We’ve purchased and grown about 50 pounds of seed garlic, and have about 6 pounds left to plant. Hopefully by next July we’ll have about 3500 heads of garlic, with 10 unique varieties represented. We also hope to have 1000 or so stalks of  yummy green garlic in the spring. In june, we’ll have loads of garlic scapes too, so come see us next year for all your seasonally appropriate garlic needs!

This past spring we harvested a lovely bed of spinach and a bed of super sweet carrots that were protected only minimally with thin agricultural fabric all winter. Because of this success, we decided to see if we could multiply the results, and have been planting these two crops everywhere. we’re getting great germination so far, and are hoping to have about 1/8 of an acre covered in fabric. We’ll occasionally pull it back to see how its doing, and we’ll sell kale, spinach, carrots, and maybe even lettuces as we have them at our tuesday market through the winter. The biggest advantage, however, will be the new growth these plants get in the spring with a big head start!

In addition to all this fall planting, we’ve still got loads of picking to do. Our last week of csas are this tuesday and thursday, and we plan to end the year with some very full boxes! If you’re a csa member or a phoenix hill farmers market customer, you’ll probably see most or all of the following this week:

-salad mix
-spinach
-dinosaur kale
-leeks
-cillantro
-green peppers
-pac choi
-turnip greens
-radishes
-and maybe carrots, sweet potatoes, or winter squash…

We’ve also been selling lots of great food to Garage Bar, Proof, and Mayan Cafe recently, so check those places out. At some point this month, you’ll probably be able to find our red fleshed watermelon radishes fresh on a salad, pickled, or roasted at one of those restaurants. -you’ll have to go down there yourself to find out who’s doing  exactly what with them!

Thats our little farm update! We plan to have a busy winter planing, prepping, growing food and growing our family. (Our son is to be born in february!) We will update you on all of the above here!

Luke and Katherine

If you haven’t already picked up a copy, go ahead and go find November’s issue of The Paper ( the blue edition) and turn to page 6. Theres a story about us and our farm and our family in there.

Thanks, Sara for your interest and hard work and skilled writing.

Btw: If you haven’t checked it out yet, The Paper is a great new little alternative positive local paper produced by some really skilled and thoughtful folks. Its available at many local business in Louisville.

This week's CSA box!

We are excited to announce a great first box for our CSA members! While the field is recovering from all the rains, and we’re catching up in our planting schedule, we’ve gone ahead and started our CSA. And heres what we’ve got:

1 Bunch of Sorrel: Tangy, citrusy, delicious. A close friend of cream, potatoes, and fish. Look for some great french recipes.

1 Bunch of Baby Carrots: Napolo: our fall sown carrots. We picked these this week in hopes that we’ll have some larger ones in a couple of weeks.

1 Bunch of Radishes: Most CSA members got french breakfast

1 Bunch of Braising greens: Beet greens (with some baby beets) were in most boxes. But the Saturday folks received Red Russian Kale.

5-6 baby lettuce heads: Varieties include Skyphos Red Butterhead, Royal Oak, Pannise, and Bibb.

1 Bunch of Scallions, grown from red onion sets.

Enjoy, post recipes, and tell us what you think!

The Groces

We’re down to the homestretch before we slide right into CSA season. We’re looking at a tentative start-date of the first week of May, so, Phoenix Hill Market pickups will start May 3rd, deliveries on the 5th, and the New Albany Market pickups on the 7th. We’ll communicate more information for you regarding any changes or specific pickup times via email.

Radishes, scallions, salad mix, swiss chard, kale, beets, sorrel, spinach, and pac choi will make their appearance in your first few boxes.  Things are lookin’ good! Here are a few photos to show you what we’ve been up to.

blooming redbuds

Our friend Josh came all the way from Florida to help at the farm.

lettuces

Katherine’s new knife, given to her by our friend Josh. She is very excited.

Sorrel

Rhubarb

first shoots!

Check out our other newly updated pages for information on the upcoming season, CSA shares, and farmer’s markets.  We look forward to this year with you!

