in Ontario. They are also known as French Horticultural, Borlotti or Cranberry beans depending on where you hail from. Our West Indian customers call them, simply, "peas" which created some confusion on my part in the early years of my farming career, but we're all on the same page now.

  Unlike a snap bean, Romano beans are left on the plant to mature until the beans inside the pod are swollen. The beans are harvested at this point and  easily shelled, yielding strikingly colored white beans with deep red specks. The outer pods are discarded.

  These beans are now cooked, which will cause the color to fade to a uniform beige color. The flavor is wonderfully unique; a nutty,earthy, somewhat sweet taste with a creamy, substantial texture. The taste is nothing like a lima bean, which was a very pleasant surprise to me.

  The easiest way to use them is to add them as the last ingredient to chili, soups or stews. They only need about 35 minutes; if cooked much longer they will split and then start to break down.

  Or, you can boil them on their own. Cover them with two inches of water or stock and add a pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to medium low and cook them uncovered for about 35 minutes or until tender. Drain, toss with some olive oil , lemon juice, salt , pepper and some minced fresh parsley and you have a delicious warm salad.

  Another one of the really great things about Romano beans is the ease of preserving them. No need to blanch them, we just lay the shelled beans in a single layer on a baking sheet and freeze them until they're solid. We then transfer them to plastic airtight bags. Because they're individually frozen, it is easy to take out a little or a lot, as required.

  We are all looking for healthy sources of protein these days, and these beans fit the bill. A one cup serving has 16.5 grams of protein along with 17.7 grams of dietary fiber. Added to that are their substantial quantities of potassium, copper, iron and calcium. We're talking about a nutritional powerhouse!

  So, why not take some time to spread your culinary wings if you have been a stranger to Romano beans until now. We'll have them available from early August to late September.

  Best,

  Guy