Zac Brown Band supports local farms

Yeah, yeah I'll get to the fun part of yesterday soon enough.  But stay with me for a moment while I give a few words of thanks to those who make it possible for my husband and I to make a living doing what we love.

There has been a lot written in the past couple of years about the local food movement.  For those of us who own and operate small farms, the attention being given to locally grown food is a good thing.  Big farms can fill orders for big companies and they have the employees to execute picking and packing and shipping.  All of that is much more difficult for the small produce grower.  But through outlets just as farmers markets, CSA programs, and selling to local restaurants and schools, the small farmer can eke out a living.  The customer benefits too by getting produce that is better quality (fresher) and has less fuel costs associated with it.  Plus buying local strengthens the local economy.  But while gaining some strength, I feel the local food movement is still in its infancy.  There are so many hurdles for us small farmers to jump over and perhaps getting our message out to the consumer is one of the biggest.  Fortunately there are quite a few really good people and organizations out there that have been willing to support local farms and to talk about it.  They are our voice.  They support what we do and they have the ability to connect with consumers in a way that we cannot.  I know I am speaking for most if not all small farmers when I say that we truly appreciate this support.  And so while this blog post is about a day of fun and adventure in the lives of two people who own a small vegetable farm, it is also about ALL the organizations that are willing to speak the message of the small farmer for nothing more than a "Thank You". 

The first time I met Chef Rusty Hamlin was in the summer of 2010 in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  My girlfriend Valerie and I took a whirlwind one day road trip there to see the Zac Brown Band at a concert.  It's a 5-6 hour drive and we left at 10am the morning of the show and got home at 4am the next morning.  And I had to go to work that  same day after the show.  It was painful but worth every memory of that day.   The band was just starting to headline its own shows and Zac Brown had come up with the idea of doing "Eat and Greets" for the fans instead of the typical "Meet and Greet".  At these "Eat and Greets", fans and band members sit down and eat together before the show.  As a fan, it truly is a unique and amazing experience.  Zac, a chef himself, has a deep appreciation for really good food and so he teamed up with Chef Rusty Hamlin who provides the culinary magic so to speak at the eat and greets.  Through a newspaper article, I had read about how Chef Rusty had been supporting local farms by purchasing food for the eat and greets from farms near the venues where the band was playing.  For the show in Fort Wayne, I was able buy a couple of tickets to the eat and greet and Val and I had an amazing time meeting the band, sitting down for dinner at a table with Joey and Rory, and eating some REALLY good food.  After dinner I decided to introduce myself to Chef Rusty and he told me if the band was going to be playing near our farm to let him know and he would be willing to purchase produce from our farm.  A couple of months later, the Zac Brown Band came to Blossom Music Center and the rest is history as the saying goes.  You can read about that day in my blog post "Those Extraordinary Days".

I've seen the band many many more times since then, but all of the shows were out of town or at a time of year when we didn't have any produce to sell.  Eventually though the timing worked out for another chance for our farm to provide produce for a Zac Brown Band Eat and Greet.  And the timing couldn't have been more perfect.  The fields are finally starting to produce after the large set back of Drought 2012.  Add to that the show was going to be on a Saturday and that meant that Chef Rusty could pick up at the farmers market where we sell produce every Saturday morning.  The market is less than 10 minutes from the show venue.  As perfect as perfect could be.

For the past week, my computer and phone had been a hub of activity to set everything up with Chef Rusty.  Emails, phone calls, text messages galore to make all the plans.  On Friday the day before the show, I was not able to help in the fields like last year, but Mike along with a couple Amish girls that live down the road were able to pick and pack all the produce for Saturday's market plus for the the Eat and Greet.

Saturday morning, Mike and Steve left early for market with the truck and trailer.  I left later so I could tend to all the animals.  The farmers market opens at 9am and so when I got there around 9:15am, the guys were all set up and starting to sell to the early customers.  Those guys do such a great job of setting up the Peters Creek Farm / Covered Bridge Gardens produce stand at the market.

I love just looking at all the different colors of vegetables.

About 10am, Chef Rusty showed up to pick up the produce.  Cauliflower, golden zucchini, white sweet corn, garlic and cherry tomatoes would all be used in the chef's creations that evening.  Mike and I had fun chatting with Rusty and catching up.  And we had some fun posing for pictures at the market too.

Oh yes, there were more traditional posed pictures too.

