Tag Archives: tomatoes

Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #17, 6/30/10

What’s been going on?

Who would have ever thought we would be looking forward to July in hopes of escaping a heat wave? With the current forecast, the 4th Of July will be cooler than just about any day we had in June! We did finally get a little rain last night so at least for a day or so I won’t have to irrigate. We had really gotten into that daily routine of go out early, turn on the irrigation, change zones every three hours, check for leaks, back wash the filters, etc, etc. Maybe July will give us another completely different picture, it would follow with how this season had unfolded so far.

Just in time for the holiday weekend we are in nearly full tomato splendor. It took the guys all morning on Monday to pick their way through the plantings. So far it looks like this will be a fair tomato season, better than last year but not as good as some years past. We do have some fusarium wilt in this years field too, which is mostly effecting the yellow varieties, but it is not as bad or wide spread as last year. With the arrival of true tomato season also comes the sometimes overwhelming demand for Americans favorite fruit, especially from the restaurants that want to have a fresh tomato plate on the menu.

Over the years we have arrived at a careful balance of varieties and how much of each to grow, it is never enough and people always say “why don’t you grow more?” There are a number of reasons we can’t and don’t produce more tomatoes. The obvious one these days is because we have a really devastating foliar disease that will prematurely kill the plants (different from the soil borne fusarium wilt disease), we grow all our tomatoes under cover (the Big Tops and the little tunnels) to keep the leaves dry and slow the disease down. We only have so much field space under cover and don’t want to or have space to put up more Big Tops.

The real reason in my mind is that we have developed a careful balance on the farm of crops, inputs and labor that make this operation sustainable and our quality of life better. If we planted many more tomatoes it would throw that balance off. Tomatoes not only take up a lot of room but they take a lot of labor. We would spend so much time in managing the tomato crop that we wouldn’t be able to properly take care of the rest of the place. Too many eggs in a basket you know. So now we will just have to do the careful dance of trying to make sure everyone gets the tomatoes they want and hopefully not leave anyone lusting after forbidden fruit.

Picture of the Week

The tractor headed to the shop with a broken steering arm

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #15, 6/16/10

What’s been going on?

Late newsletter as the phone rang at 6:30 this morning just as I was sitting down to write and it was the post office with the next batch of turkeys. This group are the Broad Breasted Bronzes, the Fat Boys as I call them. This breed of bird was the first step, back in the 50’s, from the standard or heritage breeds like the Bourbon Reds that we already have out in the field, to the monster broad breasted white turkeys that are the standard of the industry now. The reason we raise this kind, as well as the heritage breeds, is because they will grow to more than 15 pounds, which is about as big as the Bourbon Reds ever get. Some folks just want a bigger bird for Thanksgiving. We think that the Bronzes are better adapted to being raised on pasture than the big whites too. 67 very energetic poults are now running around in the brooder, one forgets how much noise the little guys can make.

As soon as we got them installed we moved on to covering the last of the Big Tops so we can plant the late tomatoes under them. Perfect timing as we have had a nice inch plus of rain over the last few nights and so the soil will be moist to begin the new plants in. This last planting of tomatoes is smaller, only four rows of mostly Big Beef reds and Sungolds as that is what has done the best for us in the hot days of August. The rains have also brought up the freshly seeded cover crops, we haven’t had this kind of conditions for summer covers in many years now. We are trying to make the best of these beastly humid and hot days but it is hard to have a great attitude at times!

We were talking with Sarah Blacklin, the Farmers’ Market manager, last night about our new electronic benefits transfer (EBT) program at market. This is the program we got a grant for to implement the electronic food stamps system and it has gone so well we are now receiving more EBT sales than almost all the big markets in New York City! Part of this success is we modeled an incentive program that other markets have used which matches up to $20 of tokens with $20 of EBT tokens. This matching helps get EBT recipients used to coming to market and shopping in a way that is different than normally do.

It has been so successful that we have already gone through the $2000 allotted in the grant for it. We are now looking for donations to help continue to build this important food access program. If you are or know folks who might be interested in donating to this program you can speak with Sarah at market or contact our program coordinator, Sabrina López, at sabrilopez@gmail.com  or 561-901-0569. As a program sponsor, you will be listed on our website, facebook, ongoing media alerts and in our market materials at the market Information Booth. We hope to continue to be leaders in the area for food access and innovative farmers’ markets.

Picture of the Week

All singing all dancing broad breasted bronzes

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #8, 4/29/10

What’s been going on?

