Well, this was a first.  My first hot sauce and I have to say, I’m very proud.  Nobody has disparaged the final product yet, though I’m always suspicious folks are just being nice.  But Jill and I like it, so really, who cares?  I thought I would lay out my recipe not only for anyone who decide to read this, but for my own record keeping.  This is an amalgamation of about three or four different recipes I found on line and on you tube.  Boy, they’re all different!!  Not just different ingredients, but different methods from start to finish.  After looking over a bunch of these, I just kind of channeled my inner Jedi and used the force.  Here goes:

The Players:

10 Habeneros

2 Ghost peppers

1 Tomato

1/2 cup chopped onions

1/2 cup chopped carrots(I steamed them a little bit)

1/4 cup fresh, chopped garlic

1/4 cup fresh, chopped ginger

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

1 lime squeezed

1 tsp guar gum(prevents sauce from seperating)

1 Tbs salt

1/8 cup Vermont Maple Syrup(no imitations from other states)

Music: Eddie Palmieri/LaloRodriguez/Ismael Quintana- GOLD, and Eddie Palmieri-Listen Here

Sauteed onion, garlic, carrots in some olive oil for about 5 minutes.  Combined in food processor with habeneros, ghost peppers et al.  Buzzed it up for about a minute or two, until it was the consistency I was going for.  I didn’t want it to thick and lumpy or too runny.  Chop it up to your liking!  Then I put it all back in the pan over med-high heat and brought it to a boil for about 5 minutes, stirring often.

And CAREFULLY!  Words of caution: DO NOT PLAY AROUND WITH THESE PEPPERS!  THEY ARE HOT!  WEAR GLOVES.  WEAR GLASSES.  DON’T TOUCH YOUR EYES OF ANY OTHER SENSITIVE PARTS. ( I found out the hard way last summer how this oil can get on and in your fingertips.  I spent a Saturday night soaking my hands in a bowl of milk and ice cubes drinking wine through a straw!!)

When finished I poured it into a glass measuring cup and poured into bottles from there.  Obviously this isn’t critical information.  I mention it because it did take me a moment or two to figure out how to get it in the jars.  Maybe it’ll help someone out.  Below is a bottle of the sauce after approximately one week.

Nice color, consistency, flavor, and heat.  YUM!!  Hopefully I’ll find the time for one more batch before my peppers are toast.  Until next time, Papa G out…

.  

done!  Weekend Two…coming up!!

Please enjoy an original composition of mine, Lullaby for Gigi, while you read.   Played by the Jeff Guerin Trio featuring Robinson Morse on Bass and Gabe Jarrett on Percussion.  Recorded December 2011 at The Haybarn Theater, Goddard College, Plainfield, VT.

http://fanafarming.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/05-Lullaby-For-Gigi-T1.mp3

For those of you who came out to support our fledging operation this past weekend, a big, huge “Thank You!”  It was great to see some familiar faces and some new ones, as well.  Needless to say, we still have a great deal of beautiful, healthy plants that will need homes in the next couple weeks.  If you didn’t make it out last weekend, we’d love to see your smiling mug stop by this upcoming Memorial Day Weekend.  We’ll be open for business Saturday and Sunday from 10 to 4.  Below is a list of what we still have available(believe it or not, we actually sold out of a couple things!!)

3.5″ Pots($3.25/ea.)

Tomatoes: Celebrity, Jet Star, Early Girl, Roma, Sungold Cherry, Supersweet 100 Cherry, Black Cherry

Peppers: Sweet Bell Sunrise, Red Rocket Cayenne, Hot Paper Lantern Habanero, Capperino Hot Cherry, Ghost(watch out for this one!!)

Squashes: Green Zuke, Yellow Zuke, Summer Squash, Acorn, Delicata, Buttercup, Baby Pam Pumpkin(pie pumpkin)

Cukes: Marketmore slicers, Northern Pickling

Black Beauty Eggplant

Strawberries

6 packs($3.75/ea.)

