The spring-planted (from seed, not bulb, mind you), August/September cured shallots got boxed today.  In other words, we spent the afternoon gettin our box on.

It was a nice alternative to real work, like pulling up drip tape in field 2, or cultivating the carrots.  It was upper 90s today, so real work sounded pretty tough (especially after a huge lunch of fettucini alfredo and ice cream).  I usually hate not doing something in the field during the afternoons, but today was the perfect time to box up one of our precious commodities.

We planted, so I thought, a lot of shallots in April.  The yield was okay, but we’re left with ~500 lbs of shallots to sell now (I hope the co-op sells lots of shallots).

Was it a good idea to try to sell this many shallots locally?  We will see.  We don’t want to get into commercial distribution because the prices suck for a small-acreage farm like Four Frog.  We are into getting more money/lb, not less.  Therefore, retail first, wholesale next, and, then (hopefully never) distribution.  If we ever go into distribution commercially, we will be office farmers, and I want to save that for older age, when I don’t want to be in the field everyday, all day.

Not that distribution is inherently bad.  It’s all good.  We’re all doing our best to make a living.

Anywho, shallots are so yummy.  Ours turned out giant-sized this fall.  Yum.  Restaurants might be a good outlet for us.  If you’ve never eaten one, come buy a shallot from Four Frog at the farmers’ markets.  If you live across country, we might mail you one!

Yeah!  Pete and the intern crew just finished planting out the onions today.  There are now ten 100 foot beds planted, each with 4 rows with roughly 3 plants per foot = 12,000 plants!  This year we grew Copra, New York Early, Mercury, Purplette, Ailsa Craig, Gold Coin, and seed-grown Shallots.  Now it’s just a matter of weeding and watering. I also just finished applying fertilizer to the next acre of ground.  I used a drop spreader to apply lime at 1 ton per acre and soft rock phosphate… Read the rest of this article »

Sunday Morning at the farm.  I’m sure it’s pretty glorious.  I live a little bit away from the farm (20-25 minutes), so I am rarely there on Sunday morn.  It’s my morning off.  I am going there later to water the onion flats and switch some watering in the main field. Next year it looks like I’ll be farming on a 10 acre piece of land right down the road from where I live.  I will continue to farm at Wildgrace (Glenn and Muffy’s) next year as well.  I want to put… Read the rest of this article »

If you come out to the farm you’ll notice first an area filled with Agribon hoophouses, and then some rows of (robust, thankfully) garlic. Then, you come to the great abyss. We did the first round of tilling last week.  It took out about half of the cover-cropped area, half left to go because it’s still too wet. Well, I was out in the great abyss - me, the sky, and an acre waiting to be planted.  It was time…to plant the sacred lettuce mix (and spinach).  Now, this… Read the rest of this article »