Let us eat lettuce!

Hello!

We’re heading into the last May market, and it’s looking to be very similar to the first two May markets with one new addition – head lettuce! It’s really crisp and tender this time of year, having not yet been subjected to the heat of summer.

We’re still moving a little more slowly in the field than we had hoped, though. As you may recall, Bill is using a new field this year. Four acres – a record area for Bill to manage. By all appearances, it should be functioning like the Garden of Eden – dark, black, crumbly floodplain soil adjacent to a babbling brook. Unfortunately, it turns out that the sandy component of the soil (which is great for root crops to grow through) facilitates the leaching of key nutrients under extremely wet conditions. So last fall’s and this spring’s heavy rains likely washed out much of the nitrogen that had been fixed into the soil by last year’s planting of soybeans and clover. As a result, the plants aren’t growing as fast and Bill has switched into his “Bill Davison, Soil Scientist” mode. He’s testing the soil, amending it with organic materials, and doing little dances to the god of soil to encourage faster growth. Like I said … very scientific.

Ben is doing his part as a farmhand. Although he appears to be dressed to hop into the next boxcar for a hobo adventure, this is actually how he dresses to farm (on a cool day -- sweater, quilted flannel, scarf, and train engineer hat). I really don't know where he gets his sense of style.



Did you know that the market is offering credit card/debit card payments? I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, but you can go to the farmers market tent (not the individual farmers’ stands) and use your credit/debit card to get cute wooden tokens in various denominations. You can then spend those tokens at the farmers’ stands. We get reimbursed accordingly. We do make change for the tokens, so there’s no penalty for using them. We are also able to accept tokens through the WIC and Senior Nutrition Program, although we can’t give change for those tokens.

Thanks to everyone who patronized Noah’s Art Stand, set up directly north of the green garlic. Noah brought a few kindergarten art pieces and sold them for $.25 apiece. He made $4.55 (extra five cents thanks to a tip from Scrogin Farm!). Intoxicated by his financial windfall, Noah declared that he is coming to the market every week to sell art! (We only brought them this week because the sitter was out of town.) He doesn’t even have a plan for spending it … he just likes having it! He obviously hasn’t yet heard of his obligation as an American to stimulate the economy by wasting it on some little trinket. We’re working on that. Ha ha.

For the next market, here’s what you can expect:

Head Lettuce
Spinach
Beets
Green Onions
Green Garlic
Nettle
Salad Mix.

If you have any questions (veggie, fruit, cooking, calculus, quantum theory), please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.

Mercy

Sunny Skies for Saturday!

Hey all!
Thank you so much for coming out to see us last Saturday. It was a trifecta of suboptimal weather conditions – cold, windy and gray. Rain would have made it unbearable. I hope that the delicious vegetables made it worth the trek through the bad weather. The green garlic is really perfect right now, as are the beets. We had at least one first-time beet eater – you know who you are, and we’re dying to know how it went!
This coming Saturday will definitely be worth the trip because we are bringing two serious crowd pleasers … salad mix and spinach!! If you haven’t had fresh leafy greens since last fall (and I don’t mean Earthbound Farm pre-washed greens!), you are in for a real treat. The salad greens are a diverse mix of early spring favorites – leaf, bibb, romaine, speckled, and more! The spinach is to-die-for. Sweet and crisp enough to eat as a snack. Our boys go nuts for it. By the following Saturday, we hope to bring head lettuce.

We’re also bringing more nettle. Don’t be afraid of the stingers – they melt away when you drop them into boiling water. Blanch for two minutes, and then use it like you’d use spinach. I’m not just saying this … nettles are awesome! They are every bit as good as cooked spinach. We use them in omelets regularly, and we make nettle soup on occasion.
This week I had the opportunity to “teach” a group of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders at Northpointe Elementary School. They were al l members of the school’s Ecology Club. The topic – local food. The kids were really into it! I brought some Earthbound Farm arugula and baby spinach for sampling and a bag of some other brand of baby carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower. I revealed the truth about “baby” carrots (they’re just mature carrots that have been put through a lathe). It was a blast! (Especially the part where we talked about heritage turkey breeds. It didn’t occur to me how funny the 5th grade boys would find the discussion about broad breasted white turkeys, whose breasts are so large that they can’t stand up. In reality, it’s a very disturbing fact about factory-raised turkey. However, for a 5th grade boy, it’s just a chance to laugh about big breasts.)
Just when life couldn’t get any better for the boys, our farmhand Phil brought them a TRASH BAG full of his old Legos. Do you know how much space is taken up by a dumped-over garbage bag of Legos? About half of your living room. When Ben asked Noah if he could find tractor pieces in the pile, Noah answered, “Ben you can probably find anything you want in there.” Lego nirvana.


The boys also found the first ripe strawberries of the year. Whoopee!

Out in the field, Bill and the farmhands have been very busy taking advantage of the recently dry weather. They transplanted 600 sweet potato plants, weeded 6,000 onions and 8,000 garlic plants, transplanted 280 tomatoes, 250 eggplants, and 300 peppers, planted ½ acre of sweet corn (keep your fingers crossed and we may get some if we can keep the raccoons away), weeded four 150-foot beds of spinach, mulched about 1/3 of the 1200 pounds of potatoes that we planted, mulched the kale, collards, and Brussels sprouts. Bill also hooked up and tried out his new 1960’s New Holland 450 sickle mower for cutting hay. It works, but it needs a new sickle blades to be really effective.


