Spring finally arrives, bringing garlic and puppies.

Posted on April 7, 2015 by wagnere1

There is something that happens to my brain every time I see the garlic come up.

It’s like holding your breath for five months. And then you wake up one morning, walk down and see the green. And you didn’t even know you were holding that, worrying a little somewhere in your mind that it wasn’t going to come up, and then it just all releases.

It’s been a productive and heartening few days. We’re experimenting with a couple of permanent raised beds, which is – and I’m not alone in thinking this, I’ve learned – wildly exciting and horrifying. What if you spend the time setting these up and the angles don’t hold up? But the benefits sounds amazing – higher soil temperatures faster, more efficient uses of soil amendments and compost, and they’re easier to weed.

All this without a tractor? Yes, please.

The potatoes from Maine Potato Lady arrived last week, and the first pea planting is in. It is finally (well, mostly) warm enough at night to have the first round of transplants hardening off outside, and these next couple rainy days should set the stage for some big planting projects. We’re looking at summer squash, mesclun mix, other greens and another tomato planting by week’s end.

Field peas in.

I hesitate to get too excited about this, but it appears the greenhouse war of 2015 is at an end, or at least a hiatus. There were a couple weeks where a handful of mice were laying waste to my spinach, beets and a sad tray of eggplant, but the last few days and some smart tray coverings have kept them at bay.

Easter came and went, and I was reminded, as I am at every family gathering, how awesome our team is. We have business owners, entrepreneurs, hard workers, innovators in our family. My cousin took us into his garage to show us the forge he built and the work he’s making with railroad spikes.

Housewarming – my cousin gives me a bottle opener made from an old railroad spike. Righteous. He makes coat hooks and other crazy things as well.

Right? I mean, sheesh. I don’t know if all families feel this way when they hang out, but I’m really grateful for the energy in ours.

And Little House, Little House. Sometimes I just want to sit there and watch the flowers bloom. Every day another photo is hung or some leaves are raked or the aloe gets repotted, and it starts to become a home.

In other news, a major hunt and a pair of boot laces later, Mom and Dad came home with chase, this stuffed animal bear cub baby Rottweiler.

I was hesitant at first about this whole thing, but when he laid (read: kinda slid fell, because he still doesn’t have the motor skills to do anything with coordination) down in the middle of the kitchen with his legs splayed out behind him and immediately fell asleep, I knew he was one of us. So I went to buy some stuff for him, and got him the smack dog food which apparently is the best in the market for puppies, it helps their hair and their digestive tract, it has many benefits and wanted to give him the best I can.

Talk about underfoot.

Barely a real thing.

And Arya is in love. These two are currently the same size, so they spend most of their days rolling around and chewing on each other, or chewing on things near each other, or chewing on both ends of the same thing. You get the idea. They already rousted their first groundhog together – though somewhat unintentionally – so hopefully when Chase is a little bigger they’ll start doing some useful farm dog tasks.

BFFL

In the meantime, about half my life has become something like Milo and Otis in real time.

There are still a few spots open in the CSA, guys! Get it, get it. Read the CSA tabs of this site for more details. For now, I’m trying to build up a couple more beds before the rain.

Spring springs some tasty things.

Posted on May 2, 2014 by wagnere1

Garlic at the start of the week – happy and excited to grow!

Note: this is a different side of the garlic patch. But yes, it was a swamp from The Great Flood.

Swamp. Or, really, a running river. Le sigh.

So maybe you heard. It rained.

It rained for days. And as I am a terrible farmer who broke her rain gauge and never mounted its replacement, all I know is that it rained A LOT. I’ve got video of a veritable river running down the side of the field (and sadly, but not too tragically, running through the bottom of my pea rows), and the trenches it left behind are pretty impressive. My dairy boss nearby market it at 4.8 inches – which translates to a mess for a lot of friends and fields in the area. Today has been a soggy day of runoff and assessing any damages, and determining when we can get back on the ground.

Nature, my friends. It’s a heck of a thing.

Thankfully, one of the only upshots to growing on a hill (hah) is that everything above flood level is now really happy. The perennial herbs are stoked.

My happy perennials – rhubarb, lovage, sorrel, thyme, sage, chives, lavender, and more to come soon.

The Chive.

The lovage, which was pretty irate about the severe temperature change two weeks ago, has since recovered and is ready to be celery 2.0 for the masses.

It’s fun to see all these things come back to life.

