It’s hard not to notice the rising cost of produce and everything else on the grocery store shelves.  While farmers market vendors could, at one time, rely on grocery store pricing to help gauge fair values for their own produce, in many places this is no longer the case.

Farmers Market produce vendors in particular run the risk of creating a “veggie thrift store” impression if they underprice, and underpricing and/or “undercutting” is a complaint that more seasoned vendors (especially those who do this for a large part, or all of their living expenses) often level at newbies to the farmers marketplace.  In most cases, this complaint can be addressed and the problem solved by providing guidance to newer vendors on appropriate prices for the items they’re selling.

But appropriate pricing is getting a bit trickier with rising grocery store prices, because in many cases we can no longer really use those prices as a baseline. A few days ago, I checked out grocery store pricing on a few crops that are in-season in Vermillion right now–crops that I am growing and selling at market.  I was flabbergasted to see that slicing cucumbers are now selling for a dollar apiece and Asian cukes are priced at two dollars apiece.  Heads of broccoli and cauliflower were selling for four dollars apiece.

Initially, I thought, “wow!  I can charge that much?” and then quickly realized that my produce wouldn’t sell if I charged that much, and I didn’t have to charge that much! Sure, gas prices are up everywhere, but my produce travels only about 5 miles from the farm to my house in town to the market.  Other prices are up too, but if I can stick with buying locally-produced goods as much as possible (and those local producers are also holding the line against rising prices), then I will not have to substantially raise my prices to meet costs.

On the customer side, maybe some would pay for my produce what they’d be paying in the grocery store now–but many others would pass me by.  They may have wanted a cucumber, but at two dollars, they’d think, “I’ll just get one at the grocery store–it’ll be cheaper.”  By the time they get to the grocery store and realize it’s not cheaper, they’re not going to make another trip back to the market to buy one that’s fresh and local.  As much as we toot the fresh and local horn, the fact remains that price is a bigger factor in a lot of people’s minds than freshness–especially when the price of almost everything is going up.

Back on the producer side, there can be a disturbingly big difference between what I need to charge for, say, a bag of snap beans, and what I can charge and still sell those beans, regardless of their price at the grocery store.

Because beans are a fairly labor-intensive crop to pick, their price should at least partially reflect that additional labor in order for me to keep growing them.  Yet I can’t expect to be paying myself professional wages ($60-$100/hour) for that labor, even if it required professional skill and additional cost to grow them to harvest without them being flooded, dried out, or destroyed by insects.

There are some “loss crops” (like beans) that I will grow, knowing I can’t quite recoup my costs, but also knowing that those crops will bring customers to my stand who will also buy additional higher-return produce like basil or summer squash.  Still, it’s worthwhile for a grower-vendor to consider how many beans they can pick in an hour, calculate what would be a living wage for picking them, and then figure out a price based on that calculation, even if they don’t think they can charge that price.  This practice can help you decide whether or not the “loss crop” is really worth growing for its customer draw (as well as giving your brain something to do when you’re picking beans!).

However, this fair-pricing-on-labor-intensive-crops conundrum is one bright spot of the rising produce price issue–the rise in grocery store prices may finally allow us to sell beans and other labor-intensive vegetables and fruits for what they cost to produce–taking the “loss” out of “loss crops.”

Just when you thought it was safe to sit back and watch the tomatoes ripen, it’s time to start planning and planting your fall garden.

While some fast-maturing summer crops can still be planted–I’m thinking beans and basil, summer squash and cukes–you’ll want to start thinking about what you want to have quantities of for winter use.  Of course you already planted your winter squash, leeks, and onions, but there’s so much more to be done!

My fall garden line-up includes some big yellow beets, storage types of carrots (Chantenay types that do best in our heavy soil are also the best keepers), rutabagas, daikon radishes, and mustard greens mixes.  I’ve already got in the kale (some people plant this in spring–I don’t have room at that point), and I sowed a little bulb fennel the other day as well.

I’ve also started soaking flats for fall cabbages–one for a red ballhead and another for a green arrowhead.  I’d thought I had seed for a big keeper variety like “Late Flat Dutch,” but that must’ve been my imagination.

My cue for starting fall crops is when we start getting a little rain again after our early-July drought (we’re getting a lovely soaking as I type this).  That makes it a little easier to keep things moist.

Carrots take quite awhile to germinate, too, so I usually strew my fall carrot beds with a very light covering of straw to keep in a little moisture.  Cover all the radishes and brassicas with row cover to discourage the cabbage moths and flea beetles that so like to munch on those crops.

We’ll likely still have some “dog days” in August, but September comes quick, and then the frosts.  Get on that fall garden planning!

