What are you doing this weekend?

I see the last post was on August 25, a full month ago.  Since then Farmer Bill has worked non-stop, averaging 16 hour days, seven days a week.  The apple harvest is different than strawberry season.  For one thing it lasts much, much longer.  Strawberry season averages 18 days; apple harvest averages 6 weeks -- for the picking -- 10 or more weeks to sell the crop.

Last year Farmer Bill managed to find a farmers' market on Mondays, which used to be his day off marketing.  So he now markets 7 days a week.  Good news is that he found a great employee, Ryan C., who goes to markets for him several days per week.  Of course, Farmer Bill just found other markets to go to on those days.  But I suppose the more markets he goes to, the more apples he sells & the sooner his crop is sold.  But it can be pretty exhausting.

Because Bill is such a people person, and is so conscientious about his farming, he has begun to develop relationships with agritainment orchards.  An orchard in Delano has purchased large quantities of our Honeygold apples for 3 years now.  Honeygold ripen about October 1; they are a green/yellow apple with a firm texture & a mild sweet flavor.  They eat and cook well, but sell very slowly, and SRF always has more Honeygold than we can sell at farmers' markets.  So the relationship with Apple Jack has been a great boon.  This year Bill found an orchard that needed Zestar! and was able to sell 50 bushel at a good price (before they softened -- and before the Honeycrisp came in).  That same orchard is now interested in some of our Honeycrisp, which means they were pleased with the quality of the Zestar! they got.  These are small orders in the scheme of things, but huge for our operation.  A third venue that may work well for Farmer Bill is a produce auction in northern Iowa.  Bill took apples there 2 years ago, but last year's crop was so small that he didn't need additional outlets (except for Honeygold!).  This week he sent a load of apples down and it sold -- very well at very good prices.  Additional apples will be going to the auction next week.  All of these sales are down to Farmer Bill.  He seeks out possible venues.  He develops relationships.  He treats people fairly, respectfully, and evenly, always.

Okay, I got a Saturday off from marketing today -- a total fluke -- so now I have to quit messing about on the computer and go make good use of this 'free' time.  Applesauce to make, apple rings to dry, and the usual laundry to work on and bathrooms to clean, although very little housework gets done this time of year beyond keeping the kitchen clean and trying to keep us in clean underwear.  By the beginning or middle of November I should be able to start doing a thorough cleanup...

Are the apples ready?

Have I mentioned that Farmer Bill is a stickler for waiting until his apples are perfectly ripe before he picks them?

Here's what we use to help us make that decision -- along with taste tests of course!

What is that bottle...?  It looks like...?!?  Yes, it's iodine, the kind you might use on cuts or scrapes, or take along camping to purify water.  Now think back to your chemistry classes in school & reaction experiments.  Iodine reacts with starch and turns black.  It reacts with sugar and loses its color.  The apples in the center of the picture show white in the center and black outside that.  The bottom apple is a Zestar!, the middle apple is a Chestnut Crab, and the top apple (almost all black) is a Ginger Gold.  As apples ripen the white center grows.  At just slightly more white than is pictured, the apples are perfect for picking.  Apples in normal storage will ripen and sweeten.  Apples picked too ripe & put into storage will not keep as long.  Apples picked too green will ripen & sweeten some, but may not gain the full flavor the grower and consumer would like.  Just a few more days now & we'll be in the apple business for this season.

The apparatus in the top left corner is a refractometer.  It measures the Brix.  Brix is a measurement of the sucrose in a liquid solution (look it up in Wikipedia if you want a more thorough explanation).  Because the apples also have fructose and other stuff in the liquid we squeeze from them, the refractometer only gives us an approximate sugar level & really doesn't tell us when the apples are ready.  But it's pretty fun to use -- and we got to spend a bunch of money on it -- and it has a cool name.

Of course, the best way to tell when the apples are ready is to taste them.  We have been tasting for a couple of weeks now -- and the 'green' taste is almost gone from the 3 earliest varieties.  Coming soon to a farmers' market near you: Straight River Farm apples.

Apples

The apple season is nearly upon us.  When Will & Aimee were here on Sunday we went into the orchard to look things over.  The Zestar! have gained a lot of size and are starting to turn red.  The Honeycrisp were not thinned enough -- so there will be a lot of them.  But it remains to be seen what that lack of thinning does to the size and flavor of the apples.  It's time to turn the apple sorter on and make sure all the parts are working.