Basil-Genovese, Purple, Lemon

Cortland Onion(good storage), Lacinato Kale, Belstar Broccoli, Rainbow Chard, Red Express Cabbage, Red Leaf Lettuce, Red Romaine

That’s all folks!  Hope to see you this weekend!  Bring the kids.  Check out the piggies!  

Happy gardening!!  Papa G & Family

Also, if you can’t make it out but would still like to support us, you can find our seedlings at the following businesses in Central and Northern Vermont.

Montpelier Agway- Montpelier

Plainfield Co-op, Plainfield, VT

Morrison’s Feedbag- St Johnsbury, VT

Lyndonville Agway- Lyndonville, VT

Hey there world!  Looking forward to our plant sale this coming weekend and Memorial Day weekend.  We will be open 9-4, Saturday and Sunday both weekends.  You can expect the usual suspects for vegetable seedlings.  Half a dozen tomato varieties, sweet and hot peppers, broccoli, kale, chard, basil, squashes, cukes and the like.  Looking forward to seeing some folks.  Hopefully its not snowing like last year!!

Well, its March 13th, we just got about 20″ of snow, its going to be in the single digits below zero tonight, and I have ginger seed from Hawaii that I’m trying to propagate!  How’s that for dichotomy?!  Yep.  10lbs of ginger arrived yesterday from Hawaii.  It came pre-cut, which is an option you have when ordering ginger.  As instructed by another grower, I counted the pieces and have 160 pieces, which ideally will turn into 160 ginger plants.  In theory, 10 lbs will turn into 50 to 100 lbs of baby ginger by mid-September.

I kept them in the trays, on top of about .5″ of potting mix(Fort Vee from Vermont Compost, for those keeping score) last night.  They were on the heat mat which is set at 78 degrees.

This is the temperature control for the heat mat.  Ooooo….aaaaaahh…

This afternoon I covered them with Fort Vee and watered.  A couple growers I talked to to said it might be a good idea to cut the Fort Vee with perlite or something else to lighten it up.  The ginger apparently does not want to be sitting in heavy, wet soil, but I don’t think I’ll have a problem based on my experience with using Fort Vee for my seedlings last spring.  The plan is to keep them in the trays in the house at 70-80 degrees for the next 4-6 weeks, during which they will sprout.  At that point, I will transplant them into containers(size and specifics to be named later) and put them in the greenhouse, where I will be keep ing the temperature at a minimum of 60 degrees(May 1st-on). This is pretty exciting.  The whole greenhouse is pretty exciting as is, but ginger seems pretty cool and there aren’t too many folks growing it, which makes it more marketable.  I will make an extra effort to document the ginger’s progress as the season progresses.

So this is a general idea of how the spinach is looking right about now.  I have to say, I’m not thrilled.  There is not enough, and what I have is rather small.  The amount has a lot to do with rodents.  See below.

The little buggers(voles) have pretty much trashed close to a third of the crop.  Not only did they chew off the nice big leaves, great for maximizing the small amount of photosynthesis taking place during the low light of the winter, but they also ate the heart of the plants.  This is where the new leaves come from.  Once the heart is gone…well, you fill in the rest.  So far, the snap traps have been the most effective.  I have a couple electric trap zappers which have only got one tiny one, so far.  This year, I need to not make a compost pile near the greenhouse(they live in it all winter eating fresh spinach salad) and keep the grass trimmed low around the greenhouse.

As for the size of the spinach, it is my guess that the cold winter has played a big part.  I seem to remember things looking a bit bigger by this point last year.  I actually looked back at a post I made on January 4th of THIS year(you can, too), and the spinach looked great.  The deep freeze and voles hadn’t really hit it up yet.  Regardless, I fertilized during a warm spell a few weeks ago and am hoping that some warmer weather will eventually show up and I will be able to finish the spring with a strong harvest and hopefully come close to what I sold last year.

As for the starts program for this year, I will be starting my first seeds this weekend.  Mostly onions and tomatoes for transplant in the greenhouse in hopes of early tomatoes to sell in June and July to the local co-op.  I caught wind of plants being sold ready to transplant in the next couple weeks…they will have early tomatoes!  We’ll see how early mine show up.