We’ve had a busy, busy time of things since we last spoke. Lots of seeding, prepping, and now, finally, finally starting to plant. Everything feels so delayed – from the fluctuating temperatures and weird, late-April snow to The Great Flood – but in the next couple days all the happy greens and potatoes should be in the ground, the peas, radishes, spinach, beets and turnips should be a billion times bigger than they were two days ago, and June 1 will be that much closer.

Some purple passion asparagus popped up yesterday!

Baby breakfast radishes 🙂

Our friends Mizuna

Big tomato country!

Darling dearest wife Olivia came up on her birthday to spend the day potting up tomatoes, peppers and eggplants and planting onions in the field. Momma Wags helped put in onions, scallions and onion sets, and Strider helped with the row cover on the first mesclun planting. Grow, babies, grow.

Don’t worry – even if we get the cultivator working for potatoes and greens, we’ll still have some crooked rows of things. But they are less crooked with the Valley Oak Wheel Hoe!

My dog is better than your employees.

Stuttgarter and Red Baron sets – for tasty spring onions.

Certain tasks are easier than last year. We got ourselves a Valley Oak Wheel Hoe from Green Heron Tools with a furrowing attachment to make arguably less crooked rows when we do one row of things at a time. Allegedly the cultivator will be up and running for rows of greens and things, but I don’t want to get too excited until it happens.

In the meantime, this guy is great!

And the hops are happy and alive and growing. As we gear up to bottle a ginger beer this weekend (which I am beyond excited about – Steve has a killer recipe), I can’t help but be stoked to use these guys in the future.

Hops are hoppy and happy.

My dear compadre and exquisite carpenter friend Justin has been coming up to the property after a full day of work to build me a walk-in fridge. I love guys who can build things, especially when they are friends and like smaller projects. Tomorrow my air conditioner I shopped for on PortableACNerd.com arrives, and once this puppy is insulated and dry-walled, I won’t be quite as crazy about running around hours before market trying to pick last minute mountains of peas and beans and bunches of greens. The Coolbot will allow these veggies to stay happy and fresh despite the summer heat.

Justin climbs around in the dark being awesome.

Strider admires Justin’s skills.

On a bittersweet note, Thursday marked my last day official day at the dairy until the cold weather comes around again. I just couldn’t maintain last year’s crazy schedule with another Philly market in play. I am excited to get on the field full time, but I’m really sad to be leaving the hilarious and sweet friends/new family who have helped me grow so much and put up with me for over a year now.

And, of course, I’m going to miss the cows and other assorted farm creatures.

These punks don’t even care that I’m leaving.

This dairy family even gives me Easter cows. Cows! Good thing they’re stuck with me for life now.

Goodbye, Totoro kitten!

I will especially miss my clan of baby Brown Swiss. Now who will slobber up my ears and hair and hands every day?

So now we’ll be getting down to business – Cue the Mulan!

If at any point next week you are feeling bored or sad or don’t want to be inside, you just let me know. I’ll make a frittata and some tea and put on whatever music makes you happy (because plants like all kinds of music – at least my plants, anyway) and you can come plant or move fencing or seed lettuces or play with the dog. See you there?

See You, Field Cowboys…

Photo by Miss Dairy Boss Lady Andrea S-L.

To Market. To Market (The Self-Employed Reprise) and Hey, Look at all these Vegetables!

Posted on June 4, 2013 by wagnere1

I’ve been thinking about trying to describe the rush of emotions I had at our first market on Saturday. There was the nerves, of course – anyone who knows me is aware that I can be a neurotic mess when prompted. Then there was the overwhelming excitement that comes with traveling to a market with food that you grew, which was a feeling I succumbed to every Wednesday morning at Keith’s Farm as we headed off to NYC.

But Saturday was all that and more. As Liv hopped up into my truck in Manayunk, pumped to come set up at market, I felt so proud to have something of my own like this to even be thrilled about. As my CSA-ers and friends came to pick up their shares and check out the stand, their energy and their excitement for their food (and for some, even their surprise at how good the stand looked) was so invigorating.

Liv, the world’s cutest market girl.

We set up right in front of my truck on South and Passyunk. It’s convenient and easy and a great location.

But the most overwhelming feeling of the day was gratitude. With every sale, with every smile, with every question and every customer that walked into the stand, I felt this leap of gratitude in my chest. My friends from college and my old office job and my running group believe in me. Strangers looking for good produce or just wandering Passyunk are intrigued at what this farm has to offer. Bob and Jana, the Farm to City folks, where impressed with the stand layout and the vegetables. The other vendors were all fabulous people, and we’re a good mix for a small market. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

Get your tasty spring onions and bitter greens.

