Always Somethin' Farm

All of our vegetables, fruits, and herbs are raised by organic methods. We do not use chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides. We practice crop rotation, soil improvement through incorporation of compost, green manures, and animal manures, and weed management by mulching with old animal bedding and good old fashioned weeding. We prefer to grow heirloom and open pollinated varieties, and dabble with seed saving. Our primary focus is on flavor, so we only continue to grow those varieties that taste good.

This past fall we planted about 650 cloves of five different varieties of garlic - hardneck (h), softneck (s), and elephant (e). Hardneck varieties have fewer, but larger, cloves centered around a hard stem and tend to have "better" flavor but shorter shelf-life than the softneck varieties. We think that they all taste great, but have found that the softneck varieties do store longer. Elephant garlic (not a true garlic - it is a member of the leek family) is larger and milder than the true garlics. This year hope to have a good harvest of California White (s), Italian Late (s), Bavarian Purple (h), German Red (h), and Elephant garlic (e). We plan to add Russian Red (h) and a few other hardneck varieties next year.

We anticipate harvesting from nearly 100 Mary Washington asparagus plants this year and will be tending to more than 100 Mary Washington and Purple Passion asparagus planted last year (and may even plant more this year). The majority of our asparagus has been started from seed that we saved rather than by the traditional method of planting crowns. We have found no difference in yield or maturity - it still takes three years to reach full production.

Our green bean crop this year will consist of Bush Blue Lake 274, Jade, and Top Crop. In the past we did a single planting of green beans, so they were all harvested in a short period. This year we will stagger plantings so that they will be available over a longer time.

Corn is one of the few crops where we purchase hybrid seed; we are just accustomed to eating the sugar enhanced varieties. This year we will be growing Fleet and Bodacious. These are new varieties for us, and a potential risk, but then again, I do not think that we have ever grown the same variety one year after another (our record keeping needs to improve!).

Our goal is to be able to harvest a variety of lettuces all year with minimal (if any) external energy inputs. If all goes as is planned, we will have a greenhouse and cold frames in which to do this. We plan to grow a variety of textures and colors.

This spring we will be expanding our tomatoe production by starting thirteen different heirloom and open pollinated tomatoes for sauce, slicing, and salad (hopefully we will keep better records as to what tastes best, is good for sauces, etc.). We anticipate transplanting between 100 and 200 of the following tomatoe plants: Abraham Lincoln, Brandywine, Mortgage Lifter, Prudens Purple, Amish Paste, Mule Team , Opalka, Polish Linguisa, Saucey, Roma, San Marzano, Amish Salad, and Sugar Lump. Some of us are really looking forward to this, while others (those that have to help skin and deseed the tomatoes) are not as enthusiastic!

Our strawberries (100 Cavendish) may have been planted too late last fall to take root - time will tell . We layered many of our black raspberry canes late last summer to expand production. We also removed blackberries from one of our main gardens because they were so invasive (I guess that they like our enriched organic soil!). These have been overwintered in a shed and will be transplanted when weather permits to native areas that we maiantain betwewen our gardens and pastures.

 Herbs that we expect to grow this year include: basil, chives, dill, oregano, flat leaf parsley, rosemary, sage, and thyme.