If you read all this, cool!  I’m happy to share my thoughts and experiences and apologize for not sharing more often… but maybe that’s a good thing.  Stay warm, be present and enjoy!

Update sounds funny.  Not sure if anyone out there has been hanging on the edge of their wood stoves waiting for my next post….its been a while!  Nonetheless, I feel I should put a little something out there for my records, if nothing else.

So there is spinach in the greenhouse right now.  We just had a pretty cold stretch in the last week or so where we dipped down to 15-20 below zero.  The min/max thermometer on the ground in the middle of the greenhouse reads about 10 above.  I kind of find that a bit hard to believe but I suppose it is possible that it was 20 degrees warmer in the greenhouse in the middle of the night.  I always thought it was around 10 degree difference.  Regardless, the spinach is still there and still alive.  I harvested about a pound for our family today and though some was a little limp when I harvested, it sprung to life when I soaked it in a bowl of cold water!  This picture is from December, but the scene is pretty much the same.

Since November, I have harvested around 60 lbs of spinach.  I’m not thrilled with that number.  I should have planted the spinach September 1st instead of September 15th.  It just didn’t grow to maturity before the light and cold shut it down.  Next year!! It will start to take off in the coming weeks, though….hopefully.

Also, rodents have been an issue more so this year than last.  Seems like they’re devouring certain areas.  Not making me happy to be keeping the field mice fat, happy and warm through the winter months.  Got a tip on an electric rodent zapper that I think I’m going to employ.  The conventional traps just aren’t cutting it.

I also wanted to address snow on the greenhouse, since some friends have commented or inquired as to how this structure coexists with the winter snows.  Great advice from Ed Persons, the Greenhouse Guru of the Northeast(I just gave him that title, but I think many would agree).  Either let the snow fall off on its own, such as in this short video I took today.  The inside of the greenhouse will heat up and between that and the sun, the snow will shed on its own.  I watched almost the entire side of the greenhouse shed this thin layer of snow and ice before I shot this video.

Greenhouse Sheds Snow 1-5-14

Almost as exciting as watching paint dry(don’t get caught watching the paint dry) or grass grow, I know.  Actually, for me, it is quite exciting since I feel more like my greenhouse won’t cave in.  From what I’ve been told, though, greenhouses cave in from pressure from the sides, not the top.  So the trick is not to let the snow pile up on the sides and put pressure on the frame from the side, weakening, and ultimately collapsing the puppy.  Just what I’ve been told by people in the know.  Coincidentally, my neighbor just cleared the snow from the uphill side of the greenhouse this afternoon.  So far, so good.

Looking forward to start making plans, orders for starts this spring, and possibly ginger….stay tuned.

Well, well, well….time seems to pass rather quickly these days.  It is already almost mid-August  and some things are rockin’ in the free world, and others aren’t.  From what I’ve heard, many folks lost a number of crop varieties due to some sort of extreme weather.  There has been the occasional gardener who hasn’t lost anything and has a beautiful garden…God bless ’em!  In our garden our onions, carrots, kale and chard seem very happy.  The cucurbita(that’s my newly acquired word for the squash family!) seem very unhappy, both in the garden and the greenhouse.  Both were planted a little late from transplants that were probably not 100%, but I’m sure the weather has not helped the situation.  We have had some cucumbers from the greenhouse, but not many.  There seems to be a low level population of squash bugs.  I’ve now learned to recognize their eggs on the underside of nearby leaves(i.e. tomato leaves near the cukes).  Here’s a picture.  They’re really somewhat attractive, I think, with the shiny copper look.

Squash Bug Eggs!

The greenhouse really is something!  We’ve been eating cherry tomatoes for about a month now, lately harvesting about six pints a week between the two varieties(Sungold and Sakura).  Sungolds are of course my favorite!  Little oranges…I love ’em!