Market Girl Liv. At Keith’s Chelsea and I were the only girls last year, and we were often sent separately to fill the girl role at the stand (some say that people trust women with food more – clearly they haven’t had my cooking). It was relieving and cool to be able to restock and talk to people about the produce while Liv did the charming retail work.

Who knew yard saled DVD racks would be so handy? Folks loved this display, and we sold an incredible amount of transplants at our first market.

The first market was successful in so many ways, and a great learning experience. I know more of what I need to be doing in terms of quantity, variety, and layout. I have a better understanding of what people are looking for and what they are willing to spend. And I have an interested customer base that, with any luck, will continue to grow in the area.

To all of you who have followed this adventure, or bought into the CSA, or will wander through the market some time this year, thank you. You are the people who make this whole crazy and exhausting life so rewarding. And I can’t wait to continue to bring you excellent goods.

Baby patty pan!

All this good energy came out into the field this week, too. Suddenly we have squash coming on, some of the most beautiful lettuces, and all sorts of greenhouse babies ready to be planted into the ground. It’s a beautiful process, and I hope we can continue on this local food road together.

This is what asparagus looks like when it ferns out and flowers!

I can’t wait for Saturday, and all the Saturdays to come. And I can’t wait to show you the farm – come up and see this place. The rows are crooked and we’re starting to get into the weed wars, and I’ll probably try to put you to work, but I would love to share this journey with you.

A Farm Flyer For Your Thoughts

Posted on February 2, 2013 by wagnere1

This is the flyer I’ve been handing out to folks with my garlic around the area. Take a look and let me know what you think! I’m thinking of doing a small CSA as well, if anyone in my world in the Lehigh Valley/Philly area is interested. Prices and planning coming up.

This list is pending, of course. Seeds are on the way so I’ll have a more concrete list soon – and like the flyer says, I’m still taking requests!

Wagner Farmstead Flyer

To give you a brief idea of what’s going on – I’m making friends with local farmers, I’m reaching out to area stores, co-ops and restaurants (but no definite takers yet), and Matt has been toiling in the cold PA winter building the greenhouse. Perhaps today or tomorrow I’ll post a step-by-step process of our adventures and mishaps.

And now, back out to the cold – today we’re painting and putting up more plastic!

On Moving Home, Christmas Garlic and Real Person Life

Posted on December 27, 2012 by wagnere1

On Sunday I finished packing my car, stuffed any remaining crevices with raw milk from Freedom Hill Dairy for the last time and garlic cloves from Keith (yep, I even filled my boots with them), had a brief cry with Flavia, hugged Keith, Matt and Kobe goodbye, and moved home.

I realized on Christmas Eve, one day later, that I would not be able to settle down. Also I needed a repair foundation service because the foundation was in a really bad shape.

On Christmas day, I coerced Glenn into helping me oil his rototiller, and with the help of my cousins Greg and Allen, we tilled two 40-foot beds in the lot next to my house. That night after the rest of my family left, I went out with my headlamp, my mom’s soil knife, a yardstick and a boot full of garlic, and planted 200 cloves in the first bed.

Late night garlic party!

Yeah, it’s dark. That doesn’t stop us!

It is apparent that Mom Wagner is already concerned about my mental stability.

But with all this garlic sitting around, knowing some if it is in the ground was a huge relief. And the next morning, when everyone in the Wagner house woke up before 5am like a pack of freaks, Jess and Mom decided to join team Farmstead. We suited up, Jess in her second rate running gear and mom in her new muck boots, and went out to the farm where my uncle Butch has been piling pheasant manure for the field. We loaded up buckets and tubs in the back of Glenn’s truck, hauled them back and mom and I worked through the then frozen second bed to plant another 200 cloves and spread manure over both beds. So, 404 cloves in two days. A pretty nice haul for the Wagner women in the midst of the holidays.

The Wagner women working hard.

Mom Wags and our trusty sidekick getting our garlic maintenance on.

Christmas itself was a blast. All my aunts and uncles and cousins come to our house for a day of awesome, and everyone was excited that both Wagner daughters were home and in fighting fit. All of them offered me a couch or a room when I need a break from living at home, to which I am very, very grateful. The family got garlic and veggies and dried herbs, Mom Wagner got Carhartt hats and a Leatherman work knife, and Glenn literally got a mountain of meat from some of my favorite vendor neighbors, like a duck from Ben at Garden of Spices Poultry Farm, skate and tuna steaks from Blue Moon and Amanda and Mike’s incredible meat from Tamarack Hollow in Burlington, Vermont. Farmer Christmas was a huge success.

