Tasty Squash now in season!

A boat-load of squash


A busy day at the Blue Schoolhouse

Hello!
Sorry about missing a blog posting last week. Our house project is pretty time-consuming and I figured you could live without a rambling blog post! Ha ha. Speaking of the house, everything is going well. We should have the basement floor poured early next week and the house moved back to the new foundation the week after. We have gotten so comfortable in our neighbor's basement, though, that I'm not sure how we'll readjust to living in our place!
This week Bill will have some really delicious squash -- acorn, butternut, and spaghetti. We've been eating it, and it's PERFECT! Be sure to grab a few. It's easy to cook squash and scoop out the guts into a ziploc bag in the freezer for later use in the winter.
We will also have tons of sweet peppers. Have you ever roasted and frozen them? It's so easy, and it's wonderful to pull them out of the freezer in the winter to add to homemade pizza. We go through a ton that way. If you do roast them, put them into a covered bowl immediately afterward. The steaminess makes it much easier to peel off the blackened skin.
You'll notice by the veggie selection that we are transitioning nicely into fall. We'll have lots of head lettuces, beets, rose-heart radishes, Japanese turnips, arugula, ruby streaks, and more!! The radishes are pretty mild and very crisp right now. The rose-hearts have a brilliant pink interior -- perfect for slicing onto the side of a main dish. The ruby streaks are for those who like arugula -- it's just another fantastic mustard green with the perfect amount of sparkle in flavor and appearance.
Please come out this weekend. We're starting to experience that September slow-down in customers, which is disappointing because we have so much delicious produce to share! Bring a friend! Here's what we'll have:

Squash -- acorn, butternut, and spaghetti
Tomatoes (much fewer)
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Okra

Best,
Mercy

Blue Schoolhouse on Stilts

Hello!

Our house is now floating 8 feet above the ground – what a sight! The boys love it. It looks like our house just sailed in and docked on the side of the yard. They’re getting ready to excavate the basement. It will be a complete mess. The big trucks will have to drive through Bill's new blackberry and aronia bushes, which is quite sad. On the whole, though, they are restricting the damage to a pretty reasonable area.





The guys are all sleeping, so I have nothing that I can truthfully report about the farm. (I’ll avoid my usual strategy of making things up.) I will say that I had a hybrid tomato for lunch, and I honestly can’t believe how much better the heirlooms are. I ate it because I had no choice, but I will not do it again. Lesson: Buy heirlooms.

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Broccoli?
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to 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. Our phone service is dead for the next few weeks until the house is moved back onto the new basement!

Best,
Mercy

Heirloom Tomato Week -- We Mean It This Time!

Hello!

The house move is underway. We are in the neighbor’s totally awesome basement, and there’s not much time for the blog. (Too much pool, foosball, air hockey, and Legos to play with! Ha ha!) The house move is going fine. Today we ran into our first two little problems. They discovered a large concrete pad under half of the back room in a location where we could not see it. We think it was the porch floor on the back side of the school house, and then someone just built over it. So they’re having to bust it up with a horizontal jackhammer mounted onto the bobcat – it sounded like a war zone. Then, the plumber found quite the leaky pipe in the back corner of the house where the water comes in from the well. He pulled up a section of the floor and said things you never want to hear about your own house, like “Wow, that’s a LOT of standing water!” and “There’s even a sinkhole!” The late afternoon deluge just added to the general soup-like quality of our yard. What a mess. I’ll post pictures next week.

Bill and Pete are working around the construction zone. This week’s harvest will be greatly complicated by the fact that we have no electricity or water at our house. It will work out, though. Just be sure that his extreme efforts don’t go to waste – be sure to come to the market with a big appetite!

It shouldn’t be hard to convince you to attend this week’s market given the mounds of beautiful heirloom tomatoes that Bill is bringing. I’ve seen the stack of tomato-filled crates, and it’s really amazing. (You’d cry to see all of the tomatoes that go into the compost – at least 75%!! People just won’t buy a tomato with a crack or too many cosmetic issues. Of course, he still has to pick them!) Our favorite market tomatoes this year are Pink Brandywine and Kellogg’s Breakfast. Here’s some tasty information sure to get you to the market with wallets blazing:

Pink Brandywine: This is Bill’s favorite. It’s very difficult to grow for market – lots of splitting. Bill estimates he only gets 10% of the fruit to sell at market. One book describes pink brandywine as winey, robust, mouth-watering, sweet, tart, and complex. Whoa. I’m tired just thinking of all the adjectives.