Potatoes after hilling


For the next market, here’s what you can expect:
Spinach
Beets
Green Onions
Green Garlic
Nettle
Salad Mix

If you have a burning veggie question, please don’t hesitate to call us at 309-467-9228. You can also email us at blueschoolhouse@yahoo.com, although during the farm season we can’t guarantee that we’ll be checking the email as often as usual.
Best,
Mercy

Coming to a market near you ... the Blue Schoolhouse Farm!

Just when you thought it was safe to go online … out of nowhere comes a new posting on the Blue Schoolhouse Farm blog! Yes, that’s right. We’re back. Mercy, Bill, Noah, Ben, whatever cats are currently living here, and various family members who drop in for extended stays. I really don’t know how you were able to make it through the long, off-season months without hearing about our madcap farming adventures. Ha ha!

The off-season was great. Here’s a quick recap: Noah did well in kindergarten, Ben passed his kindergarten screening, both boys took beginning swimming lessons, Bill made 100 pounds of sausage, and I ran the first-ever Champaign-Urbana half marathon with friends. That’s it! Six months in one sentence … I find that to be oddly comforting.

Oh wait, I forgot that Noah learned the “F” word! Now that’s been fun. Noah came home last week and announced, “Mom, I learned four new curse words today.” I said, “OK, what are they?”, expecting him to list off something innocuous. Oh no. And the rest of this paragraph is R-rated for adult language … Noah answered, “Fuck.” Just like that – totally matter-of-fact. I about fell over. It’s really weird when your little baby (OK, he’s almost 7!) says something like that. I gasped and said, “Well, you’ve hit the jackpot. That’s the big one. The one you can never say again. You just say ‘the “F” word.’ Where did you learn that?” I was expecting him to say that he’d learned it on the bus from one of the big kids. (6th graders will say anything, as you know.) He told me he’d read it on the back of some playground equipment. I guess that’s what we get for teaching kids to read so young! Anyway, I thought I was clear about him never, ever, ever repeating that word in front of me or other adults when he asked “What does the ‘fuck word’ mean?” Once again, my jaw dropped. I told him, “It’s the ‘f word.’ You don’t say the whole word. And in any case, I’m not going to get into details. It means different things depending on how you say it. Just forget about it.”

I thought that was it until we came back from the field later in the day, and Noah had written the “F word” (spelled out, of course) in chalk on the sidewalk along with a list of words that rhyme with it – duck, luck, buck. You get the idea. He had turned it into a little language lesson. On some level, I was glad to know that he could rhyme and spell so well! And we haven’t had any further “F word” incidents since then. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

And while we’re talking about the boys, both Noah and Ben have become big fans of clip-on ties. They found one in a box of clothes, and they’ve never been the same. We had to go buy two more at the resale shop just to avoid a fight over the one they found. They wear them everywhere (Menards, for example and with anything (ever seen a clip-on with a t-shirt?). I feel like I’m living with two little Alex P. Keatons.


In farming news, our new field along Walnut Creek is beautiful. The soil is much looser than our upper field and we expect great improvements in our crops. Time will tell, but right now things look really good. Things in the greenhouse look wonderful. Check out the beets! We’re also including a pictures of the shooting stars (native prairie plant) that we grow in front of our house. It’s our 4 square foot attempt at “landscaping.”



And how have you been? You’d be surprised how often we think of you. And I mean individually. Like “Oh boy, customer X would knock over a little old lady to get this arugula!” So we’re very excited to start bringing you the vegetables that you love in the 2009 season. The first market is set for next Saturday, May 16 from 7:30 a.m. until noon. We will have our stand in the same place, although parts of the market will be relocating to the south side of Washington. You’ll figure it out as soon as you arrive – no worries! (Although you do need to be careful when crossing Washington, as traffic will not be blocked.) This unusual reconfiguration of the market is brought to you complements of … THE RECESSION. The recent economic downturn has hit the City of Bloomington in the pocketbook, and as I understand it (which is always sketchy) they needed to cut back on the expensive overtime costs required to have city employees close off Main Street west of the history museum.

As you have likely noticed, this spring has been a bit wet. From what I hear, a lot of farmers are about two weeks behind with many crops because they weren’t able to get out into the fields at the typical time. Bill managed to get things into the ground here and there when there were 24-48 hour periods of time when the soil was dry enough, but it was really nerve wracking. We called in reinforcements (Read: Friends who are too nice to say “no”) for potato planting, and I spent hours on my knees one day rescuing the garlic from the weedy oats that were growing through last season’s mulch, which was cut too late due to rainy weather issues. I’ve also been spending lots of time in the greenhouse weeding the beets (which look fabulous!).

That’s all to say that we’ve had our challenges this spring, but it’s still looking awesome out there! For the first market, here’s what you can expect:

Beets
Green Onions
Green Garlic
Nettle
Salad Mix
Carrots
Onions
Celery Root
Black Spanish Radishes
Rutabaga

Note that none of the above will be available in great quantities, so I’d advise you to get to the market early. You may want to consider a helmet and elbow pads just in case other customers get frisky over the limited offering.

As always, if you have questions, give us a call at 309-467-9228 or shoot us an email at bluescoholhouse@yahoo.com.

Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday!
Mercy