Some like it hot

Text from our latest Newsletter...

The crops are growing well. Anytime it is uncomfortably hot for you or me, our field crops are soaking up all that solar energy, doing their little photosynthesis dance, and producing a plethora of branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit, which is just what we want. We are already picking the early crops such as zucchini and beans, we've just found a handful of ripe cherry tomaotes (the yellow ones, they're always ready first), and the early peppers should be ready in a few days. The past two summers have been cool, comfortable for people, but they produced so-so melons, and hardly any red sweet peppers. It is nice to have a true summer this year, with lots of hot days, meaning we'll have some great melon-eating days this August.

* Raspberries
So far we have had a great raspberry season, with lots of happy pickers, and a few hot pickers too! Right now the late varieties are at their peak. The weather was a bit too hot for a few days, but we were able to give the canes lots of water, and we had some good gentle rains, so the pick your own is still running full steam ahead. For the next week, we will have great picking, but with raspberries, the further we get into the season, the harder the picking. In other words, the sooner you come (or come back) the better!

* Pasta with Zucchini, Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta
It's time to dig out those summer veggie recipes. Here's one we dug out after picking the first cherry tomatoes a few days ago...

4 medium zucchini halve lengthwise then cut into ½" slices. Sprinkle with 2 tbsp kosher salt, drain for 30 min, then rinse
1 lb farfalle or other small pasta
5 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion chopped fine
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp lemon zest
½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
¼ cup fresh mint leaves chopped fine
2 tsp vinegar
½ cup kalamata olives quartered
4 oz feta cheese crumbled

Cook pasta, drain and set aside in a large serving bowl.
While pasta is cooking:
In a large hot pan, brown rinsed zucchini in 1 tbsp olive oil (if pan is crowded, do it in two batches, you want air spaces between the pieces of zucchini), remove zucchini from the pan and set aside.
Cook onion with 1 tbsp olive oil (3 mins.)
Add garlic and lemon zest. Cook for 1 min and remove from heat.
To the drained pasta add: 2 tbsp olive oil, and everything else except for the feta. Toss, then sprinkle with feta. Serve warm or cold. Make lots -it's great as leftovers!

* Flowers
No sooner have we wrapped up the season, than it's time to get working on next year's crop. Yes, the 2011 flower catalogs started to arrive in the mail this week. As you enjoy your flower gardens this summer, take a look at what's doing well, what's not, and if you feel so inclined, let me know!

That's all for this newsletter. I hope everyone is having a terrific summer. I know from the number of "out of office" replies this newsletter will get, that lots of you are away on vacation and I do hope you're having a great time, but I have to confess, since I really haven't had a day off since I planted the first flower seeds (that would be way back on Feb 1st), I'm so jealous!

What we did with those cherry tomatoes

Pasta with Zucchini Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta

It's time to dig out those summer veggie recipes. Here's one we dug out after picking the first cherry tomatoes a few days ago...

4 medium zucchini halve lengthwise then cut into ½" slices. Sprinkle with 2 tbsp kosher salt, drain for 30 min, then rinse
1 lb farfalle or other small pasta
5 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion chopped fine
3 cloves garlic minced
1 tsp lemon zest
½ tsp pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
¼ cup fresh mint leaves chopped fine
2 tsp vinegar
½ cup kalamata olives quartered
4 oz feta cheese crumbled

Cook pasta, drain and set aside in a large serving bowl.
While pasta is cooking:
In a large hot pan, brown rinsed zucchini in 1 tbsp olive oil (if pan is crowded, do it in two batches, you want air spaces between the pieces of zucchini), remove zucchini from the pan and set aside.
Cook onion with 1 tbsp olive oil (3 mins.)
Add garlic and lemon zest. Cook for 1 min and remove from heat.
To the drained pasta add: 2 tbsp olive oil, and everything else except for the feta. Toss, then sprinkle with feta. Serve warm or cold. Make lots -it's great as leftovers!

A walk in the mud

It's been too darn hot to spend any unnecessary time in the fields, but with a good rain on Friday we were willing to venture out to the tomato patch, even though we were ankle deep in mud. Why would we do this? Because there just might have been a few ripe tomatoes, and there were! Yellow cherry tomatoes are always the first to ripen, and sure enough we found a few. About a pint. Just enough for dinner. Well worth getting covered in mud! Keens are easy to rinse off anyway.

In the picture of our field (click on it for full size), we're looking down the tomato patch towards our greenhouses. You can see our deep footprints in the muddy lane that cuts through the field. The big sprawling tomato plants in the foreground are the cherries, next to them are two rows of plum tomatoes, next we have three rows of our standard red slicers, with the raspberries in the background. To the right of the lane we are growing peppers. If you look very carefully, past the peppers are melons. The melon rows start in front of the greenhouse on the right. We'll blog about the melons later, they will be great this year, unlike me, they love hot weather!

