tahlequahfarmersmarket.com Blog

Developing a New Strain of Certified Organic Food – Crop Plants

Administrator — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:22:53 +0000

Sorry, it’s been so long since I’ve written in this blog. I’ve been really busy developing a new strain of certified organic, ‘Goliath’ size okra plants!

Through years of organic research, I have come up with a new strain of ‘Super’ okra that bares upwards of 300 pods per plant, having over 60 branches. This new strain of okra is called ‘Heavy Hitter’ and will be featured this coming weekend at the Moore Norman Technology Center in Oklahoma City. I will be working in conjunction with OSU during the 2012 season on seed increase of this new strain….

To see my progress, and to view my work, my background, and photos, type a GOOGLE SEARCH with the ‘key’ words.. Developing a new strain of food – crop plants. We are involved in some very exciting times here.

We are also in the final stage of completion of an on farm Certified Organic Farm Processing Kitchen.

Check it out.

If the Tahlequah Farmers’ Market in Norris Park seems a little slow to take off this year.

Administrator — Mon, 23 May 2011 20:06:25 +0000

May, 23rd, 2011
If the Tahlequah Farmers’ Market at Norris Park seems to be getting off to a slow start this year, you might be kind to consider some of the obstacles faced by our local farmers this season.

I went out this morning to survey the damage from what has been our 3rd hail storm since April 22, not counting, the freezing rain we had on May 3rd, that killed our corn, the 12 inches of rain we had that same week, that drowned our lettuce, or the 78 days of drought we had previous, that prevented our turnips from germinating.

After last night’s 70-80 mph straight winds, our garden only has 19 out of 106 tomato cages still standing. (We weren’t finished staking them all, they were being held, temporarily by two strands of electric fence wire wrapped around Tee posts at each end of the rows when we were driven off by the rains. After we took shelter, the wind and rain took the Tee posts right out of the ground. We still had 20 cages to go. Now they are scattered across the field). It has rained all day today, preventing us from repairing the damage.

The good news is; it looks like the wire cages deflected most of the hail that came before the winds. Because of this, there wasn’t as much damage to the tomato leaves or blossoms as there might have been otherwise. Though, the cabbage and okra didn’t fare quite so well.

The start of this season is beginning to become reminiscent of the stories my Grandma used to tell me of her gardening experience, while trying to raise her family during the depression. She was 34 years old in 1932. She was raising eight kids under the age of twelve at the time, two of them born during the hardest of times, between 1927 and 1932. (She had 13 children all together, by September 1941). Compared to her life’s experience of living through two World Wars, and the Great Depression, we have NOTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT!!!

We still work the ground on our farm with mules, because we want to. We could borrow a tractor if we had to. We still home can our garden produce too, but we don’t have to depend on that for our sole source of nutrition. It wasn’t that way with the old folks who brought us up. My Grandpa would tell about making the Winter of ’32 on little more than Black-eyed peas.

When I watch the storms roll through Texas and Arkansas for the past few weeks, and hear about the tens of thousands of acres of farm land flooded along the Mississippi. I count my blessings. (We don’t have it nearly as bad as it seems). We can count our blessings that probably, no matter what comes next, we will still have more than we need to feed our own families. There is a lot of satisfaction in that.

Sometimes we get caught up in the Farmers’ Market World of having to grow so much surplus, that we can make a profit with the sales, and forget that all we really need, is just enough for our own family to get by.

We are truly blessed to have more than enough. Proof of that is found in the fact that the Farmers’ Market exists at all, no matter how sparse the selection. So if it seems that this season’s Market is getting off to a slow start, please bare with us, we are doing our best.

Spring has Sprung

Administrator — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 02:09:24 +0000

There’s no better way to spend these warm, sunny days than to be out in the garden. The soil is softening, showers are bringing new life, the days are getting longer and the first herbs of spring are starting to perfume the air. Bring on the work, and let’s get dirty!

Tip of the week – (Don’t try new things on a green broke mule!) We’ve been breaking gardens and breaking mules for two months, now it’s time to plant! Bill had a pretty good run away with Earl Tuesday! Earl is our 4 year old, red mule; he apparently doesn’t like our horse drawn disc! We got the mule back, but the disc is still up in a tree! Maybe, this Fall, we’ll be cutting fire wood and get it back.