Gadzukes! Cukes! While last week was close but no cigar, this week brings abundance on the cucumber front—and the second planting hasn’t even started bearing yet! I am picking 7 or 8 fruits every day now off the six slicing and burpless plants. I have had little to no success with cucumbers for the past couple of years thanks to the cucumber beetles, so this year feels like a make-up. This year, the cuke beetles seem to be favoring the summer squash instead.

More watering last week, but the storm on Sunday night was great! And thankfully, we got none of the advertised hail with it (knock on wood).

The eggplant have blossoms, tomatoes are starting to ripen, and I think I may be able to get a couple small tomatoes in next week’s bags. There are little cantaloupes forming in the melon patch, which is quickly spreading out to be about twice the size originally planned, thanks to all those nice, healthy, blossom-loaded vines going in all directions. Not so happy is the summer squash—I am planting a couple more every week so that at some point in the next month or two I’ll have a good amount to deliver. There’s always something….

This week saw the emergence of one of my favorite garden allies—the baby toads. There are literally hundreds hopping around all over the farm right now, eating bugs and burrowing down beneath the mulch to stay cool and moist. I have not yet seen any of our resident 5-lined skinks, but I’m guessing that now that the toads are out, they will be too. I just hope there are enough of them to cut down the burgeoning grasshopper population. Another not-so-welcome visitor has been a yearling fawn that keeps testing the electric fence. Harry has been busy fixing the downed wires and making modifications to our deer-protection system.

THIS WEEK’S DELIVERY:

Cucumbers, sweet peppers, a hot pepper, an onion, sugar snaps, and a couple sprigs of fresh basil.

The cucumbers are of two varieties—the shorter “slicers” (6-8 inches or so) are Mideast Prolific—an heirloom variety from Seeds of Change that I’ve grown for years. The longer, skinnier cukes are a burpless Asian variety called Summer Dance. This is my first year growing these, and I’m sure I’ll be growing them again—they are delicious and incredibly prolific. Seed was from Pinetree Garden Seeds out of Maine—I have not seen this variety elsewhere. On a side note, I can’t believe how expensive cucumbers have gotten in the grocery store—a dollar for a slicer and two dollars for a burpless variety. Yikes! Many local producers usually try to keep their market prices in line with grocery store prices, but I think we’re going to start seeing a big price difference between local and shipped-in produce.

You do not need to peel these cukes, but you should always peel a conventionally-grown supermarket cucumber because they are waxed with (usually) a petroleum-based product. They do this because while some crops can be picked green and will ripen slowly (or more quickly if ethylene gas is used) during processing and shipping, cucumbers must be picked when ripe, and will quickly lose their moisture if they are not preserved in some way. I pick cukes almost daily in season, dunk them in cool water to take out the field heat, and store them in the “CSA-only” crisper drawer of my refrigerator. Since I also sell cukes at the Farmers Market on Thursdays, the fruits you’re getting were picked no earlier than last Friday or Saturday.

I try to pick my cucumbers when they are good-sized but not huge—I do not like seedy, bitter fruits! While these cucumbers are nice and sweet, there is almost always a little bitterness concentrated in the blossom and stems ends. For perfect, bitter-free slices, take a small slice off each end and then rub those ends in a circular motion around the place you cut. You will see a little whitish fluid coming out of the skin—rinse that off and discard the ends. Alternately, use the sliced-off ends to give your face a cool rub-down! Cukes are not terribly high in most vitamins, being about 95% water, but they are a fairly good source of vitamin E. Leave the skins on to maximize nutrients.

There are lots of recipes for cucumber salads, and I imagine I’ll be eating a few of those and sharing recipes before the season ends. Right now, my favorite way to eat cucumbers is one of the simplest. I slice the cucumbers into a bowl, douse them liberally with rice vinegar, add a little cold water to cover and a few ice cubes. Then I leave the bowl on the table and eat them throughout the day.

The basil is for seasoning whatever you like! I can’t think of a thing fresh basil isn’t good with—including a cucumber salad! I should have fresh dill heads next week for the next round of cukes. The onion is for fresh use—it doesn’t need refrigeration unless you only use part of it—but you should use it up within a few days.

I know, I know—I said I was taking out these sugar snaps. But then I got busy watering and didn’t get them out as quickly as I’d thought I would. I couldn’t very well cut down the vines with all those nice peas still on them! So I picked them one last time and then took them down. I’ll plant beans in the empty spaces, and maybe transplant a few more volunteer tomato plants from elsewhere in the garden to the cattle panel trellises as well.

I also sell produce at the Vermillion Area Farmers Market every Thursday from 3-7pm on the Clay County Fairgrounds, corner of Cherry & High Streets. We’ve been getting lots of new, great vendors, so please stop by and check it out! Get there early for the best selection.

Remember to

WASH YOUR VEGGIES!