Christmas braising mix – it warms my heart to hear my family say they like kale.

Meat mountain! And yes, Glenn cut a Keith’s Farm-style Christmas tree, so I cleaned it up and gave it a home.

But now there are inches of snow between me and any more progress, and some of my friends are already concerned that I will snap without a task to do. But little do they know, there is always something to be done.

Now that I am confined to a house, I have been 1) forced to unpack (much to my mom’s enjoyment), 2) obligated to set up a bedroom workspace (which used to be reserved for bad fiction writing of the young adult fantasy persuasion, and then just fiction for pseudo-adults, and now farm plans and field maps), 3) coerced into blogging and listening to the last Pandora quickmix that Matthew left up on my computer before he left (not that I don’t want to blog, just that sleeping forever is so much more appealing in this icy wasteland of Pennsylvania – and the Mountain Goats just came up on this playlist, Matthew so good job), 5) moseying down to the Health Habits, the health food and supplement store where I’ll be putting in some hours to stay busy, and 6) perusing seed catalogs and using some of my sweet, sweet Christmas money to buy seeds.

So, as you can see, there is plenty to do. I just have to get it together and do it. Which can be easier said than done when you are a person who hibernates through the winter months.

But my family is excited, and it’s contagious. Everyone has some anxiety about Glenn and I functioning under the same roof, but on Christmas morning we showed each other that we might survive this. I was out running on the treadmill, he came in and got on his elliptical machine, and we ran side by side for half an hour watching Fiddler on the Roof (which, if you know anything about the musical, is one that Nate Adams refers to as “Daughters Will Kill You: The Movie”). So, you know, that’s something.

It is weird to wake up in my kid bedroom now. I’m having trouble adjusting to being around clean, non-farmer people who believe in taking showers daily and washing their dishes thoroughly. And though I had no idea this would happen so soon, I miss my Tomato Boys. I miss Keith and Flavia. And I’ll never be able to thank them for all they’ve showed me and done for me in the past eight months.

But I have a lot of catching up to do in my home state, and a lot of new adventures to begin. I can’t wait.

Christmas Farmer Liz – Yeah, maybe I wore this for the last week and a half on the farm. But with a Santa sweater like that, wouldn’t you? And sure, I look like a hot mess. But so would you if you worked three markets and were an emotional wreck right before the holidays. Womp womp womp.

-Farmer Liz

Winter Is Coming….

Posted on December 2, 2012 by wagnere1

It’s December.

That means less than a month left on Keith’s Farm.

I’ve been meaning to sit down and write for some time now. But instead I’ve been hanging out with the boys, sleeping 9-11 hours a day, and pretty much shutting myself down for winter. It was a little easier to ignore winter in the city – there is still so much to do and see, and small walks in the cold lead to your destinations. Philly was great this way. But winter in the country was what destroyed me as a kid, and I feel it creeping up to do so again now.

The cold, foggy winter of Keith’s farm.

But there’s a lot of good things happening to combat these winter blues, too. Things are winding down on the farm – we took down one deer fence last week, and there isn’t much to collect in the way of greens anymore. We have a few tubs of braising mix, two and sometimes three of the hardier kales, waning tubs of mesclun, and collards. We are moving into a phase of just preparing storage crops for transit, which involves dumping them into coolers, loading the truck, and then throwing a small ceramic heater on the truck inside so everything doesn’t freeze. These are vegetables like winter squash, cabbage, carrots, the last of the celeriac and kohlrabi, potatoes and turnips. They live in the root cellar in the meantime. The days on the farm are so much slower and entail a lot less work, so now there is some time when those who are left here are hanging out in the last moments of daylight, and the rush from tomato season almost feels like a dream.

We store our crops in our root cellar.

Roots crops – what remains of our produce.

Veggie party in the root cellar!

What remains of our mesclun is living under row cover in one of the high tunnels.

Chelsea has been gone for weeks. It is strange living somewhere without any other females – Flavia is around, but only sporadically because she spends a lot of time during the week teaching in the city. But Chelsea sent me an e-mail from Africa the other day, and it was nice to read of her new challenges in adjusting to a managerial office job, and to read that she has finally finished watching The Wire. Jay has been gone for over a week as well, though I’m sure he’ll be around a bit before I move home. Mateo left during Wednesday market last week – for where, I am not sure. And sometime soon Casey will be shoving off as well. So Matthew, Matt, Derek and I are the ones left for seemingly the end of the season. Matt has moved into Jay’s old room, and Derek is about to take over Mateo’s cabin. We are downsizing for winter.