It looks like we'll have about as many apples this year as we did 2 years ago -- when we sold apples well into November.  Having enough Honeycrisp to sell at markets through the month of October is very important because it is our most popular apple & draws people in.  If they want to make pies, freeze, or can we can sell them apples for that at the same time, but Honeycrisp is the apple of choice for fresh eating.  We'll be short on the Sweet Sixteen, which didn't set well at all, and short on the Ginger Gold, which is our 2nd best early apple and very popular with people who have tried it.  We'll only have enough of our newest apple, SweeTango, to make a tasting for us and a few lucky friends, family, and customers.  But considering that the trees were planted only last year (2010), it's pretty incredible to have any at all.

But first we have to get through August -- which means sweet corn and cantaloupe -- grown to fill the gap between strawberry season and apple season.  And, of course, tomatoes.  Farmer Bill loves tomatoes, but is still working out the logistics of growing them.  If he ever nails it, they'll be another good interim crop because Minnesotans crave tomatoes all winter and go crazy for the first on the markets.  He found a very good tasting variety this year -- we really like the flavor.  But the extreme heat caused growth problems for them in the hoop house, and the extreme amounts of rain caused problems in the field.  While we can't adjust the weather, we can adjust how we react to it, and next year Farmer Bill will have a little more knowledge to help him out.

Jam

Jam is possibly the easiest thing to preserve.  I've made enough jam now that I can do it almost without thinking about it.  So it was fun to invite my daughter-in-law over to participate in making a batch of blueberry jam on Sunday afternoon.  She had asked about learning to can this summer, we both turned up free on the same day, and I had some blueberries that needed to be put up, so it worked out perfectly. 

I'm working this summer with a new pectin product that allows one to make jams using lots less sugar than traditional pectin, and to double or triple recipes. So we made 11 cups of blueberry jam using only 2 1/4 cups of sugar.  A traditional low sugar pectin would have needed 5-6 cups of sugar for the same batch of jam.  I'm excited to try using this pectin on the peaches that are coming in next week.  Last year I made peach jam that was very good but very sweet even though I used a low sugar recipe.  This year I'm hoping to be able to make a peach jam that lets the peach flavor really shine through.

What does a family of two do with all of this jam you ask?  Homemade jam is a gift to many neighbors, friends, and family over the course of the year.  I love to give it away, but always make sure to keep enough for Farmer Bill (and me) to eat, especially our personal favorite, raspberry.  If there is ever a little farm stand on the farm I will consider making extra jam to sell.  Homemade jams at farmers' markets bring pretty good prices, and I expect we could get a good price at a farm store, too.  And if I can double or triple my recipes -- and use much less sugar -- my costs are lower in both time and materials.

Huh, I just looked out the window to see that there is a gorgeous sunset happening.  I think I'll go watch it...

Putting food by

Okay, I really should be working right now and not writing, but here I am.

The first field of Jubilee sweet corn came in, so I have 3-4 dozen ears that I made Farmer Bill leave behind for me to freeze.  Freezing corn is pretty easy, but messy and sticky.  Fortunately we haven't mopped the kitchen floor for several weeks, so I can get the whole mess in one go after I'm done with the corn.

There's also a box of blueberries in the downstairs refrigerator that need to be dealt with.  I have made Farmer Bill his favorite Blueberry Buckle a few times, and he's had blueberry pancakes many mornings.  But they won't keep forever.  Jam or syrup is in their future... and one more big Buckle.

The week after next the peaches come from Colorado -- that's been a treat the past few years & this year we're getting 3 boxes.  There's nothing like eating a really tasty peach in the middle of the winter to make you forget the cold outside.

Soon we'll have enough tomatoes that Farmer Bill will let me can some.  The market has been so good for tomatoes that he's wanted to sell everything that ripens.  The late spring and wet summer has made it a poor year overall for tomatoes, and they look pretty ugly.  But we ate all of our canned tomatoes from last year, and the last jars of salsa from 2 years ago, so I really have to make more this year.  Fortunately, tomatoes keep going until frost, so I don't have to worry about them quite yet.

I enjoy filling up the freezer and the storeroom shelves with good things to eat.  I enjoy it even more because we have air conditioning!  The amount of heat and steam created to preserve food is unbelievable.  I have huge admiration for people who are able to work in extreme heat.  Mostly I just get crabby.  And for some reason it's always hot when it's time to put up food.  Sort of like making hay.  Do you know the phrase "Make hay while the sun shines"?  Farmers always make hay when the sun shines -- rain on your cut hay makes it mold and decreases the nutrients.  So it's generally sunny and hot when you cut the hay, rake it (turn it over so it dries evenly), and bale.  And the hayloft of a barn (or the top of our machine shed addition) is always  hotter than outside.  Stacking bales is an art.  Farmer Bill grew up stacking bales every summer.  I did not.  I have learned a lot & am pretty good, but I don't have the upper body strength to throw bales effectively -- and we just stack straw bales, which weigh about half of what a hay bale weighs!  I have stacked straw in heat over 100 degrees -- and lived to tell the tale.  But I much prefer to put up food in a relatively cool, clean kitchen.  Fortunately for me, Farmer Bill loves to eat, so he's happy to have me putter about canning.