- Katherine and Luke

The gorgeous swiss chard before it made it into your box this week.

After a week’s drought hiatus, we’re back in the swing of things. With a nip in the air and no sign of rain anytime soon, we’re picking what we have, figuring out how to irrigate more, and plugging away. Apologies for not blogging the past few weeks. We will try to remain committed to that throughout the rest of the season. We do hope you enjoyed this weeks box. It contained the following items:

1 Bunch of Swiss Chard: variety- Bright Lights. We had some of this in the spring. Its great sauteed in a little bit of butter, but there are plenty of more complex preparations you can try.

Approximately 4 pounds of green heirloom tomatoes: You may or may not be a fan of fried green tomatoes. If you are, you know what to do. If not, you may want to try one of the many other great options out there such as, green tomato soup, green  tomato pickles, or some interesting salsa/latin dish.

12 Sweet Peppers: We included a dozen of these. Most are red, or turning red. You’ll also find some of our orange and purple varieties, and some pimentos (turn from light green to red) and biscayne (almost white). The longer red ones, called carmen are especially sweet!

Every pepper we have in the box is a sweet pepper (meaning: not at all hot), with the exception of the 2 Cayenne Peppers. These guys (variety name: Joe’s Long Cayenne) are the super long/skinny peppers in the box. They are great for adding heat to anything without bitterness or other flavors in excess. You can also dry them whole and crush them later when you use them.

1 pint of Sungold cherry tomatoes: This may unfortunately be our last cherry tomato pint of the year. With frost looming around the corner, and the continuing decrease of sun in the sky, we may not get to harvest 9 pints again. If we do, you’ll know about it. But until then, enjoy these delicious flavorful garden candies!

We hope to offer some salad greens, potatoes, sweet potatoes, radishes, and much more in the next few weeks!

This week's box!

I’m going to write a separate post about all of our tomatoes this year, but suffice it to say, we had 5+ pounds of tomatoes this week in the box, and a wonderful variety as well. Aside from these delicious, beautiful tomatoes, here’s what else we included:

5 green/turning red bell peppers: we’ve got a lot of fantastic pepper varieties. Unfortunately, they like to take their time changing colors from green to their eventual red, orange, yellow, browns, and purples. We culled some for you to enjoy green and mostly green. Look for more color in the next couple weeks.

1 Pint of Okra: We included some of our Hill Country Red and Cajun Delight, our 2 varieties. We hope you’re able to find good ways of using these. We plan to post some great okra pickle recipes and other okra recipes as well… just to help out with using the hot/dry summer’s favorite recipe.

1 Pint of Sungold cherry tomatoes: So sweet and so full of delicious,tomatoey, tart full flavor. You know this by now. We’ve put them in our boxes for a few weeks and they are delicious!

3-4 of our cucumbers: More of our Diva, General Lee, and Miniature Whie cucumbers.

2 + Pounds of Summer squash: We included  a couple “baking size” squashes in some people’s boxes this week. If you’d like to make zucchini bread anytime soon, send us an email. We’d be glad to make sure you get an enormous zucchini!

Tuesday, the cat, napping with the carrots that didn't make it.

This week’s box contains evidence of the beginning of a bountiful tomato harvest. We are pulling gorgeous heirlooms out of the field every day and, weather permitting, we hope to continue doing so for a number of weeks!

In order to make your first Groce Family Farm heirloom tomato salsa, we included

2 Jalapeno Peppers -El Jefe is the variety. I used 2 in a 2 quart bowl of fresh salsa last night, and it was perfect.

1 bunch of Lime and Blue Spice Basil -The lime basil is the better option for the salsa, but you’re probably used to both of these by now, and know what to do with them.

Approximately 4 pounds of ripe Heirloom Tomatoes -In this week’s box, you should have seen at least 2 Cherokee Purple, 1 Brandywine, 1 White Oxheart (it’s ripe when its yellow-white), a Reif Red Heart, and either a Striped German or Yellow Brandywine. We also threw in some little guys -Red Zebra, Jaune Flame, and Japanese Black Trifele. We hope you enjoy exploring these delightful flavorful tomatoes. One word of advice: try to test the tomatoes ripeness by their softness, not by color necessarily. Some of the ripest most delicious heirloom tomatoes will still have green shoulders on them when they are of a perfect eating quality.