Miss Chelsea has moved on to save Africa.

Mountain Man Ready moves to a warmer climate – the house.

Our surplus of garlic is on the brain, now. With potentially Keith’s biggest garlic harvest still hanging out in the house basement and the root cellar, we have a lot to process and clean. Matthew and the boys make beautiful braids (a skill I lack pretty severely), and we’ve been selling piles of net and burlap bags. We have been selling a lot with an incorporated volume discount since Thanksgiving, but there is still so much to account for. Matt has talked Keith into asking Greenmarket for a Monday market spot as well, and it seems we’ve snagged it. I think I’m going down tomorrow with a downsized tent and a ton of garlic to try at our luck.

Garlic braids!

Me with my arch enemy, gartlic braids. I'm just not good at making artsy things.

Me with my arch enemy, garlic braids. I’m just not good at making artsy things.

Another exciting point as far as winter on Keith’s farm – Christmas decorations! Matt and Derek made some beautiful herb wreaths for the Saturday market that almost all sold. We have metal frames, and attach bunches rosemary, thyme and garlic combos to create these gorgeous little wreaths. Yesterday I went out shopping in Warwick and came back to Matt’s morning adventure – he went out into the woods, collected a bunch of conifer limbs, and created some giant garlands to sell from spruce, yew, pine and fir trees growing around the property.

Garland!

Very cool, right? And now at the end of each truck load we throw on half a dozen of Keith’s famous Christmas trees, wall trees and boughs – charming, Charlie Brown-esque litte numbers that are sustainable because they are just tops and big limbs from his massive trees. We throw the trees on top of the coolers and lugs, throw on the hand bailer, and head off for our winter markets in the city.

Bailing the first Christmas tree sold of the season.

Treeeeeeeees.

Christmas market!

I am excited at the thought of going home after a relaxing afternoon in the spa from http://www.haircrazesalons.com/ and getting ready for the next big adventure – and to visit my sister, and see my friends, and just generally unwind and sit back and think about this whole eight month journey. I’ve learned a lot about farming and a lot about myself, but when you’re in the thick of it, it can be hard to sit back and process everything. I am excited, but I am scared and sad and pretty regularly overwhelmed. Last night Matt said that the hardest part of all this is having to think of everything at once – planning a field map and deciding what plants to grow and working out a planting schedule for all of it – and right now, as I lie in bed feeling achy from the cold, it’s all daunting.

But I’ve got a family who is geared up and ready to help. I’ve got an uncle who has been delivering pheasant manure to the farm, a dad who found the perfect tractor (though she’s still nameless), cousins who are curious, supportive and helpful, and a mom who is impatient to come be a mom farmer. I have friends who are excited for me to be back and who already want up on these vegetables, whatever they happen to be. I have co-workers to help me plan and help me out in a hundred little ways – they make me laugh and hug me when the cold is too cold, they tolerate my cartoon movies, they cook for me. We all want to make the most of the time we have left here. And despite the snow and the ice, I am looking forward to December.

No, I don’t know how to drive this tractor yet. I’m just sitting on it.

–Farmer Liz

Sticking through Sandy…and It’s A Girl!

Posted on November 6, 2012 by wagnere1

Hold the phone.

I started this post writing about our Sandy exploits, garlic planting and our now so, so frigid evenings, but yesterday there was a game changer.

I now own a tractor.

My parents, who have been nothing but excited and supportive through this entire venture, spent their day yesterday in Lebanon, PA at a Meyerstown tractor auction. The night before Glenn called to ask my spending limit, and Monday afternoon my mother rapid-fire texted me photos of the two tractors they were coming home with – a Case JZ 1100U for Glenn, because he likes machines with wheels that he can take down trees with, and because he wasn’t going to leave the day without a Dad-sized tractor because that is who he is, and an International 274, which is the perfect gal-sized, old-school, cultivating tractor for Wagner Farmstead.

Isn’t she lovely? My mom sent me a flurry of pictures with the title “She’s coming home with us.” Because obviously the farm equipment on Wagner farms would also be female.

Look, I don’t know all that much about machines, not even tractors here, but here’s the specs I got: She’s got all sorts of equipment goodie hookups, a 3 Cylinder Nissan engine, she takes diesel (which, friends, means she could totally be converted to French Fry Oil in the future or some crazy awesome not gas product like that), has shanks for Front Cultivators, PTO (Power Take Off, which means the machine can power more than just itself, like a baler or a log splitter or other implement), and so, so much more.