Kellogg’s Breakfast: Juicy AND meaty, this beefsteak variety is truly scrumptious. Look for a big, orange tomato, and you’ve found it. You can’t go wrong with Kellogg’s (product placement – we get paid for that. Ha ha!!).

Striped German: This is aesthetically the most beautiful varieties that Bill grows. And to top it off, it’s really delicious. I think it has a fruitier flavor with a bit less acidity than a red tomato, but I’m not sure if it’s just the colors that make me taste it that way.

Green Zebra: It’s ripe even though is a green-and-yellow striped tomato. The flavor is sweet and tangy. It’s a perfect foil for a sweeter tomato, and adds a visual flair.

Cherokee Purple: It is said that this variety was originally grown by the Cherokee Indians more than 100 years ago. It’s one of my favorites because it has a wonderfully complex tomato flavor and meaty texture.

Hybrids: The hybrids that Bill grows are also quite good. They’re cheaper at $2/pound because they’re easier to grow and yield much better. Of course, they have nowhere near the complexity of the heirlooms as far as flavor goes, and the skins are a bit thicker (hence their being more blemish and ding-free.) That said, if you need a lot of tomatoes and don’t want to spend as much, these are a very good substitution.

Bill is sure that this will be the biggest tomato week of the season (he was surprised about that, since last week was so good).

You may have noticed the lack of green beans last week, which was due to the beans being just too immature to pick. That means that Bill will be totally overwhelmed by beans this week. (Picking them is torture – seriously, every year I wonder why he does it.) This would, subsequently, be an excellent week for you to buy beans!!

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Broccoli?
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to 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. Our phone service is dead for the next few weeks until the house is moved back onto the new basement!

Best,
Mercy

Heirloom Tomato Week!!

Hello!

Two words … HEIRLOOM TOMATOES! This is it. The week to end all weeks in 2009. The tomatoes have ripened and we’ll have a few hundred pounds to send home with you. We will set them all up on the outermost tables. And as was the case last week, there’s no pre-selecting your tomatoes before the bell rings. We have to keep it fair and minimize conflict. (There was actually some nice camaraderie last Saturday when the whole group of customers was irritated en masse about the new policy!)

We will also be bringing loads of onions. These are just about the best onions we’ve ever grown. Someone actually asked me what we do with onions, to which I almost asked what you CAN’T do with onions! It’s like garlic. Does a meal go by without it?

Bill may also have some muskmelons (incorrectly A.K.A. cantaloupe) and watermelon. I have a serious genetic defect in Bill’s mind because I just don’t like muskmelon (or honeydew for that matter). It does look beautiful and has such a nice mouth-feel. I hope you enjoy it as much as he does! (By the way, you almost NEVER see real cantaloupe in America. It’s not grown in many parts of this country. The stuff in the stores is really muskmelon.)

We are preparing for the house move, which starts on Monday. They’ll do some light excavating around the foundation so that they can run steel beams under it. They’ll actually move it over the course of a few days later that week. I think we have the logistics worked out – we’re staying at one neighbor’s house, our freezer is bunking with another family, and our ice blocks will be visiting Henry Brockman’s freezer. It takes a village, you know.

Here’s what we’ll have on Saturday …

Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Sweet Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Basil
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, 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

Do you need onions? Yes, you do.

Hello!

This past Saturday was another record-setter, and by quite a margin. We have never brought so much food to the market before. We actually had to ask our friend Kevin, who had innocently offered to help harvest not knowing what he’d be getting into, to take a bunch of the food home with him on Friday and bring it to the market on Saturday morning. Another volunteer on Friday took another load to Kevin’s house, which is a few blocks east of the market. Kevin loaded it all into his mini-van and brought it down at 6:30 a.m. What a guy! We actually plan to use his house as a delivery point for the next few weeks because we have more food than we can fit into the truck/trailer/my car. Crazy.

Speaking of loads of food, we watched the movie Food Inc. this weekend. Did you? I could not stay for most of the movie because the boys were too squirmy, so Bill watched it solo. He thought it was quite good but nothing that he hasn’t read before.