For some reason the Farm Tour wore us out more than usual, maybe it was because the weather was so nice instead of the record highs of last year. Great to see everyone here at the farm, both new and old faces, they are still crunching the numbers but it looks like it will be near the record number of visitors of last year for the whole tour. We had a few dignitaries and some distant travelers too including two groups from Maryland, one each from Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina. Welcome to those of you newly signed up to the newsletter.

A very nice four tenths of an inch of rain on Saturday night was the perfect gentle rain to make everything happy. Monday was one of those milestone days that happen every season, one of those days that marks the end of the somewhat more casual early spring and heralds the coming of late spring and summer. The guys occupied their whole day in the tomato field. First they had to build the eleven hundred feet of trellis for the plants to grow on. 99 six foot metal T-posts later and wire fencing hung they began to slip the eighteen different varieties into the beautifully prepared soil. Yesterday I finished the last three rows, all happy and watered in. More variety information to come but there are several new things we are trying this year including new paste, cherry and green-when-ripe tomatoes. Can’t wait!

The other milestone passed for the season was the first delivery of lettuce to Weaver Street Market. For 19 years now we have supplied all the spring lettuce to Weaver Street Market in Carrboro. That is one marker, the other for the season it that now every Monday and Thursday through August we will be delivering either vegetables or flowers to them. Add that to now twice weekly Farmers’ Markets and the season is in full swing, no turning back. Today, on one of the last cool mornings and with a nod to the passing of spring, we are going to finish up the splitting and hauling of the firewood for next winter. A little past official Chainsaw season but at least it will be done.

Picture of the Week

The first rays of sun on a beautiful spring day

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #4, 3/31/10

What’s been going on?

The last day of March and a brilliant moon last night, just on the other side of full, it hangs on the tree line in the west as the sun is beginning to clear the horizon on the east. Signs of a good day to come. We need a solid day as “the stand”, as we call it, is rising like the phoenix after collapsing in January snow storm. Yesterday we got all of the posts back in line and the supporting beams in place so that today we can raise the rafters back up. With any luck we will be putting the tin roof back on tomorrow.

The moon setting over the rising Stand

Lots of good progress this week, we did manage to slide the “little” tunnels to their 2010 positions. Prior to moving we also prepare all the beds that will be soon indoors with irrigation lines, landscape fabric and for the tomatoes the trellises that will support them. We slid on Thursday and then closed them up to help warm up the soil before planting the warm season crops that go in them. Yesterday the early cucumbers and tomatoes went in the ground, a few days late but happy none the less, hmm real tomatoes in two months!

Great rain for us on Sunday, no severe weather, just a nice long rain with just over an inch. I was beginning to twitch with the thought of having to set up irrigation this early in the season but this rain will keep that job off the list at least for another week. With the winds of yesterday it should be dry enough in the next day or two to return to cultivating the early season crops, have to get ahead of the weeds when they are small. The big batch of spring crops have been going in the ground over the last several weeks and are really beginning to grow now that we have had a good rain. Another round gets planted this week and next and then it is time to turn our sights to warm season flowers and getting ready for the main planting of tomatoes. With the temperatures reaching toward 90 later this week it will seem like it’s time for summer crops, not yet please!

Glenn and Cov planting tomatoes

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4/23/04 Vol. 1 #6

It all just moves faster and faster now.  When I teach classes in sustainable farming I start with a pyramid diagram of the important parts of a farming system in the order of their importance and when they occur during the season.  On the same level I have Weed Control, Irrigation, and Trellising; all of equal importance but also they slap you in the face all at the same time during the year.  Well consider us slapped!  We have spent the week setting up irrigation all over the farm, and getting all of the trellis (1000 feet) up to support the main planting of tomatoes.  Today the tomatoes go in the ground, couldn’t imagine more perfect weather for planting them, they should just hit the ground running!  I got a little conservative this year with only ten varieties, still all of the favorites- Cherokee Purple, Striped German, Green Zebra…only seven weeks until the first Sungolds!

In our spare time we did manage to cover four more of the “big tops” (one of our neighbors drove by and yelled “it looks like the circus has come to town!”), we are getting much faster, only an hour per bay now.  We entertained our first Kindergarten class, wow I think I will stick with teaching college aged kids.  Two more meetings preparing for our new market at Southern Village, I will talk more about this in a week or two but our market association is opeing a third market there on May 6th.  Otherwise we just jumped around like chickens on a hot plate trying to get it all done.