Then I took the chef over to meet Bob the owner of Seville Berry Farm and to purchase some raspberries that would be used on the dessert that evening.  (I also placed my order for Bob to bring me several quarts of raspberries to next week's market so I can make some jam.  Oh yeah!)

After Chef Rusty left, I finished helping the guys at the market which is something I really don't ever do.  Thankfully the people I waited on were very patient with me since I was really clueless, but I managed to muddle my way through.

After a small lunch and a quick nap and some visiting with my brother-in-law and my niece, Mike and I made our way over to Blossom Music Center for the show.  Through Chef Rusty's generosity, we were able to attend the Eat and Greet, say hi to the band members and enjoy some beyond describable good food.  Both Zac Brown and Chef Rusty always give a little speech about the food before dinner.  They thank the local farms where they bought the food and they encourage everyone at the eat and greets to support their local farmers.  I can tell you it is very rare for us small farmers to feel a bit like celebrities, but for a brief moment in time these guys make it happen.  Mike and I got to tour Chef Rusty's new custom built semi trailer where he and his staff cook all the food.  It was AMAZING.  No, beyond AMAZING.  What a change from 2 years ago when everything was carted around in a basic small trailer pulled behind a regular sized truck. 

There is a tent that comes off the side of the trailer and that is where the tables for the guests at the eat and greet are set up.  This is a little farther back view of the tent that comes off the semi trailer.

We then made our way over to our seats which we didn't hardly use as the entire crowd stood for the entire Zac Brown Band show. As a fan of country music, I can tell you is not very often that the ENTIRE crowd stands for the ENTIRE show at a country music concert, but Zac Brown Band is far from a typical country music concert.

And so once again, I find my self sending out a HUGE thank you to Chef Rusty Hamlin and the Zac Brown Band organization.  Their support for local farmers is just amazing.  I encourage everyone to go visit Chef Rusty's web site at www.chefrusty.com.  There are some recipes as well as links to his restaurant that is down near Atlanta, Georgia.  

And now it is back to normal farm life, but yesterday's memories will last forever. 

Late summer evenings

It's been nearly a month since I wrote in the blog.  A lot of good has happened in that month mainly in the form of rain.  Not that all the bad from the drought has been erased, but at least some of the vegetable plants are really starting to look good.  It is this time of year that my husband and I enjoy walking the field in the evening and look at the results of the last 4 months of hard work.  The evenings are cooler and this year especially the bugs are minimal.  An idyllic setting for a nice evening walk.

Yesterday I was outside doing poultry chores and just thoroughly enjoying the late afternoon.  Directly across the road from our chicken barn is our neighbor's cow pasture.  Years ago when I was a youngin', I used to do a little bit of work with dairy cows.  Occasionally I miss being around them, but with a dairy farmer as a neighbor, I get to enjoy watching the cows without any of the work.  I like this arrangement.  Best part is that in the summer, the cows give birth out on pasture so every once in awhile I will catch a view of a cow and calf before the farmer makes it out to the field to take the calf away.  There ain't nothing much cuter than a baby cow.

And an equally fun part of cow watching is that they are so darn curious.  It doesn't take much for them to walk up to the edge of the pasture and watch the human that is watching them.

After chores were done, Mike asked me if I wanted to walk back to the garden with him.  On such a fine evening, there was no way I could say no.  I had already turned the beagles loose in the pasture behind the barn about an hour earlier and they were happily baying and trailing rabbits round and round.  That is a sound I never get tired of hearing.

The cabbage is looking very good.  I particularly like the Savoy cabbage.  The plants are beautiful and the heads of cabbage that form are just as beautiful.  There are banana peppers to the left of the Savoy cabbage.  All is well in this part of the garden.

The purple bell peppers are doing well too.

And the eggplant is doing very well.  Somehow Mike has become the king of eggplant.  He jokes about it because neither one of us likes the taste of eggplant at all.  But he has a knack for growing gorgeous eggplant that is in high demand.

We spent a good bit of time walking up and down the rows of cauliflower searching for signs they were forming heads.  The plants are tall and gorgeous, but only a couple of plants have formed cauliflower heads so far.  It is a little bizarre to see these beautiful plants not doing what they are suppose to do - an effect of the drought for sure.  On the other hand, as miserable looking at the first planting of broccoli turned out, the next planting of broccoli is turning out some awesome looking heads.  These are a few that went to market last week and tonight for dinner, I steamed an equally beautiful looking head of broccoli.  Good stuff right here.

And at the very back of the garden, the soybean field starts.  The beans are starting to turn and in spite of the mild weather, this is a sure sign on the farm that fall is just around the corner.