Working the Watermelon Patch with Mules

Administrator — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:13:28 +0000

It’s the first day of Spring 2010! We’ve got a six inch blanket of snow over the 30 bunches of onions we planted March the 9th, and the 100 pounds of potatoes we planted March the 8th. That ought to water them in pretty good. We spent the whole Spring break, breaking gardens up and down the section lines for our neighbors and friends with Bill’s two mules. What a good way to get a Winter sun burn! We calculated that 7 times around the watermelon patch was equal to one mile. I sure was glad when Pee Wee took back the reigns after my first mile! I’ll be 49 this year, it didn’t take long for me to realize that harrow relay racing is best left to the guys that don’t remember JFK; possibly, better left to those who don’t remember Jimmy Carter!

February 14th 2010

Administrator — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:13:09 +0000

Today is February, 15th 2010. I haven’t written in a long time, because of the foul weather. Those spoons in the persimmon seeds were soooo, right. We’ve had more snow this year, than any year since 1988.

THE REAL REASON I WANTED TO WRITE TODAY, WAS TO SHARE THIS; Yesterday was Valentines Day and I wanted to do something special for my sweetie, so I made truffles. I used Farm Fresh eggs just laid that morning, some Oklahoma native pecans that I traded okra for this Summer, fresh churned, local butter, and semi sweet chocolate chips from the store in town.

I’ve got to admit – I’m not much of a candy eater, to the best of my knowlegde, I ‘ve never eaten a truffle before. To tell you the truth, this country boy always thought truffles were just some kind of mushroom over in France or somewhere. Who knew they were chocolate candy? But they were a sensation with my Wife! Definitely, an “Atta boy” for me! And easy to make too!

Three of the six ingredients grow right here on the farm, or over in the neighbor’s pasture (they own a dairy). This Summer, I traded 20 pounds of okra to another neighbor for 8 pounds of pecans. The eggs are laid by our chickens out back of the house.

The recipe is simple:

2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 egg yolks

3 Tablespoons cream cheese

1/3 cup Amareetto liqueur

1 – 1/2 cups finely chopped pecans (don’t skimp on the pecans)

Melt chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler over low heat. (I just made my own double boiler, by placing a smaller pan inside a larger pan of boiling water).

When chocolate melts, remove from heat, stir in softened butter one Tablespoon at a time.

Add egg yolks to the mixture, and beat well with a mixer. (It will begin to thicken a little).

Add cream cheese, and Amaretto, and mix until smooth. Cover and chill until firm (about 2 hours).

Spoon out mixture, and shape into 3/4 inch balls (about the size of large marbles). Roll in cookie tray of finely chopped pecans. Set aside on waxed paper lined cookie tray. Refrigerate for about 1 hour. Makes about 40 or so truffles.

Serve in a good sized soup bowl, lined with decorative red wrapping paper. Cut paper in a circle a little larger than the bowl. Sscallop the edge of paper with scissors. Fold in half, quarters eighths, sixteens, and unfold, to create a cone shape, and place in the bottom of the bowl. Fill with chilled truffles, Scewer a pair of the chilled truffles with two red toothpicks, and set out a brandy or wine glass of Amaretto to use as dipping sauce. Enjoy!

See you this Spring at the Tahlequah Farmers Market!

Remember: Dry Creek Farm, Moody’s, Oklahoma.