Obviously lots of options for the picture of the week but we agreed that the most important is this one.  Joann Horner and her fiance Brian Gallagher launched their Castlemaine Farm at the Wednesday market.  Joann has worked for us for three years now and is Chief of Staff here at Peregrine Farm, she is days away from closing on her own piece of land.  This year she is growing on a piece of our farm and selling her produce at the Wednesday market and other locations.  Beautiful greens- Kales, turnips, mustard, bok choy and soon swiss chards, cabbages, kohlrabi and more.  We have had a number of our staff head off into their own operations over the years but none that we have been so involved with and encouraged about.  Look for and support them at Wednesday market and of course Joann will be keeping us organized on Saturday mornings through the season.

Picture of the Week
Grand Opening of Castlemaine Farm- Joann Horner and Brian Gallagher

6/23/04 Vol. 1 #15

Longest day of the year on Sunday and now Betsy begins to rejoice as the days get shorter, in her mind frost is surely just around the corner!  These are the kinds of mental games we play during the steamy days of summer.

Tomato harvest is in full swing now and we are beginning to get into that summer harvest rhythm.  The spring vegetable crops grow so fast and are so tender that we have to harvest them every day or so to keep up.  These summer crops, like tomatoes and soon peppers, we harvest just twice a week in a concentrated effort then leave them alone to ripen up some more fruit.  New staff on the farm always take some training to get our tomato system down, from the beginning of turning under of the cover crop of wheat and clover, the laying of the reusable landscape fabric (don’t like to use and throw away black plastic), the building of the fence/trellis’s, careful planting of the many different varieties in just the right row (just so so as my grandmother used to say),  pruning and tying the plants up to the trellis, and then repeated tyings.

These steps are just anticipation of the real dance of carefully picking, wiping and sorting of the fruit themselves.  Every Monday and Thursday now we load the truck up with empty boxes and head to the field.  Certain people pick certain varieties and become specialists in their idiosyncrasies, the Cherokee Purples are hard to get the stems off and we sometimes have to use pliers, the big Striped Germans bruise so easily that you have to use two hands to gently pull them from the vine, the Green Zebra’s and the Aunt Ruby’s German Greens have to get just the right amber cast to them before they are ripe.  Back to the tailgate of the truck with full buckets and the sorting begins.

Each tomato is inspected and wiped with a soft cloth and put into one of three boxes for each variety, one for fully ripe ones, another for the ones that need a few more days to fully color up and a third for the freaks.  New helpers always need coaching on what is ripe and what constitutes a freak, great angst over to “freak it” or not “it just has one kind of funny spot?”  Then there is the “have to eat today” pile, fruit that got bruised or split in the picking process or is perfectly good but has one worm hole in it so it won’t keep.

When we are done picking we gently drive the boxes down to the packing shed and take them into the air-conditioned room and carefully stack them according to variety and ripeness, the ripe piles destined for the next market and the restaurants and the less ripe to while away a few days for the next market or the grocery stores.  Early in the season it is just a few boxes of a couple of varieties, this past Monday it was 40 or more boxes, next week it will be over a thousand pounds at each picking.

It has taken the whole morning to harvest and now we all stand around, soaked with sweat and stained green from rubbing up against the tomato foliage, as I select out one fruit of each variety to sample and cut off slices for each to try, “Wow, look how green that Aunt Ruby’s is inside and the flavor is really good”;  some folks like the Striped Germans some don’t “too sweet”;  noses wrinkle, in a good way, at the tartness of the Green Zebra;  they all love the Big Beef and rarely do we sample the Cherokee Purple after the first pickings because they all know it’s their favorite.  Everyone gets a bag and takes as many fruits as they want from the “have to eat today” pile and then round out their selections from the “freak” boxes and head home talking of the tomato sandwiches, salsas, and sauces they are going to make.

These Monday-Thursday harvests leave time the rest of the week to get other chores done, weeding some here, planting a little, trellising the peppers, cleaning the freshly harvested red onions in the shade when it’s beastly hot like it was last Friday, even finishing up projects put off like finally putting a door on the feed room of the Poultry Villa so the critters don’t eat holes in the feed bags that are being delivered this week.

Picture of the Week
These Kellogg’s Breakfasts will be ready to pick on Thursday

7/21/04 Vol. 1 #19

Pretty quiet out here on the farm this week, even with the slight break in the really hot weather we have been just chugging along with the usual chores.  The mid summer meeting season seems to have arrived and so we have been trying to attend some that we think might be good for us to participate in.  Most of the farmer meetings are in the winter when we all have lots of time to think about new ideas but it is all on paper or in slides.  There is a period during the growing season when short events happen, usually afternoon or evening, that allow us to actually see things growing, in person!

