Local Food Goes to the Fair!

Local food is "happening" all around us at this time of the year. LFLF went to the Hookstown Fair Friday night determined to bring home some chicken! This is the 1st year that the Beaver County 4-H Stockmans Club/ sponsored a Market Poultry Pen class. We've been waiting for this to come to our local fair for some time. These 4-H projects are good "short time" projects for busy kids & you don't need a lot of money to get started. The 4-H'ers buy chicks in a group of 25 from the "Chick Pool"! Chick Pool chicks are sourced from a certified hatchery. Each 4-H poultry project member can then exhibit 1 meat pen of 3 birds at the fair.

At the livestock auction Friday evening, we successfully bid on these chickens! The pen of 3 weighed 22 pounds, so we'll see how much that is after they dress out. Can't wait for a nice chicken dinner this fall!

Growing Lots of Food

LFLF took some time over the weekend to snap a few pictures of farm fields of local food growing. Most of us have either worked on a backyard garden scale or have seen backyard gardens. Many have container gardens. But have you ever wondered how big some of our local farmers' fields are? Many market farmers are bringing produce to market several days a week. We take it for granted that they will have enough of what we want when we arrive at their tables. Other growers are running "on farm" markets and keep a big variety of produce stocked every day.

This picture of sweet corn fields shows the different varieties of sweet corn by the color of the tassles ..... could be white, yellow, or bi-color. Just next to these fields are the fields that have been picked and the corn stalks have already been cut down. Remember we've been eating true local sweetcorn since right around the 4th of July. That's a lot of sweetcorn. Note the tree on the horizon for an idea of the size of just these 3 fields. There are other fields at earlier stages of growth coming to provide us with sweetcorn until just before the frosts in October!
Next we have 2 of 3 large fields of local cabbage .... the 3 of them were at different stages of maturity to provide a continuous supply of cabbage.


More stuff growing ..... this is a large field of what looks like butternut squash from our roadside vantage point.
(Note that it is not cool to jump out and wander into other folks property!)
Enlarge the picture and look in the lower left area for the light green squash shapes. You can see by the trees in the distance that this is quite a large field.

These are just a couple of the fields that our local farmer has going. You haven't seen beets, radishes, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, summer squash, peppers, cucumbers, onions, lettuce, etc.! We haven't included fruit trees and berry bushes either. We haven't seen herbs, garlic, and pumpkins. Imagine what they would look like ......
We do have sunflowers "blowing in the wind" in our closing picture ..... this too, is just a tiny sample of what a cut flower growers have out there.

Lisbon Square Market

Just 4 vendors at the market on the Lisbon Town Square, but they had a full range of goodies! "LFLF" was passing through Lisbon, Ohio today on the way to the Agland feed mill, so your intrepid local food blogster got dropped off to reconnoiter ......

Success of course! The fresh blueberry pie came home with us as well as some red & green bell peppers. The person just ahead of me picked out most of the red peppers from the bushel baskets, so a mixed bunch is headed for a stuffed pepper Sunday dinner. Not being a personal fan of eggplant, these were the first ones that I've seen this season, but I can't say that I've been looking ......

We also picked up a bag of Ginger Gold apples, a great eating apple and one of the first of the season. Here's a neat link to some "apple crate art" .

We're happy to report that LFLF actually owns an old original Blue Goose crate!

At Market Today

The Beaver Farmers Market was really crowded today ..... the season is really in full swing! We spotted the first small watermelons today. Also, braided strings of garlic and tons of fresh herbs are available ....... can't even begin to list everything at the markets now!
If you really want to get local, you can find these ripe fruits out in the wild areas right now. We had just remarked on seeing some ripe bushes in a swampy area on our travels this morning before market. They're elderberries and this is the first time that they've been seen at the market.

Patty's Daylilies Close-up

I knew that this daylily, "Julia's Surprise" from Patty's Daylilies, had a lot of buds on it, but I didn't realize how many. It had 4 branches and a total of 19 buds. See all of the bud scars? Can't wait to see what it looks like in 2 years ......