The Sakura on the other hand have been quite an interesting experiment.  I won’t even tell you how much the seed cost, except to say that it was a lot more than all the other seeds.  Why I chose this variety, I still really am not sure.  But I can say this, they do seem to produce quite a nice tomato.  Fairly large cherries, not so much the “pop in your mouth” type, but something you can slice in half and fill up a salad rather quickly with. and abundant fruit on the plants, as well.  All the cherries are about seven feet tall now, anyway.  I’m wondering if I should top them or what.  They are destined to be pulled the second week of September to make way for spinach.  I suppose if I’ll end up doing something and will learning.  That has been the pattern thus far…

The slicing tomatoes have behaved a little differently.  I suppose they’re taking longer for an obvious reason: the fruit is so much bigger.  We have started to harvest some of these last week.  I think they are going to come on strong very soon, as a bunch are starting to turn color.  It seems like the Big Beef have produced the most so far.  These are mostly planted on the South end, where the spinach all seemed to produce better than in other parts of the greenhouse.  Maybe I did put the compost in unevenly last fall; laid it on a littlet too heavy on that end and lighter elsewhere.  Or maybe its the sun?  Soil test is the way to go.  Got to get on that soon.

Jill direct seed a bed of basil which seems very happy.  She made the first round of pesto this past weekend…so good!!

The hot cherry peppers(Capperino, for those of you keeping score), are doing very well, as far as my untrained and inexperienced eyes tell me.  Why?  Because they are producing very nice looking cherry peppers.  I guess its that simple(yeah, right.  Nothing is that simple!)  The cherries have been fine for the most part without being staked or trellised, but it seems that some support may be necessary in the future(like maybe the near future).  I have staked some of the bell peppers with some small bamboo stakes, but some of those are not doing the trick.  The chile peppers(Red Rocket Ristra) seem to be doing fine.  Nothing turning red yet but lots of fruit with no apparent support needed in the iminent future.

The cukes….ah, the cukes.  As I said, I think we planted these too late with stressed plants.  We will do better next year.

I decided that planting the whole greenhouse for the summer might turn into more work than we could effectively handle this year(both of us having full time jobs and little kids and etc etc etc).  So I threw down some vetch, oats, peas mix that I got from High Mowing earlier this summer, in hopes of building some organic matter into the soil.  For those of you who haven’t been following along in this birth of a farm saga, the greenhouse site had to be completely leveled, thereby scraping away all the topsoil, this leaving me with having to build our soil from scratch.  So I thought the cover crop was a good idea.  Maybe I’m just introducing a bunch of seeds into the greenhouse…who knows.  I’ve tried to mow it before I see flowers, so hopefully all will end well on that front.

I had a grand idea to can stuffed hot cherry peppers in olive oil and spices and give them away for the holidays this year, but I’m not sure how to store them.  Some recipes online say to store them in the fridge without canning, and they will last a month to a year, depending on which recipe you look at.  A couple other recipes say to heat up a water, vinegar mixture and pour it over the peppers in the jar, add some olive oil on top and cover, thus sealing.  Yet another says to just can the stuffed peppers, but I have seen warnings that this would melt the cheese…what to do?  Use the force.

Well, like Jill said, this weekend was certainly an auspicious start to our plant sale venture.  Wow!  Mother Nature sure dished it out here on the hill…biting wind, sideways sleet and snow…I’m amazed anyone came out at all.  But they did.  Friends.  Neighbors.  Strangers.  They came and they enjoyed the warmth of the greenhouse.  And at the end of the day, merriment ensued with some of our dear friends.  It was a great weekend!

As for sales, I’d say we sold mostly tomatoes, squash and peppers.  Not a lot of people bought basil, but we didn’t grow a lot, so that went pretty quick.  The flowers we grew for fun for ourselves also sold, which was fine.  Snapdragons, statice, celosia.  Some folks went for the cooler weather crops: kale, broccoli, onions.  Very little lettuce, no leeks or chard(until Amy and Joseph showed up!).

We did the best we could under the adverse conditions, and we are pleased.   We do, however, have a great deal of veggies still left and have decided it would be prudent to have a sale again this coming weekend.  The weather is starting to turn and it is supposed to be in the 80’s by the weekend.  That should get folks thinking of gardening!  Same bat time, same bat channel…10am to 4 pm Saturday and Sunday.  We’ll see what happens.