Nothing but Calibrachoa

A well known journalist, lecturer, and grower in the Ontario flower industry figures that as growers, we should be growing nothing but Calibrachoa (sometimes called 'millionbells'). He's joking of course, but given their wide range of colour, non-stop blooming, and absolute ease for the gardener to grow, we understand what he's getting at! Just look at that photo! It's SuperBells White Calibrachoa from Proven Winners, just  a single plant growing in a 6" pot in our greenhouse. It has a mounded, semi-trailing habit, so it makes a great filler, and as you can see, trails over the edge of the container (yes, behind all those blooms is an ugly green plastic pot).

We are puzzled by something: it doesn't sell very well. I think it should be planted instead of Gulliver White Bacopa, because it has more blooms, and it blooms all summer (Bacopa is finicky and stops blooming in the hot summer unless it is babied along). We sell five times as much Gulliver White as we do SuperBells White. Maybe that's because we've been growing GW longer, and it trails more. Oh well, next year we are growing the trailing version of SuperBells White, so watch out Gulliver White, your days may be numbered!

Our latest Newsletter

From our latest newsletter (Hutchinson Farm News Vol. 14 No. 5 Sunday June 27, 2010):

Hot cold hot cold wet dry wet dry. That pretty much sums up this past spring. As a result the strawberries bloomed all at once, which makes them ripen all at once, so the season was much shorter than normal. We've been talking to the cherry growers at market, and it's the same thing -the cherry season will be short. And the weeds, they're coming on all at once too! Yes, Mother Nature sure makes farming, shall we say, "interesting!"

    * Raspberries
      "David, I have never seen a better looking patch of raspberries" said our crop consultant a few days ago. It sure was nice to have good news about a berry crop this year, we knew the raspberries were looking fantastic, but our consultant has seen a lot of different raspberry patches over the years, so that really means something. The canes are absolutely loaded with berries. Right now we've got enough berries for a steady supply of "ready pick" berries at our store.

    * Pick-Your-Own
      We are all set to have a fantastic pick-your-own raspberry season, and it will begin in a few days -depending on the weather of course. We're checking the patch each day, and as soon as there are lots of ripe berries for easy picking, we'll open up the patch for the pick-your-own. The best picking will be over the next two to three weeks. Please note, picking starts at 9:00 in the morning this year, an hour later than other years. In the photo, Rebecca is enjoying an evening walk through the patch -what a great dessert! By the way, the currants are ready to pick right now.

    * Seascape Strawberries
      If you missed out on the main season of strawberries, don't worry, you can still enjoy our "day neutral" summer strawberries. This is experimental for us this year, so we only planted four short rows, so that we can learn how to grow them best. They are just starting to ripen, and we like them -the flavour is very good. We'll be picking them every Sunday (we don't have enough for every day). We had our first taste last week, they were good, tasted just like strawberries should, but it was an unusual harvest. We picked a few from the field, but most of them came from the hanging baskets and small pots that we had planted up!

    * World Cup Fever
Did you notice Rebecca's jersey? With four Mexicans living on our farm, we are, of course, rooting for the Mexican team. As I write this early on Sunday morning, I'm looking forward with great anticipation (and trepidation?) to this afternoon's game against Argentina. Any sensible fan would just close the farm so that we all can watch the game without any interruptions, and you customers would be out of luck. But we are also devoted to providing you with that "just picked" freshness, so of course we will be open, and we're recording the game. As it turns out we won't be able to watch the game until Monday night, and we want to watch it without knowing the outcome. This is where you come in: If you are coming to the farm Sunday afternoon or on Monday, please please please don't mention the game! Thanks!

You'll be seeing more summer crops coming in over the next few weeks, everything is growing very well, and I'm keeping a close eye on those heirloom tomatoes. We'll do our best to keep ahead of the weeds!

Bye for now,

The first pint

It's their irresistible smell that makes them so wonderful. In our farm store this morning, we had a table full of strawberries, and in came the very first tray of raspberries for the season. All you could do was smell raspberries as their bouquet enveloped the area, overpowering everything else. What a delight, I had to nibble a few right away, then run for the camera before I ate too many!

So the raspberry season has begun! We now have a steady supply of raspberries (hopefully until the end of July). We will have lots of pick-your-own raspberries soon.

Crop of the Century?

Raspberries Raspberries Raspberries

We have never seen the canes so loaded! Fifty years from now you'll be telling your great grand children how back in 2010 you picked two six quart baskets of raspberries without moving your feet (what's wrong with a little exaggeration?). Our crop consultant says he has never seen a better crop of raspberries anywhere in his entire 40 year career.

We have picked the very first red rasps (they went straight into the mouth). We'll have some for sale next week, and the famous 2010 pick-your-own by the end of June into mid July.