Market Basket

The fruit & veggies are really looking good now at market. This week = plenty of sweetcorn, beets, green beans, onions, carrots, cabbage, peppers, summer squash, & zuchinni ........ also some tomatoes, peaches, potatoes, & garlic. The first hardy mums showed up at market this week.

LOCAL LATE BLIGHT FIGHT!

Aaaacckkkk!

Despite a prophylactic spraying of fungicide last week, it looks like late blight has shown up in our home garden. Yes, gentle foodie readers, prophylactic is a legitimate agricultural term defining a "preventative" (or preemptive, if you will) measure. Scouting last week had not shown any signs of late blight on the tomatoes and they were sprayed with a fungicide containing chlorothalonil as recommended by Penn State Cooperative Extension, Cornell, & UMass. Obviously, something had already started although we didn't see it. I'm sure that the rain since then helped to keep conditions favorable for movement & proliferation of spores. Take a look at this picture of what was found when I went out to spray again tonight. Note the grayish spot in the bottom center of the photo above. It doesn't look like much when you're looking over a couple of dozen bushy & lush tomato plants, but it was lurking in there in the bottom close-up photo.
Two plants were carefully removed piece by piece & sealed in a black plastic garbage bag.

All of the plants were sprayed again, so we'll see what happens. We bring this topic up because all of the farmers growing tomatoes for market are having to deal with this potentially devastating crop problem. They are scouting the fields looking for this disease daily. The organic growers have a more limited range of options open to them to prevent the spread of late blight. Affected plant material can't just be thrown on the compost heap either, so this is a difficult problem. Let's see how everyone fares for the rest of the season. Our local paper already ran a story on a home garden wiped out by late blight ......

National Farmers' Market Week

Yes, it's National Farmers' Market Week from August 2nd - August 8th. Go out and hug your favorite farmers' market vendor! OK, OK, OK ...... if the hug is a little TOO MUCH, at least get out there and buy some fresh fruit & veggies! Just look at the local sweet corn and peaches in season now ........

Just for the record, we're still munching on some white nectarines & green gage plums picked up at Janoski's Farm Market on Friday ......

Preserving & Cooking the Harvest

Sorry to take so long to get this up on the blog, but it's been a BUSY week. Things started happening on Wednesday when my friend (and market garden grower) Karen & I went to the "Preserving Food at Home: A Home Canning Workshop" sponsored by Penn State Cooperative Extension. There was a really good crowd of 40 (women & men!) gathered to learn the latest techniques and recommendations for preserving food at home. It must be the economy and the concerns about our food safety that has made these programs really popular this year! It was a special treat to see my former colleague Pat Leach, now retired from PSCE in Indiana County. Pat has such a wealth of knowledge and personnal experience in this area & is a Penn State Master Food Preserver. If you're interested in preserving, check out the Penn State publications and get a copy of the current Ball Blue Book. Be sure to check out the rest of the Ball site when you're there ..... tons of good info.

Then it was off to the Ambridge Farmers' Market after work on Thursday. Luckily, the rain wasn't an issue when we got to the market. It came by later in the evening, which was a good thing for the Beet Cooking Demo--> going on at market! I don't know about you, but most people have only boiled beets or avoided beets because they don't know what to do with them! Everyone was gathered around the tent to watch Renee Squire from the Beaver County Penn State Cooperative Extension office demonstrate grilling beets and sauteeing the beet tops with fresh onion & garlic as a side dish. The two of us from my office at work both tried the recipes and we loved them! Here's a grilled beet recipe using rosemary that might be interesting to try .....
Finally, a look at some beautiful veggies. These round zucchinis look perfect for stuffing. And remember that August 8th is "National Leave Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Porch Night" in case you are overwhelmed with this veggie!

Here's a cabbage that cries out "TAKE ME HOME"! It was so big that it had it's own personal tote for market. That's a lot of Haluski!