That's enough for now, going to get started on the corn.

Sweet corn

Some of you probably think you know what constitutes good sweet corn.  Some of you may even think you've eaten good sweet corn.  Most of you would be wrong.

Unless, that is, you've put the pot of water on to boil, gone out to the field & picked some ears of corn, stripped them on the way back to the house, and plunged them into the boiling water for exactly 5 minutes.

Fresh is hugely important for good sweet corn.  Maturity (ripeness) of the ears is also hugely important.  Most corn that I have purchased in the past 10 years -- from Farmers' Markets and farm stands both -- has been over-ripe.  If the kernels don't pop when you bite into them, if they aren't crisp, it's over-ripe.

And most hugely important of all: variety.  There are literally hundreds of sweet corn varieties.  The new varieties are called 'super sweets.'  And they are pretty much all to be avoided at any cost because they taste like candy, but not like corn.

Farmer Bill grows 2 main corn varieties.  The early variety is a bi-colored corn called Temptation.  It is sweet, but not super sweet, and the ears are on the small side.  But it is really very good.  The 2nd variety is a 'heritage' corn called Jubilee.  Jubilee is the corn Farmer Bill's father raised for the canning factory in the 1950s.  It is a traditional all-yellow corn with large slender ears, and a most excellent corn flavor, and it is what we try to freeze for our winter use.  But don't buy Jubilee and expect to keep it all week in your refrigerator.  Because it is an old variety it hasn't been modified to keep its sugars from turning to starch.  If you keep it more than 2 days it will be starchy and tough.  There is a 3rd variety, with a number for a name (it's escaping me right now, I'll add it in later).  It's a sweeter variety like Temptation.  And like Temptation it tastes great and will keep a bit longer in your fridge.

If you ever get the chance, eat a really good ear of sweet corn picked fresh from the field. 

Or maybe you shouldn't, because it will spoil you for ever eating restaurant or grocery store corn again... you'll only be able to eat sweet corn in July, August, and September for the rest of your life.

Oh, that rule doesn't apply to me

As I get older, I find myself getting crabbier about people who assume rules don't apply to them.  This week I'm particularly peeved about library patrons who think they should have special dispensation because, darn it, they're special.

Some examples.  A woman using the Internet has used up her first hour.  To get additional time, without logging off and starting over, she has to click a button every 10 minutes.  Very annoying, can't I just give her an additional hour?  No, that's not an option for me.  A young man who has come to the library to use the free Internet hasn't bothered to bring his library card although he knows he needs that to sign on, can't I just give him a guest pass?  No, not without some ID (this is our policy for very specific reasons that I won't go into here).  A patron has one of our 1-week, no renewal books checked out but hasn't finished it in 7 days.  Can't I extend the loan just 2 more days?  No, that's the point of a 1-week, no renewal loan period: no extensions.  The back-breaking straw.  A local teen center brings in 20 4th, 5th, and 6th graders without advance notice & wants them all signed up for our Teen Read summer program.  None of them are interested in the Children's program because the Teen program has the cool prizes this year.  None of them are interested in getting books as prizes -- they want the store gift cards, state fair tickets, candy, etc. that comes with the Teen program.  In the end we sign them all up for the Teen program.  But because I tell the group leader that we are making serious exceptions to the rules for them and that we'll need to hurry the process because they arrived only 15 minutes before closing & it's now only 5 minutes to close, I am called on the carpet as being unfriendly and unwelcoming.

For the past month, I have been telling our neighborhood 10 & 11 year olds no to signing up for the Teen program... Now I hear that the library is working on stronger collaborations with this center, and we can expect them to come in early next summer to get the kids signed up and reading.  That's great, I'm in favor of kids reading.  But if we're making exceptions for the center kids, I'm going to sign up my local neighborhood kids at ages 10 & 11; in fact, I'm going to sign up anyone who asks -- because they're special, too.  But mostly because the neighborhood kids are the ones I need to foster relationships with, so they are less likely to pose behavior problems in the library and more likely to pick up a book or magazine to read.

Over the 10+ years I've been at my current branch library, I have seen kids go from childhood to teen -- for better or worse -- to young adult.  One young man who was a regular breaker of rules is now in college and doing very well.  Another young man, who has the potential to go either way, seems to be moving in the 'right' direction. Girls who regularly tried to push our buttons now come in to get suggestions for books to read.  These patrons come back because the staff at my library has worked, hard, at being welcoming to everyone.  I am very proud of how well most of our staff does in dealing with the constant demands of our patrons.