Oganic Farm processing Kitchen

Administrator — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:50:10 +0000

I truely apollogize for the sporatic way that I have been keeping up with my blogging duties since November, but I have been spending every waking moment building an Organic Farm processing Kitchen by my-self from the ground up ( the only one of its kind in the State of Oklahoma) I hope to have it completed by April 15th of 2010, but as funds are short, I may not be able to achieve this ambitious goal on schedule without help to buy more materials to carry on construction. We break our Organic Garden with a mule named Jeff and dig our water lines by hand with a shovel. We use no weed killers, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides. It is our belief that what goes in is what you get out. We are fortunate in that we are able to farm in the Dry Creek valley and because of this, our soils are rich and deep. Our rich soils are amended only by the use of turnip greens and litter collected from the roosts of our free range chickens – who by the way, turn their noses up at chicken scratch and laying pellets, in favor of the earth worms and beetles they scratch up through all day trecks in the leafy woods. Their eggs tend to rip egg cartons upon attemps to close them over the abnormally large country eggs; a thing that always amazes our customers. As we are a small farm, we cannot afford a tractor, and so, we do all our labor by hand via horse and mule power. This takes an incredible amount of effort, but the sound of tugs and trace chains and the rising dust of freshly broken ground are so incredibly Earthy, that it is somehow worth every blister, just to experience this spiritual connection between beast, man, and Earth. It has been said that, ” A man who does a thing he truely loves, never works a day in his life. If a task is truely enjoyable, it is never a burden.

Christmas Turnips

Administrator — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:00:53 +0000

Wednesday morning it was 5 degrees in the garden, so when someone at church this morning asked me if I still had turnips, I said,”I don’t know?” I just didn’t see how they could have survived the freeze, Our water line didn’t survive it! After Church services I walked out to the turnip patch to check on them and was pleasantly surprised to see that, even though the tops were burned back by the near zero temps, the actual turnips looked pretty good! I picked about 15 of them for our Church diner tonight. One of them is about 2 1/2 pounds!

December 13, 2009

Administrator — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:49:53 +0000

Double yoke eggs: Supposedly, chickens will lay off of egg laying when the days get shorter in December, but our hens seem to have picked up the pace. Now we are getting double yoke eggs every so often. We have been letting them free range all Summer, when I first bought them scratch this Fall, they would not even eat it. Now that the green things are getting harder to find, they finally started to peck at it very lightly. Last week, I bought them some Purina Layena laying pellets, they would not eat that either, until I dicovered from a neighbor that they like it better if you mix it with water first. They are still free ranging, but they seem to like the Layena mixed with egg shells from breakfast and grease, with warm water; they certainly deserve the special attention after the double yoke eggs!

Hey guys, I really appreciate all the ginuine interest in the Farmers Market site. We are currently pulling turnips and enjoying the last of the garden before we till it under for the Winter.

Administrator — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:10:47 +0000

Soil Conservation

Administrator — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:50:42 +0000

We, as organic farmers and ranchers, think, almost constantly of ways to improve the soil by planting late season crops such as; oats, crimson clover, rye, or Austrian Winter peas, to be plowed under in the early Spring. This allows for regeneration of the soil’s nutrients (much the same way that God regenerates his fields by freeze killing Summer grasses, then flattening them with the weight of heavy, wet, snows and strong winds, so that they will come in full contact with the soil to be eaten by micro-organisms and worms, returning and replenishing nutrition to the soil, by rotting and decomposing them back into the organic matter that made them.
I noticed this morning, it was cloudy and rather dark still by 7:40am. My family had left for school already; my wife to college, my kids to grade school and to high school. I also noticed that nearly every light in the house was still on; for the seasons are changing and the days are shortening to the point that it is no longer light enough to see in the early morning when they are getting around.
I was raised in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter, era. President Carter started a great movement to conserve energy. I remember the orange stickers that were issued to cover the school light switches, that read,

“Turn off the Lights when leaving the room”.

Shouldn’t we, as conservation wary farmers, be aware also, that we are becoming very slack in our conservation of energy?
I turn the lights off all over the house, almost every day. Sometimes I miss turning off the outside lights until I see them burning in the middle of the afternoon when I come back from the fields. I try to drill into my family’s conscience that we have an electric bill that is eating our lunch and popping the bag, but they don’t seem to really take heed that a penny saved by not wasting energy, can be spent on better things. I would wager that the pennies saved in a year could buy a new couch. The Bible says, “It’s the little foxes that spoil the grapes”. Little things like, ‘not turning off the lights’, will slowly, but surely take a toll on your families income. Living conservatively is good for the Planet, good for society, and good for our children. If we are not good stewards of the land and not good stewards of our households that are small things, then why should God trust us with the big things?
I think we are all good stewards in our hearts, but maybe we need to make our minds aware of it. If we think collectively to make a conscious effort to conserve, our Planet will be a better place because of it.