We just got news today that the house mover will be here on August 17, weather permitting, to move our house. Yes, we’re moving our house. We need to dig a basement and, well, the house is in the way. You can look forward to hearing all about this adventure in the coming weeks. We have a marriage counselor on retainer.
We have wrapped up the first week of the boys having returned from the grandparents’ house. I’m not sure how long it will take for us to re-program them! Here’s a taste of what we’ve heard since they’ve been back …

1. Not two hours after returning from grandma’s, Noah announced that he was bored and wanted to go back to her house. (He wrote on the sidewalk in chalk “I M Bord.” Pretty good spelling for a little guy!) We have tried to explain that it’s not always that fun at grandma’s and that she actually has a full-time job. They don’t get it – they think my parents go to The Magic House or up in the Arch every day.

2. We went to pick blueberries and then vacuum sealed them to store them over the winter. Noah said, “You know, dad, there is a freezer bag that prevents freezer burn.” Seriously. He sounded like a little commercial (and we don’t have television here at the house for them to watch). He couldn’t remember the brand name, so the advertisers only did half the job.

3. When Bill got out the homemade yogurt, Noah asked how many calories it has, noting that “some brands have more than 100 calories per serving.” This from a kid who has never heard the word calorie to my knowledge.

4. Noah asked me more than once yesterday if I knew that I may be “missing an opportunity to buy a Honda.” He seemed pretty concerned about missing the opportunity, so it must have been a pretty compelling commercial. He now refers to himself on occasion as “Mr. Opportunity.”

5. As you may have guessed, they watched A LOT of commercial television while on vacation. My dad has a TV on at all times, even during dinner. The boys are totally in love with Animal Planet. Given how much moaning and groaning Noah has been doing about farming, we asked him if he’d live on a farm or in the city when he grows up. He immediately responded, “I want to live in the television.” Whoa.

I know some people think raising two boys on a farm must be idyllic (while members of my extended family think it sounds like torture). Let me assure you that our kids dislike us and our lifestyle (on occasion) as much as in-town kids dislike their lot in life. It just depends on the hour of the day. And our kids are “behind” in some kid activities. Like Noah can’t ride a bike yet without training wheels. We just haven’t gotten around to taking him somewhere that he can practice. On the other hand, he can use very sharp knives and clippers. Ben is similarly precocious with the dangerous implements.

Were you able to watch the big storm roll in on Tuesday? It was really impressive out here on the farm. Bill said it was like being on a movie set with special effects – like a scene out of Lord of the Rings (Gates of Mordor scene, anyone?). I was in my bunker of an office, where I never have any idea what the weather is doing. Bill said they were harvesting for the CSA on Tuesday morning – him and three interns. They knew a huge storm was coming from looking at the radar. The interns were furiously picking veggies while Bill tried to quickly mow a section of weeds. All of the sudden, a perfectly straight line of dark clouds moved over the trees next to the field. The temperature dropped, the wind picked up, and before Bill knew it, they were all staring at the sky. It was biblical. Fast-moving, low-to-the-ground, rolling clouds then moved in, followed by an amazingly powerful rain. Bill said it was awesome. And then they ran for cover, barely making it out of the field before it got too slippery to get the truck up the hill.

This week’s featured vegetable is the SWEET ONION. It’s hard to get people excited about onions, which is really too bad. Onions are CRITICAL to good eating. What meal, what dish, can’t benefit from a delicious, sweet onion. Bill’s onions – Walla Walla, Candy, and Copra – are truly divine. And I’m not exaggerating. The difference between Bill’s sweet onions and the onions in the store (you know, the cheap 5-pound bag) is AS STRIKING as the difference between store tomatoes and Bill’s tomatoes. It’s really something. You can roast, grill or sauté these suckers and eat them plain. Not kidding. And I’ll be totally honest here, we need you to buy a lot of onions. We have THREE THOUSAND POUNDS of them in our garage. It’s not a big garage. I fear they will turn up in my house if you don’t buy some, and quick. Ha ha. Seriously, we have a boatload and you need to start eating them! We’ll be selling them by the pound or in 5-pound bags.

We’re looking at another monstrous harvest this weekend. I’ll be driving a big portion of it in to town (to Kevin’s garage!) on Friday night. Kevin will most likely be unavailable to deliver it on Saturday morning because his wife Christina is expecting their second baby any minute now. Good luck, Kevin and Chris!