Ready to take to the River!

Disclaimer: I do not share recipes very often because my cooking is fairly random ingredient-wise. I look at what I have in my fridge and cupboard and pantry and on the counter, and I make something. Therefore, all measurements are approximate and all ingredients are substitutable.

Cut approximately 1/2lb fingerling or new potatoes into bite-sized chunks and place in a cast iron skillet or other roasting pan. Add a small cut-up summer squash or zucchini, plus a cut-up sweet pepper or two if they’re smaller. Add a small hot pepper too, if you like a little heat. Also throw in a little diced-up onion (1/2 a small one should suffice).

Toss these with garlic olive oil* (or olive oil and garlic powder), plus salt, pepper, and some crushed oregano. Roast at 350 degrees until the potatoes are tender, but not mushy–about 20 minutes to 1/2 hour.

While the veggies are roasting, snap about 1/2lb. beans (I used the yellow flat variety called “Marvel of Venice”) into a small frying pan with a lid. Add just a little water to the bottom of the pan, clap the lid on, and turn heat to high. When water boils, turn off heat if you have an electric stove–let boil for about a minute longer if gas. Don’t take the lid off–let the steam cook them ’til they are tender-crisp.

Are you stirring your potatoes? You should–to keep them from sticking to the pan. If and when they’re done, take them out of the oven and let them cool a bit.

Drain your beans and dump them into a bowl. Season with salt and pepper, more garlic olive oil (or just plain olive oil–it’s all good), and some balsamic vinegar, plus a little drizzling of honey. While the cooked veggies are cooling, slice up a couple small fresh tomatoes and a couple little sprigs of basil.

Now dump the tomatoes and basil into the bowl with the beans. Scrape the slightly cooled roasted veggie mix in there too. Mix well, and add more balsamic, salt, and pepper to taste. You can serve this warm or cool. My vote is warm, but it’s going to be easier for me to get it out to the river in the cooler.

Yum!

*The garlic olive oil is simply half an elephant garlic clove steeped in a jar of oil in my fridge, but you can buy garlic-infused oil if you like.

Cucumber Abundance

Guess it’s obvious what’s going in deliveries today! Good thing, too, because I’m running out of room for them in the fridge. The shorter ones are “Mideast Prolific” from Seeds of Change. I’ve grown these for a number of years, and if the cuke beetles don’t get them, they bear nice, sweet fruits good for both slicing and pickling.

The longer, skinnier ones are a new “burpless” variety I’m trying from Pinetree Garden Seeds out of Maine. They’re called “Summer Dance,” and they’re incredibly prolific and tasty. Very nice-looking too–though if not trellised they do tend to curve. These will go on the “must grow” list for next year.

Spent the morning yesterday pulling the big weeds out from the potato and leek beds. I’d been waiting for a nice, soaking rain to be able to get them out easily, which thankfully came before they all went to seed.

I’m always so smug at the beginning of the season when everything looks so clean and neat, and I’m keeping so on top of the weed issues. Then we get the June rains and it’s impossible to keep up with the hoeing–so the aisles end up needing mowing.

Yes, I know–I could use mulch. But it takes a lot of mulch to cover a garden this size. So I just keep covering a little more area every year and “weeding” the rest with the lawnmower.

Baby Toad

Around the farm these past few days, the baby toads are hopping. They’re pretty much all heading south–to the Vermillion River? Or just to find a good place to burrow down in the moist soil and eat bugs?

We’ve had to be mindful of our feet, as they’re just about everywhere, and I am putting off mowing for a bit until they settle in. I would love for a few of them to stick around and eat some of the grasshoppers that are also quite numerous, and I don’t want to scare them off or run them down.

Toads in the Road

Unfortunately, they are also all over University Road–so go slow if you take that route, and give them a little extra time to hop out of the way!

Just returned from a trip to Brookings, where I visited the famed McCrory Gardens. On the way back, I had one of those encounters familiar to those who have driven for any length of time on the Plains–the, “Uh-oh–what am I driving into?” experience.

A big, draping curtain of clouds, with attendant swirls and curlicues that looked like possible beginnings to a tornadic funnel. I started scanning through the radio stations pretty much to no avail (apparently they think no one actually lives between Brookings and Sioux Falls). Finally settled on a Minnesota radio station advertising three separate tornado warnings–but only in their state.

I came out of the clouds and heavy rain (kept thinking, if it gets any worse, I’m pulling over–but where?) just north of Sioux Falls and settled into the rest of the drive, cruising 65 down the interstate with the heat and humidity blasting in the windows.

Stopped off at the gardens to do a little cuke harvesting–15 big ones and many more on the way–my crisper drawer is straining under the weight–and pulled into town about 4, jumping out of the truck and onto the computer to check our chances for some wet stuff.