A few of this week's stars, from left to right: Jaune Flame, 2 Cherokee Purples, 2 ripening Brandywines, and a Striped German in the background.

In addition to the salsa ingredients, we also included:

2 Cucumbers – 1 miniature white and 1 General lee. We should have much more of these coming in the near future.

A handful of summer squash – Baby and medium size. you’re likely familiar with these varieties by now. We’re in between our 2 patches now, so production may fall off a little bit for another week or so before its back up to extraordinarily high levels again.

1 quart of cherry tomatoes -Sungolds with a few Isis Candy mixed in. The Isis
Candy have much less of that sweet and tart thing going on. They are still sweet, and look gorgeous, but aren’t as flavorful.

1 Small bunch of Carrots -We finished picking our bed of Bolero in order to make room for this fall’s broccoli crop. These Nantes Scarlet didn’t grow quite as long, but they do taste quite nice.

We hope you all enjoyed the box this week. Its hard to believe, but we’ve actually just passed the halfway point. 13 weeks down, 12 to go!

REMINDER! THIS SATURDAY IS VOLUNTEER DAY – and we need your help! From 1p-6p we’ll be hosting visitors and volunteers. Bring the kids, the dogs, and plenty of water! Please see the post below for more details, and be sure to RSVP via email or on the blog. Thanks!

In your boxes this week:

4 Cucumbers - Diva (skinnier) or General Lee  variety

OR

1 Cucumber + 1 pint Okra (depending on whether you got Okra last week)

Blue Spice and Italian Large Leaf Basil

5-6 Summer Squash – 1 extra large baking squash (anyone already made zucchini bread?!) and a handful of small to medium of the same varieties as before (for those of you “guest CSA families” this week, just scroll down to older posts to find descriptions)

2+ heirloom tomatoes – IMPORTANT!!! There should be at least one that is ripe today, the others should ripen within 2 days. Be sure to use that “first ripe, first eaten” rule, otherwise, you’ll be sorry.  We wanted to make sure y’all got some tomatoes soon – and we’re on a tomato worm rampage right now. Our method? Picking the toms just before they fully ripen so they can finish ripening in a worm-free zone. Varieties include: Striped German, Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, Jeune Flame, and Great White

1.5 pints Sungold Cherry Tomatoes – I posted a recipe for an incredible pasta sauce that I’ve used sungolds and many other kinds of tomatoes for the base. It also incorporates a lot of other ingredients you have in this box – check it out on the “recipes” page.

3-4 small-medium cabbages - 2-3 Samantha Savoy (savoy indicates that it’s a dimpled or bumpy leaf)  and 1 Tendersweet or Arrowhead (green cabbage varieties; sweeter and tender).

3 green peppers - mixed varieties

Zinnias – a couple of bouquets; the smaller bouquet is full of Persian Carpet Zinnias – and they are just so delightful.

Enjoy! We’re pretty happy about this week’s box – we hope you are too! This is the beginning of a lot of great summer food.  Carrots, cilantro, more baby squash, and other new things will be making their appearance again soon.  Be sure to check out the “photos” page soon, as we added some new images of the farm.

Good eating to you all!

Katherine

This is an opportunity to work, visit, and play. We believe that working alongside others not only goes faster, but is way more enjoyable. We want to welcome you into that work, but we don’t want you to hesitate to come if you aren’t able to work, or just want the kids to see the chickens. Please come for any length of time or in any capacity!

What to bring:
lots of water and some snacks
sunscreen and/or bug repellent
work gloves

Recommended:
long pants (I know it’s hot – but it’s worth it)
hats/sunglasses
good work ethic and listening skills

Please let us know if you plan on coming.
For directions click here, hit “directions”, and type in where you’re coming from.
We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon!

Katherine and Luke