Look at Them Melons!

The news on the street is that we've got the best melons of the season. You better come out and try for yourself, just to make sure. We have about 300 pounds of them, so get prepared for some major cantaloupe eating this week.

We'll also be bringing an enormous amount of patty pan squash. Our second planting is going gangbusters right now. Patty pan is a very versatile crop that can be used like a winter squash OR a summer squash. You can grill it, saute, bake (whole or diced), make soup, or my very favorite PIE! Here is my very own recipe for it. It is a great summery take on pumpkin pie.

Patty Pan Pie

2 lbs patty pan squash (about 2 medium squash)
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons fresh grated ginger
grated rind of one lemon
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 cup sour cream or creme fraiche
1 9-in pie crust

Cut the patty pan squash in half and place flesh down in a Pyrex pan and bake at 375 for about 40 minutes (depends on size, until you can easily stick it with a fork). Then puree the squash in a food processor. Cream eggs with sugar in a separate bowl, then blend in all the other ingredients including the squash. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. You can use the fork test to see when it is done (if the fork comes out clean, it's definitely ready). Let the pie cool, and serve it cold with whipped cream. I always make my own whipped cream and add some lemon juice.


In other news, we are ridiculously thankful for this mild July. You probably will never hear a farmer say that the weather is perfect, but here it is... July has been perfect. We didn't have to irrigate all month, but we didn't get too much rain either. And it has been such a relief to work in 86 degrees instead of 101! The cool nights have helped our peppers and tomatoes set fruit, as well as our mid-summer green beans that were a gamble. We'll have plenty of those next Saturday.

See you at the market!
Chelsea

The Food Safety Enhancement Act: HR2749

Many of you all have already heard about this Food Safety Act. It is being voted on today (Thursday) early afternoon in the House. Yesterday it failed to acheive a 2/3 vote, thanks to many of our Oklahoma representatives, but congress has suspended the normal rules to allow a simple majority vote to pass the act today. This is the Act that you probably received emails about saying "their going to make Organic farming illegal!!!" and whatnot, which is quite an exaggeration. However, as small scale vegetable producers, we do have MANY concerns about it.

The Act as it stands requires frequent FDA inspections of all farms and processing facilities, an across-the-board $500 fee for all farms big or small, and extensive expensive traceability guidelines. Luckily there is an exemption for producers who sell the majority of their products direct-to-consumer.

Here are the biggest problems we have with this Act:

1. It does little to address the real food safety problems such as: sourcing food from China, industrial food processing and confinement animal feed-out operations. The scale and complexity of the industrial food distribution system severs the farmers' accountability to the consumer. There has NEVER been a Food Safety issue arising from Organic produce. Food borne illness usually originates from large scale processing facilities, not Organic Farms.

2. It is not scale appropriate. Small scale family farms do not pose the same risks as corporate farms and processing facilities. Small scale farms have inherent traceability because there is rarely more than 1 stop between farmer and customer. Small scale farms should not be required to pay the same fees, provide the same extensive paper and electronic records, and pay the same penalties for noncompliance.

3. Small scale farms that wholesale directly to a retailer or food preparer (restaurant, cafeteria), should also be exempt from these requirements.

Read more about it at the Organic Consumers' Association website.

We'll be on the news again tomorrow morning to discuss this Act. It is Channel 6 news at 6am.

We're On The TUBE!

If you have a TV and aren't too busy picking the squash bugs off your yellow squash, check out Channel 6 News at 6 pm for a quick story on Bootstrap Farm. Rick Wells, who we met at the market a few weeks ago decided to come out to the farm and interview us. We had a good time, and talked about a lot of stuff while harvesting. Hopefully, they cut out all the stupid things I said and concentrate on Chelsea's complete sentences.

They also spent much of the morning trying to take sneaky candid shots, so I thought it would only be fair to get one of my own.

Thanks KOTV,

Don

Bootstraping at Whole Foods!

Whole Foods is getting serious about buying local and we love it! They've already called to buy more tomatoes - we might not have very many at market because they are selling so many. They are also buying yellow squash and cucumbers, so if you are in the brookside area and you can't make it to the farmers' market - go to Whole Foods and ask for our veggies. Be sure and tell them thank you for buying local.

Otherwise, we'll see you at the Cherry Street Farmer's Market on Saturday. 7-11 am. We'll have amaranth, assorted peppers, squashes, tomatoes, cucumbers, fancy red okra, and more!

Anyways, the picture above is our developing pie pumpkin patch with watermelons and tomatoes in the background.


These little plants will soon be 1000 broccoli and cabbage transplants. Wow! We're already thinking about cool weather - how about that?