This week we attended a seed saving workshop.  With over 200 varieties of crops that we grow, it is just not possible to think about saving our own seed.  To do a good job of saving seed one really needs good isolation from other like plants so that you can be assured of no cross pollination, that would be really hard for us to achieve.  We have been interested in this for several years now, particularly in the heirloom tomatoes.  From time to time we have ordered tomato seed and when they began to produce it was clear that it was not what we had ordered, imagine how excited I might get if the Cherokee Purples turned out to be something else!  So we are looking at beginning to make selections for fruit quality and plant strength in some of these heirloom tomatoes so that we can have some more control over one of our most important crops.  In the back of my head I also have an interest in trying to develop our own Poblano pepper that would produce consistently under our conditions here in North Carolina.  We have trialed at least a dozen Poblano varieties and have found only one that does reasonably well and are afraid that we may not be able to get that one for too much longer.  The seed business these days has been in great flux as it becomes more and more consolidated.  We have lost several varieties over the past few years as the new companies decide to discontinue varieties for one reason or another (the main reason being dollar$).  I’m not sure it’s not just the heat that makes my head swim with such ideas!

The Broadbrested turkeys, known here on the farm as the “little guys”, are three weeks old now and will graduate to going outside from the Poultry Villa during the day to get them used to eating grass and sunshine and their new mother ship.  After two weeks of day time privileges they get to go out to the fields for good.  First along side, but separated by a fence, the “big boys” and finally total integration.

Picture of the Week
The Broadbreasted White Turkeys thinking about making a run for the outdoors!

3/17/05 Vol. 2 #2

OK so it’s now three days from the official beginning of spring and it’s snowing!   We have consulted with lots of our fellow farmers and no one can quite remember a spring this late in getting started.  We are moving forward with the planting plan, as usual, and I think we have caught back up to where we need to be but things just look sad out there in the cold!  There are now over 6000 heads of lettuce in the field and I managed to get the first spinach, turnips, carrots, radish, beets, broccoli raab and the first two plantings of sugar snap peas in the ground but we are still waiting to see them come up.  Most of the flowers look good except they are not as far along as they should be.  Now most of this will quickly correct itself with some consistent warm days, we do wonder though.

In the greenhouse I have gotten a little out of control.  Last week was the big tomato and pepper seeding and as hard as I try to not look at the seed catalogs the siren call of new varieties is seductive.  20 varieties of tomatoes this year including two new purples, several new reds including three we brought back from Italy.  On the pepper side the story is even worse.  36 varieties, partly due to our Italian travels again as well as our continued search for disease resistant varieties.  We have been devastated the last two wet seasons with bacterial leaf spot, which defoliates the plants.  This is a huge problem for large commercial growers and so the breeders are now releasing resistant varieties, at least in the sweet bells.  Our yellow bell has the resistance and it really works, we found one red bell last season that we liked and we are now going to trial four newer ones also.  There are also three new varieties in each of the Poblano and Anaheim/New Mexican green chile types.  The logistical nightmare of keeping track of all these varieties is huge;  from soaking seeds, to seeding in small-cell-size flats (almost 5000 seeds), to moving up the best seedlings into larger containers and then finally moving them to the field and remembering where they are!  All this talk of tomatoes and peppers makes it seem warmer outside already.

Picture of the Week

Snow falling outside while the collards, anemones and lettuce are staying warm inside.

4/20/05 Vol. 2 #7

I can feel the tsunami rolling towards the farm, just over the hill now!  There is always a week about this time of year when the honeymoon is over and we are in the middle of it.  It is a combination of getting ready to plant the big batch of tomatoes and the weather finally warming up enough so that things really start to grow and need attention like irrigation water.  Let’s just add the Farm Tour on top of  the pile while we are at it!  Saturday and Sunday is the Farm Tour.  Our annual opening of the doors to the general public to come see the farm.  Many of you have been on the Farm Tour before and it is a great opportunity to see many of the folks who sell and the Carrboro Market.  Few folks know that the tour was actually Betsy’s brainchild.  Eleven years ago she thought it would be great for customers to be able to go see the market vendors’ farms.  In the end Weaver Street Market sponsored the Tour as a benefit for Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.  Betsy designed the first tour and worked closely with Weaver Street and CFSA on timelines, etc.  Now in it’s tenth year thousands of people go on the tour and it raises thousands of dollars for the work CFSA does.  It is easy to go on the tour.  Just pick up a map at market or Weaver St. or many other local businesses and go to first farm that you want.  The best deal is to buy a button which will be your pass for as many people as you can stuff into one vehicle, for as many farms as you want.  30 farms this year so you will have to choose, it is hard to do more than 3 maybe 4 farms in a day.  In the mean time we will be mowing and picking up around the place, nothing like have hundreds of house guests all at once to make you buff up the joint!  Unfortunately the weather looks a bit mixed for the weekend, Saturday has a front moving in with a chance of rain and then the temperatures dropping with the wind picking up for a brisk Sunday.  Come on out anyway!