We still have plenty of just about everything except basil(gone) and Delicata Squash(about 18 left), and I presume we’re only low on those because we planted less.  Reminder: Plant more next year!  Oh yeah…Thank you to everyone who came out to support us!!  Big big love, out to you!!! 

You just can’t take the hippie out of the girl…

Celebrate Tomatoes!

If you are are reading this, odds are you have received an email from us letting you know that we have seedlings available for your purchase. We would love to make a party out of our new venture(which should come as no surprise to our dear friends!). On Saturday and Sunday, May 25th and 26th, from 10am to 4pm, you are welcome to visit our “infant” Friends and Neighbors Farm and purchase seedlings for your gardens and partake in whatever merriment may ensue…it’s on! Our seedlings look beautiful! Below is a list of the plants and varieties we have available. Feel free to email us with specific requests. We’d be happy to reserve whatever you’d like for you, because, of course, its all about you!!!  Reserve your seedlings and show up late on Saturday…we’ll have a a cooler full of cold bevies.  I might even move the piano into the greenhouse!

Being our first year and having no idea how many folks will show up, we really have no idea if we grew enough….we will find out, won’t we?

Here’s the list:

Tomatoes(1Plant/3.5″pot):

• Sakura Red Cherry
• Sungold Cherry
• Celebrity
• Big Beef
• Jet Star
• Roma

Peppers(1 Plant/3.5″ pot):

• Sweet Sunrise Bell
• Hot Paper Lantern Habenero
• Red Rocket Ristra
• Capperino Hot Cherry

Black Beauty Eggplant(1 Plant/3.5″ Pot)

Vates Kale(6 PK)

Red express Cabbage(6 PK)

Belstar Broccoli(6 PK)
Rainbow Chard Mix(6 PK)
Italian Flat Leaf Parsley(1 Plant/3.5″ Pot)
Cortland Onion(6 PK)
King Richard Leek

Basil:

• Genovese(1 Plant/3.5″ Pot)
• Dark Opal Purple(6 PK)
• Lemon Basil(6 PK)

Zucchini and all below(1 Plant/3.5″ Pot):

• Cocozelle Green
• Goldy Yellow

Summer Squash

Marketmore cuke

N.Pickling cuke
PMR Delicious Cantaloupe melon
Delicata
Burgess Buttercup
Tuffy Acorn
Baby Pam Pie Pumpkin

We will also have hanging baskets for sale.  They are working hard to be as vibrant and magical as they can in a couple weeks.  We’ll see if they succeed…

Here are directions to our place:

106 Cree Farm Rd, Marshfield, VT

Phone 802.426.2048

From Montpelier: RTE 2 East, Left on Creamery St in Marshfield, stay left, .5mi(give or take 1/4 mi) look for first rd on left, big fields with greenhouse and green house.  There will be signs.

From St J: RTE 2 West, Right on Creamery St in Marshfield, stay left, .5mi(give or take 1/4 mi) look for first rd on left, big fields with greenhouse and green house.  There will be signs.

From Calais:  use the force….just because you can.

Just spoke with Ed Person from Ledgewood Farm in NH, the greenhouse guru. Important tips:
1. Once seedlings emerge, take domes off and let soil dry out as much as possible without killing the plants. The humidity will cause the legginess and create other problems. Transplant in a couple weeks after first true leaf appears.

2. Plants will be happiest at around 60 degrees, growing much faster than at 50. The amount of fuel used is doubled to keep the temperature at 60 as opposed to 50.

3. Spinach will bolt if the diiference between the soil and air temperature is too great. In winter, the soil temperature is generally around 45 degrees, so you don’t want to let the daytime temperature get higher than 55 or 60. The difference shouldn’t be more than 10 degrees in low light conditions(winter). As the light increases, the delta can increase.

4. Humidity in the greenhouse is a problem. Creates enviroment for fungus/mold.

Needless to say, I just took the plastic domes off the sprouted seedlings.

Thanks, Ed!