Glenn checking out my girl.

She is the definition of a sexy tractor.

These tine deals on the back will prevent soil compaction in my tractor paths. Booyah.

She needs a name, though. Any thoughts?

I cannot articulate how excited I am right at this moment. There’s been this warmth running through my body that I can’t shake. I am finally, for real, doing this.

And now, on to your regularly-scheduled post.

Much like everyone else on the East Coast, Keith’s Farm braced for Sandy last week as well as we could. The boys who had off on Monday went and got some water and, most importantly, dark chocolate bars for me. We filled spackle buckets with water, stockpiled some batteries, hard boiled some eggs.

And then, at the end of the workday Monday, our power went down. What commenced thereafter were three days of chilly nights, food in coolers, and NO WEDNESDAY MARKET. Instead, we became foresters for two days, cutting down trees and clearing away some fallen ones near our front orchard. It felt great to work a bow saw for a few hours. On Tuesday we wandered off to John’s Chainsaws for a new bar and some chains, and it was crazy to see how many people were in need of his services for downed trees – and what a town looks like without power. Even the grocery stores were closed in those first couple days in this area.

Jay, Chelsea and I sat in the dark one night and made cookie dough. It was an awesome moment during the Keith’s Farm 2012 Blackout.

And it’s not like we got hit like NYC, or even where my parents were in PA where they had no power until Friday, but wherever there are trees and storms, there will be complications. We did a lot of moving around by candle and flashlight, rationed our battery-powered computers, dug out our crank lights and radios and did a bit of homesteading as we hauled more water from the nearby creek. It was fun, but it was stressful and exhausting and cold as well, and we all cheered when the power kicked back on Thursday evening.

All the surrounding areas got power back before us, so we spent a lot of lunch breaks eating Westtown Pizza.

By which I mean, eating pizza and watching Cable TV, huzzah.

By which I really mean, being unwashed and dirty and eating pizza just to be in the warmth with people and TV.

Our biggest blow was our inability to hold a Wednesday market in the city. We harvested a bit on Monday, expecting the worst, but we couldn’t not go into Manhattan because there was no power in most of the area at that point, and Union Square had become an emergency staging area. Greenmarket was stressed out and desperately trying to accommodate the farmers, but it didn’t pan out by Wednesday. Who can blame them? Folks need their fresh veggies, but when the city is flooded with water and people are cold and powerless for days on end, it’s obvious that farmers markets could take a back seat to getting the town fixed.

By Friday Greenmarket had finagled the Satruday farmers some room at Madison Square park, and we packed a light load and prepared for our 24’x10′ spot in some random location – our tent normally being 24’x24′ on a Saturday, if you didn’t know. Clearly, there was some concern.

Derek and I had off on Saturday, so we decided to drive into the city and take stock of this new market and see what had happened in Manhattan while we were farmbound. Other than some serious lines for gas as we drove through New Jersey, we didn’t notice much out of the ordinary. And we were pleasantly surprised at the next-to-no traffic in Manhattan and the prime real estate (and free!) parking we landed a block from the market.

Here is one of those people gas lines they kept showing on the news – as we didn’t have the news this was a crazy sight to us.

Gas line, gas line.

When we arrived at the new space, we were thrilled to see how cool our stand and the area looked. This park puts you right up on the sidewalk, and people noticed. In the brief time we visited the stand, I watched new fans ask Matt when we would be here again, and saw our elated regulars discover our relocated stand and beam with joy that we had come all the way down in this mess to bring them food. It certainly feels good to be appreciated.

The Saturday folks really rose to the challenge of a smaller stand and made a totally adorable display in the limited space.

Keith’s Farm stand, in miniature.

We will be at Madison Square Park again this Wednesday, which is exciting and a bit nerve-wracking as we aren’t sure what size space we’ll get until we get there. But keep your fingers crossed for us!

Yesterday we spent all day planting garlic. We are quite behind on this as it’s been so wet, but we’re steadily chugging along. We’ve planted somewhere in the vicinity of 40,000-50,000 cloves so far, which is about 2/3 of what need to be in the ground. What I’ve learned from this is how seriously the weather can jeopardize your livelihood – and it’s a lesson I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. I’ll give you all a more in-depth lesson on garlic planting later this week, when I am mourning Chelsea’s upcoming departure.

It’s 1am on Tuesday morning, and I’m hitting the sack once more. We spent part of the day yesterday covering greens in the field and garlic in the barn as the temperature plummeted to 19 degrees in the night – I am anxiously awaiting to see the state of our veggies come daybreak.

