01 Jun Wed 2011
Vacation
We won’t be at the market for the next 3 weekends. Instead, we’ll be on vacation, checking out farmer’s markets in other places. It will be strange, trusting someone else to let the chickens out every morning and lock them up at night, feed the dog, and take care of the garden, but hopefully we’ll come back recharged and ready for the rest of the market season. Some of our produce will mature while we’re away – the cauliflower is already setting nice heads and will probably be done by 
the time we get back. We have a few cayenne peppers about 6 inches long already. We also have some beautiful beefsteak-type tomatoes that are already the size of tennis balls, and roma-type tomatoes the size of eggs. These should be ripe in time for us to sell at our next market on June 25. Wherever your travels take you this summer, or even if you stay close to home, I hope you take time to smell the roses… or tomatoes… or melons, and enjoy wherever you happen to be.
Cheryl Alvarado, JustPicked Farms
04 May Wed 2011
JustPicked Farms at the Emporia Farmer's Market
The regular season of the Emporia Farmer’s Market starts this Saturday, and we plan to be there with fresh, locally grown goodies. The Market is in the lot at 7th & Merchant, and selling starts at 8 am. We will have our free-range eggs (check it out, our eggs will be in the breakfast burritos for sale at the Kiosk!), a green and red “All Star” lettuce mix, broccoli, green onions and a smaller, easier-to-manage cabbage called Caraflex. This cabbage has tender cone-shaped heads, and is just the right size for someone who doesn’t feel the need to make a gallon of sauerkraut! Try it finely shredded in a salad for extra crunch, or instead of lettuce in fish tacos.
Happenings On the Farm
The strong winds we’ve had lately have given our high tunnel (just in production this spring!) sort of a beating. We had to make some repairs to the doors after the wind caught them and blew them open and shut a few times. Not to worry though, the veggies in the tunnel are coming along just fine.
Our 28 hens are giving us plenty of eggs, and we’ve got another 30 chicks growing quickly. They’ll start laying small eggs around September. The small eggs (called pullet eggs) are the tastiest!
We’re gearing up our perennial patch for more selection in years to come. We’ve planted 60 asparagus crowns, some green and some purple. If things go well, we can start selling asparagus next year. We’ve also planted some rhubarb, bunching onions, and will soon be planting raspberries.
Other things we hope to be able to sell this year – tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bok choi, spinach, radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, eggplant, watermelon, cantaloupe, green beans, zucchini, butternut squash, blackberries, strawberries, and pie pumpkins.
I hope to see you at the market this weekend! Be sure to stop by and say hi!
Cheryl Alvarado
25 Apr Sun 2010
The Mystery of the Missing Eggs
The Mystery of the Missing Eggs
For a while after we moved our hens out of their cozy wooden house and into the roomier hoop house, we noticed a decline in egg production. Originally we had attributed it to stress, since the hens had been harassed and a couple of them killed by a dog just before we moved them into their new house. This weekend, however, we discovered the real cause of the missing eggs.
The hoop house has a human-sized door in the end, so we can go in to gather eggs and fill the feeder and waterer. We close the door at night, but during the day it’s open so the chickens can come and go and free range outdoors.
Saturday after we arrived home from running errands, we knew there should be some eggs to gather since we had heard the hens singing their “I just laid an egg” song. For those of you who have never heard this, it goes like “buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buck, buckET”! We went to check, but there were NO EGGS! This was unheard of for afternoon. Our suspicions immediately turned to Ellie, our dog, who had lately been caught chewing up the ceramic nest eggs. We got some scrap lumber and quickly made a 12 x 12 inch chicken-sized door so the chickens could still come and go, but Ellie could not get in.
Not long after we had completed the new chicken door, we saw Ellie trying to get in. She stuck her head in the chicken door, but then could not get her front feet in. All was good. We went back to work on other things, but in less than an hour, we found Ellie inside the chicken coop, chowing down on freshly laid eggs!! She had somehow figured out that if she put both her front feet in the door first, she could then squeeze the rest of her body through.
We closed the opening down to about 12 x 7 inches, still big enough for a chicken, but too small for Ellie to get her shoulders through.
I hope. We’ll see tomorrow.
Cheryl
07 Feb Sun 2010
Signs of Spring
February 07
Signs of Spring
One of the things I enjoy most about gardening is watching the seasons change. People tend to think of seasons as beginning on a certain date – winter in December, spring in March, but in reality nature follows a smooth wavelike pattern, gradually becoming a little less like one season, and a little more like the next, unhindered by dates on the calendar. In the depths of a cold, snowy January, it seems like winter will last forever.
And then the seed catalogs arrive.
Seed catalogs are truly the first signs of spring, and even though they aren’t a natural phenomenon, they are still a ray of hope – a reminder that the cold days of winter won’t last forever. Arriving at the deepest trough of the winter doldrums, they signal the way out, a sign of surer, more natural signs of spring to come. Other signs of spring follow quickly after the seed catalogs’ arrival. The chickens start waking up a little earlier each day and stay out a little later each evening. Snow turns to mud. And then suddenly, there it is – the first little sprig of green. Sometimes it’s a crocus, a joyful, brilliant, blooming herald yelling “Spring is Here!” Sometimes it’s a dandelion that’s found a sheltered spot on the warm south side of a building, just a whisper of spring.
Yesterday, I found this little weed growing between buckets I had set under the eaves of the barn to catch rainwater. A true sign of spring. I hope it gives you the same feeling of joy and hope that it gave me.
Cheryl