Here’s what we’ll have …
Tomatoes
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red)
Okra

If you have any questions, 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

The Great Onion Harvest of '09

Hello!

The boys have returned … let the chaos begin!! Seriously, they are SO LOUD. And I think they grew while they were gone. It was probably from all of the horrifying snack food they were able to eat – are there growth hormones in Oreos? (The first night, I called to see how they were doing. Noah said, “It’s great, mom, but I have a little bit of a tummy ache.” I asked him what he’d been eating, and he said, “Well, there were some M&Ms, grapes, and hot chocolate.” Hmmm. Sounds puke-ifying to me.)

They did have an amazing time. If you have 5-7 year olds in your life and need tips on what to do in St. Louis, call me. They went up in the Arch (where Ben accidentally smacked some guy in the face while he was talking with his hands – the guy asked my parents if Ben is Italian!), visited Grant’s Farm, went to The Magic House, saw Ice Age 3 (the movie – I think it was the third one), swam at the public pool, and took a trip down to Johnson’s Shut-Ins and Elephant Rocks (where my dad started referring to Noah as Sir Edmund Hillary) in the Mark Twain National Forest (Missouri). They are covered in scratches and mosquito bites but otherwise seem to be unharmed. The worst part is the readjustment to life on the boring and awful FARM! Oh yes, they were immediately taken down to the field where they had to ... help pick tomatoes. Call DCFS; it’s child abuse if you ask them. Ha ha.

It’s great to have them back, of course. Ben is already saying hilarious things. It’s so interesting to hear his thought process right now. At 5 years old, he has given a lot of thought to life, death, and “spirits.” I’m not sure where he’s getting this, but he recently announced that “you can’t kill a spirit … you can only melt them.” Heh? He was so earnest that we had to cover our smiles.

Here’s another good travel idea for you … Plow Creek Farm in Tiskilwa, Illinois, 8 miles south of Princeton (http://www.plowcreekfarm.com/). It’s a wonderful U-Pick berry farm where they use little or no chemicals. The farm is part of an intentional community affiliated with the Mennonite faith. It’s quite a hike – probably 2 hours from Bloomington-Normal – but it’s worth it for excellent blueberries. We’re going tomorrow and then again later in August for red raspberries.

If you’re looking for a night out at a restaurant, we heartily recommend Chef Leo’s in Peoria on Monroe Street in the same building as the Peoria Bread Company. Leo uses a lot of local food, and the dishes are tasty. Check it out.

And if you’re looking for a fun local thing to do, join us this weekend at the Normal Theater for Food Inc. I believe we’re going on Sunday night, but it runs on Thursday, Friday and Saturday as well. The movie website is at www.foodincmovie.com. They’re serving local organic popcorn and potentially Pepsi Throwback (with real sugar!). See you there!

So on to actual farm news (or the Mercy version of farm news). The onion harvest has been a humongous success this year. Notwithstanding the amazing patch of weeds that grew up around the onions, Bill and the farmhands were able to harvest two entire wagonloads of storage onions and beautiful Walla Walla onions (2000 pounds!!). I helped one day, and it was a lot like an Easter egg hunt. Bill had to whack the weeds back with a scythe first – very Grim Reaper of him. The last onions to harvest are the “candy onions.” Bill expects to get another wagonload’s worth.



Noah is going at the tomatoes like a little pro. When he didn’t know that I was listening, I heard him in the tomato row muttering, “I’m gonna get you, sucka!” to an unsuspecting tomato. He is a little carbon copy of Bill sometimes.
Harvesting tomatoes is one of the dirtier activities. It turns your skin green and grinds dirt into the smallest cracks in your skin – you basically look like a dirtbag for weeks. There’s no scrubbing it off. Pete, the farmhand, said it’s the worst part of harvesting tomatoes. He was lamenting how dirty his hands were the other day when Bill decided to start blaming him for all of the dirt (about 10 pounds of sludge) in the bottom of the wash tub. Pete did not think that was funny.

I am happy to report that Bill and the coons are at an impasse. Bill has successfully protected one bed of corn, which he will be bringing to the market this Saturday!! The coons are already checking out the next bed, of course. It is starting to ripen, and Bill needs to get the electric fence over to that bed ASAP after harvesting your corn for this weekend. It’s such a battle. Bill also has a new set of potential varmints to deal with – the wild turkeys are eating the oats in the potato bed. Of course, there’s not much he can do about that because turkeys are just too cool.