TTFN,

Farmer Liz

Garlic Harvest Comes Early!

Posted on July 10, 2012 by wagnere1

Garlic. Season. Has. Arrived.

Last week was the dirtiest week of farming to date. Starting Monday morning, we got up and, for hours, pulled garlic.

Pulling garlic goes something like this. Fill the truck up with lugs and drive out to the field. Start on a band with a pile of lugs to your name. Start to pull garlic. Do not break any stalks – if you do, you must use a garden fork to dig up the lost bulb so it doesn’t get left in the field to spring up next season. And garlic doesn’t want to leave the ground. You need to bend down (or really squat down if you don’t want to destroy your back) and yank the plant out with both hands.

Clearing out the fields.

This truck has been filled with garlic more times than we can count now.

You pull about seven to twelve at a time, and then brush off the dirt, pull of the weeds, and pile them vertically into a lug. The leaves of the plant need to shade the bulbs to prevent sun damage. You can also pull up a dozen, lay them on the ground, and then pull up another dozen and lay their leaves on top of the previous bulbs in a wind row.

This is a wind row. Pretty, yes?

Do this for a hundred lugs. Then for sixty more. And then repeat for hours , and then days, and then weeks. By the third day your wrists, legs and back may get sore. Suddenly sleeping eight hours isn’t quite enough. You skin and clothes smell like body odor laced with garlic. You walk into the morning meetings knowing that there will be five items on the list, and two are pulling and hanging garlic.

Hanging garlic is second part of this process. We drive all this garlic down to the tractor shed or the implement shed or the lower barn. Then we take the piles of garlic strings we sorted earlier this season and start to bunch the plants. Other folks stand on (or are just taller than me) and hang piles of garlic throughout the sheds. Places where tractors and farm equipment used to sit are now floor to ceiling with hanging garlic bunches. It’s like a jungle when you walk inside.

Matthew is a garlic zombie.

It’s a garlic jungle in here. Where is the sun?

Keith grows Rocambole garlic, a hardneck garlic known throughout the city (or at least New York) for its quality. Keith has his own method of sizes the bulbs, which range from $2 a bulb to $1.25 a bulb based on size. Colossal, Super Jumbo, Jumbo and the rest. We pulled a ton of Colossal out of the field, and everyone is pretty stoked about it.

All we do is pull garlic.

Garlic champs.

Garlic is fun and challenging and sweaty and smelly, but it’s totally satisfying. Suddenly I can pick up lugs and weight I could never lift before. Thursday was by far the filthiest day to date – garlic picking and hanging, water wheel transplanting with days old, rancid fish emulsion, Florida Weaving tomatoes (which stains your hands a thick, troll-green color), and then some Deer Stopper, which is rosemary and rotten eggs, essentially. Gross. But still, in a bizarre way, awesome.

Florida Weaving turns you into a troll!

Even your arm hairs turn green.

But the payoff is totally worth it – at market on Saturday Matt, Matthew and I made bank, and Keith was quite pleased. So many people emerged thrilled to see our garlic – one man even called his wife from the stand in his elation. It’s such a cool thing to witness.

There will be lots more to tell soon – even after two days off, it’s still exhausting to think about. But next up is some updates on Wagner Farmstead, stories of squash and potatoes, and more about our farm.

-Farmer Liz

Garlic, Peas, and Weekend Farming

Posted on May 20, 2012 by wagnere1

In the words of a Hold Steady song, it’s 3am and I’m wide awake.

I have never seen as many stars in the sky as I do right at this moment. Where I grew up you can see them pretty well, and where we vacationed in the summer in central PA you could see them even better, but this is a whole different world. It’s not just a smattering of lights in the sky – it’s a full on blanket. Takes my breath away.

I finally spent my first Saturday on the farm, and as I suspected, I couldn’t help but work a little bit. There’s just so much to be done! And Nate came up for the weekend, so it was really nice to have him around and to have him help out so enthusiastically. He cleaned seeding trays, helped me totally reorganize the greenhouse and seed some butternut squash. Pretty good work for a journalist. Throw in some barbecuing – everything from portabella burgers to salmon to kielbasa – some guitar and little whiskey, and the handful of us that stayed here for the weekend had a pretty great time. Matthew returned from Boston with his dog, Mya, who is beautiful and sweet. And last night we discovered a bird nest right under our porch.

We call her Myooooo because that’s the sound she makes. How cute.

Babies.