We have been moving steadily towards getting the main planting of tomatoes in the ground, got the Big Tops covered, beds prepared, irrigation lines down, row cover laid and today will begin to put up the 1000 feet of trellis to support them all.  It is a lot of work but these luscious fruits are about 15 percent of our business each year so we make sure that it is done right.  While everyone seems to remember us for our peppers (I think it is the hypnotic effect of the roaster in the fall) the tomatoes are a much bigger part of our life.  We have decided to put off the actual planting until early next week due to the weather forecast.  It is critical that they go in the ground and start growing vigorously without any stresses early on, it means much better plants and fruit later.  We had a good frost here on Sunday morning and had a couple of plants in the little tunnels burned a bit so we just want to be careful.  I started the irrigation dance yesterday by getting the pump back down to the pond and pumping water.  Flushed out all of the main lines running up the hill and all across the farm and then the rest of the week we will begin rolling out the irrigation lines, thousands of feet.

Picture of the Week
Just about the whole top of the farm, new flowers in the front, the little sliding tunnels on the left, lettuce in the middle and the Big Tops in the back, come and see it all on the tour.

4/27/05 Vol. 2 #8

We are still recovering from the Farm Tour.  We love having folks out to show them what we are up to but Saturday sure does become a long day with Market, then the Tour and then after Tour chores like picking asparagus and dutch iris.  Thank you to everyone who came out especially with such mixed and breezy weather, we feel it is important for the”city folks and the country folks” to get together (isn’t there a song in the musical Oklahoma like this?).  Part of the sustainability equation of environmental-economic-social is that our neighbors and customers are accepting of and in many ways a part of what we do on the farm.  We wouldn’t be successful without your support!

One of the questions we heard a lot over the weekend was why don’t you heat the greenhouses/tunnels?  It is partly for the same reason that we don’t use black plastic for mulch, make as few trips over the field with the tractor as possible, drive efficient vehicles, use a passive solar greenhouse for transplants, use drip irrigation and reuse those drip lines as long as possible….  I guess it all started with the oil embargoes of the 70’s when we realized that this oil thing was a limited resource.  From the beginning of the farm we have tried to use ways of producing crops (and living) that use the least amount of petroleum products as possible.  We knew that eventually the availability and price of oil would become a limiting factor in farming systems and we wanted to not be as dependant on it when that time came.  Sure there is still a lot of plastic on the farm, more that we like but much less than most commercial farms, unfortunately we have to use some of it to be competitive at this time.  There are still more things that we can do.  Hopefully greenhouse films will soon be made from something like corn starch, we can change the tractor over to bio-diesel, maybe we can run the irrigation pump off of solar panels.

It appears as if we missed the bullet again with the cold weather.  It was 30 degrees here on Monday morning without frost but everything we had covered made it through just fine and the asparagus didn’t get frozen!  Today the big round of tomatoes finally goes in the ground, it has taken some time to get ready for planting but we finished it all up yesterday.  We need to get them in because next week is pepper week and it is an even bigger job than tomatoes!  The first round of tomatoes in the sliding tunnels look great and they got pruned and tied up for the first time with lots of quarter sized fruit on them!  Only 5 weeks until we eat the first one!  We of course planted yet more flowers, the last of the spring vegetables and for the first time in a long time, sweet corn.  We haven’t had the room for corn until this year and so I thought let’s see if we can grow a really good sweet corn.  After much research I settled on both a white and a bicolor both with “excellent flavor, sweetness, and eating qualities”.  Now we will see if they actually perform well, you will know if they make it to market!

Picture of the Week
The tomato system- cover crops for good soil and good insects, drip irrigation, reusable fabric mulch, trellis fences and the Big Tops to keep them dry and reduce the dreaded foliage disease.