Farm Tour

The local farmers co-op that I like to get my produce from had a customer appreciation day yesterday.   Not knowing what to expect, a bunch of friends and I went out.  We knew there were five farms involved, but not what would happen.  What we expected to last a couple of hours ended up lasting most of a very informative and enjoyable day.  I was beat by the time we got home - but it was a good 'out all day in the sun' kind of tired.

I didn't think to bring my camera with me.  I had my blackberry, but it didn't seem to want to take more than 25 pictures (which almost felt like I was back to using film.  Man, it's been a long time since I've been restricted to how many pictures I could take.)  Anywho, before I ran out of pictures, I took these:

The first farm was the only stop where they used green houses.  Everything else was grown in the fields.    In this case, their tomato plants are seeded in January, and by November when they shut the place down, will be 23' long.    They tie them to the ceiling, and as they get longer and longer, lower the string holding them up, and wrap the base of the plant around the pot.  Eventually, it gets so that there is no floor space between the rows.

The next stop was at the farm where I love to buy baby carrots.  Little did I know that they grow other things too.

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Cabbage

*other* kind of cabbage

 and kale, parsnips, kohlrabi & peas too.

The third farm does mostly peas, but they grow asparagus too.  These are asparagus plants, after the picking season, when they are allowed to go to fern to build up their root system.

They took us out on a hay ride to one of their pea fields, and gave us a few minutes to pick peas.  I was the only one in my group (or, apparently among anybody on the tour at the time) who grew up in the country with a huge vegetable garden.   Without thinking, I hopped off the wagon, grabbed my bag and started picking.    It turns out, I am without a doubt the undefeated pea picking champion.  When we were done and it was time to head back, I was pretty embarrassed to see that I was the only one among the group of twenty or so whose bag was even close to being full.    Everybody else had a small handful.  But I kept my peas.  (The farmer said they'd be hard to sell at the market because of the damage from the recent hail storm.)

This family also has humanely raised, antibiotic-free cattle, so we picked up some fresh meat there too.

And some asparagus relish that's to die for.  YUM.

After that, I couldn't take pictures.  Our next stop was at a potato farm, where they took us out to the field to dig up some baby red potatoes.  

Finally, we went to a strawberry farm, which was the only U-pick farm of the bunch.  I think I might go back there tomorrow and get some more.  I think there's some homemade strawberry jam in my future.

Don't judge me for all those peas.

Also, please pretend that I remembered to include the orange tomatoes and the beefsteak tomatoes I took home.  I also suspect that there will be fresh tomato sauce in my near future.