-Don

Bootstrap Beefsteaks

Tonight is the night we become world famous farmers.. on the local news. Watch us at 9pm on Fox news, and again tomorrow: morning show, noon, and 5pm. It should be a cute story.
I hope you all got a chance to read the article in the Urban Tulsa about "localwashing". I said a few things about Whole Foods that kind of put a fire under them. Fortunately instead of being mad, they called and ordered a bunch of veggies! So please support their decision to go local and buy some of our tasty Beefsteak tomatoes and Cucumbers when you shop there!

To the left is a strange tomato problem we are having on a few plants. We think it is "spotted wilt", but it is hard to tell. If YOU think you know what it is please let us know!

Hope you enjoy these pictures of our newly improved market stand. We will have all of these lovely veggies and more Wednesday morning at the Brookside farmers market (41st and Peoria, from 8 to noon). See you all then!

We're Famous! See us on TV and in the paper

This week we're the "Veggie Couple" on Fox news and the Local Foods informants in the Urban Tulsa.

When the Fox news reporters came to the farm a couple of months ago, we thought we probably shouldn't disclose that we don't even watch TV, lest we'd offend or scare them. They liked us and took video of us doing our farm chores and interviewed us on how much we love each other - it was a pretty interesting mix of topics.

We'll see how it turns out on Monday, our segment will be on at 9 pm, then they are going to show it again on Tuesday on the morning show, at noon, and at 5 pm.




If you check this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly, Tasha Ball (of the Tasha Does Tulsa blog) just wrote a fantastic story on local foods in Tulsa. She exposed that many retailers and restaurants promote a facade of "green" or "local" and really don't buy much of anything local or organic. She interviewed my wife, Chelsea - the cute lady weeding sweet potatoes in the picture, while her lazy husband loafs in the shade - about our experience with retailers and restaurants. The article is positively scandalous and you can read it here. I think we rocked the boat a little.


We'll be at the market tomorrow, bright and early with: Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Yellow Squash, Butternut Squash, Dill, Blackeyed Peas, Bell Peppers, Poblanos, Anaheims, Jalepenos, etc. 7 am at 15th and Peoria.


See you there,

Don

Sweet Corn, Tomatoes, Peppers!! It's Summer time!

Hey everybody-

Hope you all enjoyed the summer rains this week. Our crops needed it, and it was the perfect amount, but it was a bummer that we got rain at both of the markets this last week :( A lot of you all came out anyway- thank you!!

We have so much planted right now, and it is all looking really good so far. Here are our muskmelons (cantaloupe). These are our non-weedy rows. We have some that are further along that are almost ready!




There is a picture of the rain coming down while we were hiding out in the trailer.





Tomorrow should be sunny and hot and full of good vegetables. Our summer veggies are really rolling in now! We harvested our first batch of sweet corn: "Peaches and Cream". It is delicious. Plenty sweet, but full of flavor as well. We also will have a large amount of tomatoes, Beefsteak and Brandywine varieties, picked ripe off the vine. We'll have yellow squash, cucumbers, patty pan squash, hot peppers, bell peppers, and a few handfuls of red and green okra. Its about that time of year when people are starting to get sick of yellow squash, but..... have you tried grilling, baking, fajitas, ad spaghetti sauce with yellow squash??? There are many ways to enjoy this relatively cheap, healthy, and very prolific vegetable.

Hope to see you all at the market tomorrow.

Chelsea

Summer Crops on the Way!

We will bring carrots, squash, cucumbers, Calalloo and peppers to the Cherry Street Market Saturday morning, but we are disappointed in the quantity. We've discovered that June is a difficult month to plan for. All of the spring crops have given up due to the heat and dry weather, which we had plenty of this year. The lettuce is cooked, the spinach is drowned, the beets are finished, and so forth, while the summer crops are just getting their wheels turning. So here we are with more than 3 acres planted at the moment and very little to show for. We though that since we missed the Wednesday market we'd show you a big picture of what is at the farm so you won't think we've just been drinking lemonade and dreaming about farming. We really are farmers! In the above photo you see (from the left) Okra and Green Beans and behind that are nearly 3000 sweet potatoes, many of which are heirlooms. Behind that is a huge patch of really fancy sweet corn that is currently getting eaten by Chinch bugs. As far as we can tell there are not any organic remedies for Chinch bugs, do you know of any? They are annhilating our corn seedlings so fast that I wouldn't be surprised to find all my best corn dead tomorrow. Hopefully they move on because Chelsea planted even more sweet corn behind them that isn't up yet, maybe that corn will have a chance.

In this photo you can see our nearly weed-free beds of Hales' Best Jumbo cantaloupe, and two stands of amazing sweet corn with some all-black heirloom tomatoes smashed in the middle. We are very proud of all of our summer and fall crops, we just wish they'd hurry up and make some veggies!


See you at the market,

Don