New for 2008 !
Lots of apples! Organic apple trees tend to be
biennial--caused by too much fruit in the good years, as there is no good way
to thin apples without chemicals.
Before the turn of the 20th century nearly all apples were biennial
producers. Last year should have been
the “on” year, but due to the unusual Easter morning freeze and June
hailstorm most of the crop was lost.
In the scramble to somehow make up for this drastic shortfall, we met Bill
and Mary Ann Oyler, who
had begun to transition their small orchard to organic production. This year they will be fully certified
organic. The quality of the Oyler’s
fruit has been absolutely outstanding. Since even in a normal season we
have a hard time supplying everyone with sufficient fruit, we plan on getting
apples from the Oyler’s again. This will ensure the fruit quantity and
quality through the last half of our season and into the winter. With
blueberries in mid-season, and strawberries in June, we should have a more
steady supply of fruit. The eternal quest for the best heirloom
tomatoes continues! We’ll continue
seeding several of the heirloom tomato varieties we have come to like in the
last several years, San Marzano, Green Zebra, and Arkansas Traveler. We will add a few more which have been
highly recommended by friends--Cherokee Purple, Orange Banana, and Amish
Paste. And speaking of tomatoes…at this very moment
(mid-January) we are constructing
a small greenhouse/high tunnel to grow-on the rows of spinach which were
interseeded with the mesclun in late fall.
Within a short time of harvesting the spinach in March, we’ll be
planting this house to tomatoes so we can have a few home-growns earlier than
we’ve had tomatoes in many a year. We are looking forward to our second year with
our mechanical bean picker. Last year was a bit of a rocky start mostly because of the dryness—but we
did have a lot more green beans than other years previously. Our experiment with peas was also
successful, so we’ll be adding more of
these as to make June more varied and delicious as well. We’ve long known that we have not supplied
nearly enough bulb type onions. Onions
are terrible competitors and for organic growers there’s little option but to
hand weed them—which you can imagine is a tremendous disincentive to grow
them at all. For the first time last
year, we tried planting these into rows of black plastic. We’ve always tried to minimize the use of
plastic in the fields because it’s a nasty process pulling it back up and
disposing of. But the experiment
showed that a very few rows could grow a tremendous number of onions when
spaced closely together. We’ve already
got lots of sweet white and red
bulbing onions seeded in the greenhouse for this. We’re also planning to fill in as needed
with some nice large sweet PA onions grown by Becky’s cousin (though these
are not organic). In the last few years we have sought to encourage
our neighbors, especially the younger farmers to produce meats for the local
market. We do this by linking interested subscribers to these producers. This
will keep the farms viable, preserve the farmland, and add to food security
for all. Likewise, as we all learn more about the nutritional benefits of
grass fed beef, it's truly exciting to utilize the grass Kretschmann Farm Signup Form
For more information contact:
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