We’re also bringing some mushrooms this weekend. They are unbelievable. I really count them among my favorite things to eat – turn the cap upside down, brush on olive oil, good balsamic, salt and pepper and then grill them for about 10 minutes or until the edges start to get a bit crispy. I can make an entire meal out of them.



This Saturday will be another crazy-great harvest. This is the most diverse and plentiful time of the farm season. We hope to see every one of you this weekend, because we’re bringing a boatload of food. Here’s what we’ll have …

Tomatoes
Sweet Corn
Okra
Eggplant
Leeks
Poblano Peppers
Green Bell Peppers
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red and Green)

If you have any questions, 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

Empty Nesters on the Farm

Hello!

Or should I say bon jour! I’m preparing for a presentation tomorrow in which I will talk to a group of international students visiting ISU for a few weeks to learn about American systems (i.e. government, planning, education). The audience members will all be from Africa, and everything I say will be translated into French! I’m so excited. I anticipate that I will sound very intelligent and compelling in French!

I’ve also been working on plans for the upcoming run of the movie “Food Inc.” at the Normal Theater next weekend. It shows NEXT Thursday (July 30) through Sunday (Aug 2) at 7 p.m. Have you heard of the movie? Check it out at www.foodincmovie.com. The movie includes interviews with Michael Pollan (author of many foodie books such as In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (of Fast Food Nation fame). I talked to Dawn, the theater manager, and she will be serving Pepsi Throwback (with REAL SUGAR rather than High Fructose Corn Syrup) and potentially locally grown popcorn (if it will work in her popper). If you go to the move, be sure to show her some appreciation for the extra effort. I HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE! It’s your chance to see Bill on the social scene as well. Now there’s a reason to come out!

Tomorrow is also the beginning of our boy-free week. My parents are taking Ben and Noah down to their house for a week of pure indulgence. I shudder to think of what they’ll be doing, and of course, what they’ll be eating. Ben and Noah are already planning a raid on Grandpa Rick’s Oreo cookies. We’ll miss them but not enough to refuse the offer. This will be the first time we’ve ever been without them. (We’ve been without them separately but not together.) I may just lay on the floor of the living room and enjoy the silence.

Trusty farmhand Pete will be on a family vacation next week (July 27+), so if you’ve had a hankering to help farm for a day or two, this would be the week to do it! As always I have to say that harvest days (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays) are the most social days. If you need directions, just email us.



From Bill … I spent much of today raking the second cutting of hay, and I’m still trying to keep the raccoons out of the sweet corn. I’m also planting fall crops such as radishes, carrots, lettuce, arugula, Japanese turnips, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, and radicchio. These crops are being planted in a new section of the field where I tilled in a clover, alfalfa, orchard grass cover crop, so they should do really well. And as always, Pete and I are weeding and thinning previous plantings, trellising tomatoes and peppers. It’s particularly gratifying to till in the empty beds and cover crops.

Today’s most exciting news is that Pete picked TOMATOES. I’d make a bigger deal of it but we still won’t have that many to sell this week. So if you’ve made it this far into the blog posting, you have been rewarded with an early warning about the tomatoes! Pete and I also moved the onions and shallots that we harvested last week out into the sunshine to help them dry out. We’ll be selling them for weeks to come.

Today I started working at 7am and finished at 8:30pm. I still am not able to keep up – one particularly frustrating thing to see this time of the year are all the giant weeds growing in various beds that are maturing and setting seed. That means lots more weeds next year. On a more encouraging note, the melons, winter squash, and sweet potatoes look really good. If all goes well I will have a lot of these crops to bring to market.

It will be another bountiful harvest this week, so we hope you have your re-usable bags ready for a big shopping trip! Here’s what we’ll have …

Eggplant
Cucumbers
Green beans
Dragon tongue beans
Summer squash
Potatoes
Carrots
Shallots
Fennel
Kohlrabi
Swiss chard
Head Lettuce
Beets
Onions
Garlic
Kale
Collard Greens
Basil
Parsley
Broccoli
Radicchio
Cabbage (Red and Green)

If you have any questions, 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