Well, thunderstorms are likely–yes, they are.  With possibility of attendant high winds and large hail.  It’s dry out there, and though everything desperately wants water, I’m not giving it during the hottest part of the day–hard on the plants and on me, too.  So, I’ll keep hoping the evening brings some storms, and then hoping those storms won’t bring the bad stuff with them.

Argh.  Sometimes it’s stressful being a farmer.  You worry when it rains; you worry when it doesn’t rain.

Another hat tip to Cory at Madville Times for a fun post about a website that lets you calculate the walk-ability of your neighborhood.

Just visit Walk Score’s site and punch in your address. Mine was only 3 points behind San Francisco, a top-rated walking city! Now if those big strapping guys over at the Sigma Nu house would shovel a bit more consistently in the winter….

This spring, I got a letter from the SDSU Cooperative Extension Service, indicating that they’d like to send us a bunch of free bags for our farmers market.

The bags are printed with instructions to “Wash Fruits and Vegetables Before Serving,” and they’re being provided to markets throughout the state as part of a food safety initiative. Later on, they want to send us a bunch of surveys to find out if the message “stuck” with our customers.

I said, “Sure!” because, you know, free stuff from the state is cool! Especially for our little market!

Here’s what I got in the mail a couple weeks later:

Cooperative Extension Bags

This is a 48lb. box of plastic. It contained approximately 1500 plastic bags, plus a bunch of handouts about washing fruits and veggies printed on cardstock. And when I opened it, I thought, Oh. Oh no. In saying yes to this, I have said yes to raping and littering the planet.

Maybe I was being a little over-dramatic, but 48 pounds of plastic bags is more than our market will likely use in five years! And it also occurs to me that, if they want to get a message out that people will remember, why didn’t they print it on something that people would hold onto?

Many of our customers at the farmers market bring their own bags these days. They actually feel guilty if they forget their bags and have to take a plastic one. I’ve seen people putting cukes in their purses to avoid yet another plastic bag. For goodness sake–entire countries have banned the use of plastic bags!

A quote from the CNN article here:

Often, the flimsy bags are used once and discarded, adding to waste in a country grappling with air and water pollution as a result of rapid economic transformation, officials said.

“Our country consumes a large amount of plastic bags. While convenient for consumers, the bags also lead to a severe waste of resources and environmental pollution because of their excessive use and low rate of recycling,” the statement at the Web site Gov.cn said. “The ultra-thin bags are the main source of ‘white’ pollution as they can easily get broken and end up as litter.”

The government statement added, “We should encourage people to return to carrying cloth bags, using baskets for their vegetables.”

Congratulations, China, for being a world leader in environmental policy!

Not only do many of our customers bring their own bags, our farmers market has a new vendor (she’ll hopefully be coming more regularly now that VAAC Art Camp is ending) who is making lovely up-cycled grocery and tote bags from all kinds of fabulous remnants and doilies and table linens she finds in thrift shops.

Would you prefer plastic, or this?

Handmade Bag by Susan Heggestad

Now, it’s not that we don’t appreciate free stuff from the state. Believe me, we’re happy to be getting some recognition and help! And we appreciate all the free advice and support that our extension agents have given throughout the years.

But my gentle suggestion is this–don’t send us 1500 plastic bags that will end up in rivers, streams, fields, and landfills. Send us 50 cloth bags that we can use as a giveaway promotion for our regular customers (or just customers who forgot their bag that day), and those bags and the message they’re printed with will continue to show up at the market and around town–and not because they were blown into trees by the wind or scattered by the roadside when they sailed out a car window.

Heck, they’re even making bags out of recycled plastic soda bottles now. So, if you get a little more grant money for a project like this, and you want your message to endure in consumer’s minds, put the message on an enduring and reusable product that will also provide markets with a cool “freebie” to reward their customers. It will probably also cost a lot less in shipping!

I am going to have quite a mixed bag.  Sugar snap peas (last week!  I’m cutting down the vines!), a little baggie of broccoli side-shoots, a bag of Marvel of Venice pole beans, cucumbers of a couple types, some nice bunches of Italian flatleaf parsley, a couple small summer squashes.  Oh, and lots of sweet peppers and a few hot ones.

I meant to pick some lemon basil for today’s market, but waited til the last minute so it would get right into the cooler–then got involved in tying up the rest of the tomatoes on the big trellis and forgot about it.

Harry and I each had a ripe Sungold cherry tomato today.  I’ve had a couple “Stupice” and “Oregon Spring” tomatoes turning, but none so far for market.  The tomatoes are indeed coming!

Vermillion Area Farmers Market

Clay County Fairgrounds, Corner of Cherry & High Streets

Thursdays, 3-7pm

Get Some Local Goodness!