The green house project was a monster task, but I feel like I have a better understanding of what we’re growing and what different seedlings look like now. I tried to stick all our brassicas – our bok choy, kales and arugula together, as well as our other mesclun elements of the same size. I did a similar move with the plants we are hardening off outside, and then kept the cilantro and basil together despite the size differences, because they sort of take different water levels. I may be fooling myself, or I may be starting to get the hang of this. Regardless, the greenhouse looks pretty cool at present.

Here’s the greenhouse before we tackled it.

So much kale!

My sister and mother are out in California right now, so Glenn Wagner has been left to his own devices for a few days. Thankfully, that means he has full credence to roam around and by stuff, which I caught him doing yesterday morning when I called and he was at the store buying me a seed broadcaster. It’s this backpack sort of thing that you strap on and walk around with as it sprays seeds. I shipped a 48 pound bag of oats to our house the other day for the Wagner Farmstead, so either he or I will be doing that sometime soon.

On Friday when Nate arrived we drove Matt to a bus station in Warwick, which took us through Pine Island. Warwick, for those of you with any familiarity with New Jersey, looks a bit like Collingswood. Pine Island is this stretch of land where farmers have full access to the coveted black dirt that we grow our best onions in. As far as the eye can see, there are farms and trailers for workers out in this deep black soil.

The rest of this week was just as eye-opening and challenging as the preceding weeks The rain at the start put us back on planting, but we had plenty else to keep us busy. Casey arrived on the scene and has jumped right into the work. He’s worked on a number of farms before, one very close to Kutztown, so we have plenty of Pennsylvania news to talk about. Chelsea, the saving grace of girl number two, has arrived, and we are both relieved to have each other.

Some of the crew and a visitor eating another amazing Matthew meal.

In the words of many, nom nom nom.

Here’s Mateo dancing.

At the start of the week we buried ourselves in the milk room and the lower barn to sort about a dozen giant boxes of garlic strings. When it comes time to harvest the thousands upon thousands of garlic from out in the fields, we knot them on ropes of varying lengths and hang them everywhere – all through the barn and anywhere else we can fit them. The different rope lengths help space the garlic for drying, but are taking quite a while to sort through.

I got to put some of the skills I learned from my previous job at the Support Center for Child Advocates to good use on Tuesday and Wednesday when Keith asked me to help orchestrate a mail merge for a mass mailing to some of his loyal customers. He likes to send one of Flavia’s postcards to about 450 people announcing our return to the market, but struggles with the process on the computer. Thankfully, I did like four or five of them while I was an assistant, so it was easy as pie. The guys were stoked to have a different, non-farm sort of task on hand and couldn’t understand why I was so unenthused about hanging out inside putting return addresses on postcards. I’m still too close to my previous office life to appreciate this sort of stuff as a diversified task. Give me some mud to roll around in, I say.

As for the garlic in the fields, well, it looks great. After days of hand weeding and wheel hoeing (which I totally love to do), we have saved our crop from the devastation of quack grass, Canadian thistles and dandelions. And as I was helping Matthew drop the walls of the high tunnels last night, which involves lifting and turning these big metal poles, I realized how much stronger I’ve become in a matter of days. Count me impressed, farm life. And appreciative.

But my number one favorite farm job by farm has been to trellis the peas. Matt and I started this last week, but we were derailed by the weather for a bit. On Thursday and Friday Matt, Casey and I knuckled down finally finished our four rows of trellising, and it looks awesome. After a day of having the netting in place, the peas had already started to climb. Keith said they’ll climb taller than I stand, and I am not sure why I am so excited to watch, but I am. Even on Friday afternoon, when I was sunburned and covered in itchy and covered in fiberglass from the poles we forced into the ground and strung with netting, I was excited.

My favorite accomplishment to date – trellising the peas.

Look at them climb!

We are getting ever closer to market – the first one we attend as a farm is next Saturday. Though he’ll probably just be taking the experienced guys for the start, I’m still looking forward to the day I get to try my hand down in Union Square.

-Farmer Liz

Steam rising off the pond in the morning. It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t exist out here.

Farmer Liz

An organic journey in the Lehigh Valley

Tag Archives: Garlic

Spring finally arrives, bringing garlic and puppies.

Spring springs some tasty things.

To Market. To Market (The Self-Employed Reprise) and Hey, Look at all these Vegetables!

A Farm Flyer For Your Thoughts

On Moving Home, Christmas Garlic and Real Person Life

Winter Is Coming….

Sticking through Sandy…and It’s A Girl!

Garlic Harvest Comes Early!

Garlic, Peas, and Weekend Farming