Drought 2012 and other challenges

We have had a lot of people asking us how the drought has affected us this year.  Well it hasn't been good, but I can say it's been somewhat better than some of the pictures I have been seeing from farther out in the Midwest.  We have had three rainfalls since early June.  1.6 inches on July 3rd, 0.4 inches on July 19th and 1.5 inches on August 10th.  It's pretty bad when you can remember when it rained and how much it rained for the last 2+ months.  The July 3rd rain really saved the day for a lot our plants that were newly transplanted in the ground.  However, the plants that got transplanted after July 3rd only had that little bit of rain on July 19th so they are pretty stunted.  In fact walking back through a good bit of the vegetable plants gives the feeling that I am walking through the land of the Lilliputians.  Mike was not thrilled when I said I was going to be posting some of these pictures but I told him that this is the year of the drought and people should see what challenges farmers face in dry years.  Now some of the vegetables are doing halfway decent and I'll save those for future blogs, but here is a tour of how the drought has affected our vegetable farm.

These celery root plants were planted about a week or two after the July 3rd rain, so they have been in the ground for over a month.  They are still smaller than my cell phone.

The broccoli plants themselves are not too bad size-wise, but they are either not forming a discreet head, more like a cluster of little shoots like in this plant

Or if they are forming a head, the broccoli heads are very small.

I couldn't find any good comparison pictures of an individual broccoli head from past years, but here is a picture of some large bins of broccoli that we sold in 2010 (These bins are the size of the big bins that you often see watermelons stored in at the grocery store).  A big difference in size to be sure.

Then here are some green beans that are out in the field right now.  The plants are not much bigger than this water bottle and they are starting to flower and will be forming pods soon.

Then there are two different patches of sweet corn that were planted at approximately the same time.  The first patch should be taller than this, but it is growing in the wettest corner of the field and actually produced pretty well for us.  This is the corn that my mom, my sister and I put up in the freezer last week to enjoy all winter long.

And there this is the patch that is planted in a drier area of the field.  This sweet corn variety normally produces plants that are about 7 feet tall but they are tasseling and are not even waist high.  I have no idea why I am smiling in this picture because I really really REALLY love this variety of sweet corn and it is sad to see it like this.

Mike has replanted some of the cold tolerant plants such as carrots, spinach and beets and is hoping for a late frost.  Those seeds are just starting to come up.  All of the earlier plantings died in the ground due to lack of rain.

And since the blog is entitled "Drought 2012 and Other Challenges", I thought I would show a few pictures of how wildlife can impact crops.  We actually have not had too many problems with raccoons in the sweet corn until just this past week.  Perhaps it was because we wiped out the family that decimated the early blueberry crop and it took awhile for new ones to find their way over here.  Who knows, but they are here now.  We are tolerating the damage right now, but will have to start setting traps again if the problem escalates.

And then last but not least is a look at the soybeans planted this year.  The bushel per acre yield will be lower than average but so much better than what has been happening in the hardest hit drought area of the Midwest.  Overall the plants do not look too bad.

But you don't have to look far to find areas of the field that sit next to a groundhog den.  Pretty impressive groundhog damage shows why farmers hate groundhogs.  From standing in waist high beans in the previous photo to standing in beans that aren't even knee high.

I asked Mike if he thought last year's disastrous year when we had over 2 feet more rain than normal was better or worse than this year and he said it was too early to tell.  It really depends on what happens with all the late plantings of vegetables.

The Yard Aquarium

My husband likes to refer to our chickens as "the yard aquarium".  I think that is a very fitting description.  The laying hens especially provide as with ample entertainment as they get to free range in the yard most afternoons as long as the snow is not piled chicken-deep on the grass.  Our amusement comes from two sources.  One is that they are chickens and we are people.  So often we are left wondering exactly why they do what they do.  The second is that because they are chickens, they have tiny little brains.  They have a hard time finding solutions for obstacles in their lives.  So this blog is a collection of minor happenings in the lives of the chickens on our farm.  It is the reason we have a yard aquarium.

