Next Generation Organics

I’m the worst blogger there is. Summer gets too crazy and my fall has been spent putting up an NRCS funded hoophouse. Thank you american tax payer. Its a monster, for us anyway. I had to marry my two biggest ladders together to get to the peak of the roof to put the plastic on. Talk about sketchy. I made it to where it will roll into two different spots so you can have two different growing areas at different times of the year. Thanks to Jon Lawrey and Preston Riley for helping to get the  hoops up and the plastic on.

 We had a great year and are getting ready to fire up the greenhouse next month and start planting to do it all again. We are still ordering seed, and sourcing OG seed potatoes and so on. 

In February we are giving a ‘virtual tour’ of our farm at the Idaho’s Growers Own conference so that will be cool.

Uhh not much else to report. Maybe I will blog in another 5 months with more…

We have interns. They are amazing, Jon Lawrey and Jacquie Beaumont moved here from SLC to slave at the farm this summer. Jon is a budding banjo maker who is just setting up shop here in Homedale. Everything fell perfectly into place and they have a house about 500′ from the farm. We are so stoked they are here. 6 hands do so much more work than 2. We are STILL planting though. We got in the summer squash yesterday, and the peppers,eggplant and tomatoes last week. Celery will finish up today and winter squash, cukes and basil probably next week. I can’t tell you how nice it is to have some great folks to work with. Thanks guys.

no time to post… greenhouse business insane….fields need planting……plants need watering….irrigation needs fixed….weeds growing, I hates them…… going to two markets….  getting some help???? possibility of intern?????  built this mulch layer saved days of work….it lays plastic down and then covers it back up all in one pass….. check out our Face book site for a video…..more later…thanks for a great spring to everyone who has bought plants and been by the booth.

.

So close to having the new greenhouse addition ready. Benches are built, plastic is stretched, only the end wall plastic remains. We had a perfect 2 hours of calm yesterday to get the plastic on. Not 5 minutes after we were done the wind came up and it would have been impossible to do. The greenhouse gods were kind for sure. End wall will get done today and Robert is your Muvas Bruva. We had our 2 greenhouses packed to the brim last year and we are going even bigger this year so it had to be done. Can’t wait… We were contacted by a rep from Toyota today about buying some potted herbs for a Farm to Table event on the 23rd of April at the Capital City Public Market . It sounds pretty cool, they are pairing local chefs with local producers and giving away culinary herbs as part of the promotion. Sounds cool. Stay tuned for more info.

Its that time of year again, hop rhizomes are dug and ready to grow into those beautiful little nuggets to flavor your beer. I have four different varieties ready to plant. Cascade which is an American standard used mainly for aroma. Canadian Redvine which is similar to Cascade but grows and yields more. Centennial which is a high alpha variety for those really hoppy beers like IPAs and Chinook also a high alpha variety. All Certified Organic of course. My counts are a little down this year due to an irrigation project last year that led to a lack of water in the fall. Ooopppssss. On the plus side I got a drip irrigation project funded by Uncle Sam and the NRCS. OK, let me know if you need some rhizomes, you can ‘comment’ at this site or email me direct at oldbart@hotmail.com

It was  80 degrees in the green house yesterday. Plants are popping and I’m ready for spring. Is it really only February?

Spring comes a little early around here. We are firing up the greenhouse, with all those wonderful herbs, onions, chives, spring greens, and early tomatoes. Its so nice to duck into a 70 degree greenhouse when its 30 outside. I have a hot water heating system made from a recycled water heater and some 1/2 in. tubing that circulates hot water at the plants root zone. It works awesome and keeps the soil of the plants nice and toasty. We are super excited to be into our 3rd year of production, and can’t wait for the Capital City Public Market to kick off in April. There are lots of plants to care for until then so stay tuned.

Check out these baby tomatoes, so cute. Those are Bull Blood Beets in the background for a killer micro greens mix.

Guy Hand, who does  the radio shows Edible Idaho and NW market news on BSU radio did a piece on our Mulberries today. How cool is that?  He writes on all sorts of great food and ag stories as well as the restaurant reviews for the Statesman. He comes by the stand on Saturdays sometimes and was pretty intrigued by the Mulberries. His piece spoke of the Farmers Market being the perfect venue for super short season, fragile produce like the Mulberries.  The Redfeather lounge is running a Mulberry soufle special this month also. MMMM…. Matt at the Bittercreek/Redfeather is always looking for unusual stuff so the Mulberries were a perfect fit. We sold some to them last year and this year people were starting to ask and request them again so thats pretty cool.  This will probably be the last week on the Mulberries, there might be a few next week but the trees are looking pretty thin. Next week we will have red and black raspberries though…. IF you come early we might even have a few this week.    Here’s a link to the Mulberry story and Guy Hands website.

http://www.nwfoodnews.com/2010/07/09/market-garden-report-mulberries/

http://guyhand.com/

As I was walking past the greenhouse yesterday I saw this bright purple berry just laying there in the dirt????? I realized it was a whole ripe mulberry a bird had dropped.. what are the chances?   So that’s Natures way of saying “Hey, there are ripe Mulberries back there go pick them”    They are delicious, they are almost like a concord grape with a real mild flavor. They are the  most organic product we have. We don’t do a thing to them.  They are considered a wild harvest product under our organic plan. The trees are about 40 feet tall and chock full to the top. We let the birds pick the top, and they stay off the raspberries.  

I took some of the B grades and made a syrup we had over vanilla ice cream last night.  IT WAS GOOD……  We will have some available at the Capital City Public Market this saturday. We are on the NW corner of 8th and ID. Look for the Next Generation Organics banner with the picture of my grandparents sitting on the old Ford Model A.

The Capital City Public Market is opening a new wing. It will extend down ID st. from 8th st. The T we are calling it. It should be pretty cool.  It will centralize the market more and there will be fewer busy roads to cross. We will be down ID st somewhere. Come on down, we will have lots of plants still. We have herbs, including Basil, and summer squash, winter squash, cucumbers, the tomatoes and peppers are done but there are still a lot of great things. We have a bunch of gourmet herbs to put in the windowsill and use as you need. That way its right there when you need it, instead of running outside to the garden and burning the food.