Meet Lucy.  She is one of our laying hens that work for a living.  As such, until about a week ago, she did not have a name.  Names are generally reserved for those lucky few hens that get elevated to pet status, but sometimes a working chicken does something special to distance herself from the crowd.  About a week and a half ago for no apparent reason, Lucy decided that she did not want to go back into the barn to roost at night with the other hens.  She's a skittish little thing and I don't know if you have ever tried to herd a chicken across the yard, but it is very difficult.  And so it came to pass that I just decided to let her do her thing.  It took a few days, but I finally found where she was staying at night which was tucked in behind some old railroad ties that are stacked behind the chicken coop.  Every evening I would tell her she really should go to the barn because she was in danger of being eaten by a variety of predators that wander through the night, but being a chicken she could not grasp the concept of something she could not see right then and there.  Well that and she doesn't understand English.  Every morning I would start my morning routine by walking to the chicken coop saying "here loose chicken, here loose chicken".  She would come out of her hiding spot and I would feed her some vegetable scraps or a little cracked corn.  It didn't take long for "loose chicken" to become "Lucy".  And that is how a working chicken manages to snag herself a name.  This behavior lasted about a week.  Then 4 nights ago Lucy went back into the pen with the others to roost.  3 nights ago, she stayed outside by the railroad ties all night and now the last 2 nights in a row, she has gone to roost with the others in the barn.  Crazy little chickens.

Leaning up against one of the barns is a collection of old pipe gates that are not being used right now.  A few weeks ago I was walking out to the barn to lock up the chickens for the night.  It was just starting to get dark and as I passed the front corner of the barn where the pipe gates are standing, I heard a long pitiful "bawwwwwk".  I looked over and there was a chicken wedged between two of the pipe gates.  Probably in the quest for finding the best bug or worm ever, the hen had walked in between the gates until she could go no further.  And because she is a chicken with a tiny little brain, she could only think of one solution to her problem and that was to go forward.  And in her attempt to go forward, she found herself trapped with her wings awkwardly wrapped around the rungs of the gait.  All it took from me was to gently push her backwards about two chicken sized steps and she was free.  She must have been there for some time though because the first thing she did after she was set free was to run to the waterer and drink for several minutes.  Tiny brains.

One of the other big jobs I finally got done last month was the summertime stripping of the laying hen pen.  With the hens being outside most of the time and the hot weather we have had this summer, I put it off longer than I should have but I finally got it done.  I always wait until late afternoon to do this chore.  By that time the chickens are done laying for the day and they are out in the yard foraging.  It really messes with their tiny little chicken minds to be in the barn while I am shoveling, scraping, sweeping and using the shop vac.  But the confusion for them does not end when the pen is clean and the brand new wood shavings are spread across the pen floor and all is quiet.  Wood shavings that are months old and mixed with chicken manure and dander take on a very drab gray-brown color.  Brand new wood shavings are bright in color with almost a pinkish hue.  Mix together a sudden change in floor color with a very stupid animal that can see in living color and it becomes rather amusing.  The nighttime going to roost isn't too bad as colors are subdued in the fading light.  However morning is a different story.  When I walked into the barn the morning after I cleaned the pen, almost all the hens were still on the roost even though it had been light for a good hour.  You should have heard are the squawking and carrying on they were doing.  The color change was too much for them to comprehend.  They acted like they new shavings were hot coals.  If one of them happened to teeter off the roost and land on the new shavings, it would set of a commotion of wing flapping to get back on the roost as quick as possible.  Every time I do a major clean out of the pen it is the same.  Fortunately it only takes a few hours and the girls do figure out that the new shavings are not dangerous.  It can be tough being a prey species thinking everything is out to eat you.  Tiny little brains.

The new layer chicks are five weeks old today.  Last week I finally started introducing them to food items other than the chick feed they have been eating.  First up, zucchini.  This is always a favored treat among the hens.  The chicks on the other hand have only ever seen feeders filled with crumbled feed so squash is a foreign object to them.  At first as usual, the sight of squash sent terror into their minds and they all huddled in the back of the pen.  One brave Americauna chick did finally come to "look" at the dreaded zucchini before retreating to the back with the others.  I never did see any of the chicks peck at the squash while I was in the barn, but by morning it had disappeared so they figured it out.  Since then they have enjoyed watermelon, tomatoes, spinach and apples.  Each new food item is getting less scary.  

It won't be long until I toss some scraps into the pen and a feeding frenzy will ensue like it does when I toss treats to the hens.

And so the yard aquarium continues to make me smile.  I get such a kick out of looking out the back window to see chickens hanging out on the back deck.  Even chicken droppings on the front porch make me smile.  The chickens act happy and they make me happy.  And although I don't have the room or the time to have a larger flock, it's nice to know that my chickens are feeding a few families with their eggs.  For that I am thankful.