What’s Growing This Week:    Leeks Carrots Baby Spinach Sweet Potatoes Asian Pears Navel Oranges Dino Kale (M, L) Walnuts (M, L) Broccoli (S, L) Meyer Lemons (S)—-# Green Garlic (L) Potatoes (L) Page  Mandarins (L)

Terra Firma grows over 30 types of different vegetables and fruit from seed; multiple varieties of many of those.  All told, we purchase almost 100 different plant varieties each year.  We spend more on seed annually than we do on either fuel or fertilizer.  Unlike fuel and fertilizer, however, there are thousands of  vegetable varieties available.

 For years, we have had two main goals when it comes to seed.  First:  to have it in stock at the right time.  We do our best to monitor our inventory and order new seed in a timely fashion.  Second:  to find the seed varieties best adapted to our growing conditions.  Just because the seed catalogue says a broccoli plant is vigorous and produces well in the cold doesn’t mean it’s true for us.  Over the years, we have assembled a stable of varieties and built a calendar of when to plant them.  This has been especially key to our ability to grow vegetables for a CSA, which demands a relatively steady production of a wide variety of crops.

 Nonetheless, every year we seem to lose a favorite variety or two.  Seed companies stay profitable by constantly breeding patented, “improved” varieties and charging higher prices for them.  When the patents run out or a competitor releases a similar variety for a lower price, these varieties disappear and are replaced by “newer, better” — and more expensive — ones.  Unfortunately, they don’t always perform as well as their outmoded cousins.

Losing a favorite variety can be extremely frustrating for a farmer.  The process of selecting a replacement can take years, with an accompanying loss of sales or profit.  While the produce industry considers vegetable a commodity — one variety the same as the next — customers have always known better.  That is one of the reasons why farmers’ markets have been so successful, and why many natural foods stores and farms like ours often market vegetables using their variety name.  Unfortunately, the seed industry is just beginning to acknowledge their accountability to the end user of the varieties they produce (the eater).  More unfortunately, they are using this awareness in a rather sinister way, “branding” new varieties and hiring farmers to grow them while retaining ownership of the produce all the way to the supermarket.  But that is a topic for another newsletter.

Every few years, we lose one of the most distinctive vegetable varieties we grow:  the carrot called “Nelson”.  These are the blunt-tipped, super-crisp French carrots that kids and parents love more than any fake “baby” carrot in a cello bag.  The culprit in this case not a greedy seed company, but a carrot that is an unreliable seed producer, vulnerable to frequent crop failures.  Any farmer who has grown  Nelson can understand the problem — the plant itself is weak and slow growing.

At TFF and other farms like ours, our only option in these instances is to find another variety to grow.  But last week, I heard a farmer tell a story of a different reaction.  This farmer grows organic seed in Washington state — broccoli, cabbage, spinach, chard.  But he had never grown carrot seed until the Nelson variety disappeared on him.  At the time, he was growing and selling Nelson carrots, and marketing them as a niche product.  He decided he could no longer rely on an outside seed company for one of his most important crops.

He made the decision to breed his own version of the Nelson carrot.  Because it is a hybrid seed and protected by patents, he had to spend several years “de-hybridizing” it — allowing the crop to go to seed, selecting  and saving the best carrots each year, then replanting them.  After several years, he finally succeeded in developing a stabilized, non-hybrid carrot that resembles Nelson in all the right ways.

 Listening to this farmer, Nash Huber, talk about the process of developing his own varieties, I was amazed.   Because he grows produce for sale himself, he is always seeing ways to improve vegetables.  But because he also has years of experience growing seed, he is actually able to do it.   He is currently working on improving Dino Kale as well as creating a frilly red kale with a better flavor and texture than the variety currently available (which we don’t grow).

Just as important, he is an organic grower, and the varieties he is developing are specifically adapted to organic farming practices.  This is in stark contrast to most of the varieties available commercially, which are developed and selected in conventionally farmed fields.  Many do not perform well for us or other organic growers.
I’ve always had fantasies about selecting and saving seed here at Terra Firma, but hearing Nash speak confirmed for me that they are just that — fantasies.  Farming seed is as complicated and specialized as farming for a CSA, and we’re lucky to get that right most weeks.  I’ll leave the seed growing to the pros.

IN YOUR BOXES
While we might not be growing our own Carrot seed, this year we were able to get hold of plenty of our favorite carrot, Nelson, and it has been the carrot in your boxes since the fall.  The cold, rainy winter weather makes the carrots even crisper and sweeter than normal.  Try this test:  drop one on the floor and watch it break into pieces.  This is due to the tender core and low fiber content, which make it such a great carrot to eat raw.

 Satsuma Mandarin season is over for the year, and we have now begun harvesting our Navel orange orchards.  While it’s always a bit of a shock to transition from the easy-to-peel convenience of the mandarins, we are sure that no one will be disappointed by the juicy sweetness of the navel crop this year.  We have a great crop on the trees, so you can expect to see a steady supply of Navels well into March.  Next week you’ll also be getting more of our specialty grapefruit, and more Meyer lemons will be coming soon as well.

 We had a light crop of Walnuts this past fall, and a heavy one of Pistachios, so you’ll be seeing more of the latter than the former for a while.  But it’s been over two months since we’ve put walnuts in the boxes, so it’s time this week.

 Sweet potatoes are one of the most nutrient rich carbohydrates that you can eat.  While still a “carb”, they are also chock full of fiber, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C as well as other important vitamins and minerals.  The sweet potato variety that we grow, “Diane”, is sweet enough that they don’t need any of the sweeteners that Americans have traditional added when cooking this root vegetable.  Some folks even find them excessively sweet; my suggestion to you would be to try cooking them with onions or garlic; chile peppers; lemon or lime juice; curry spices; or other flavors that contrast with the sweetness.  In Africa and the American South, they are often served with greens such as collards, kale, or spinach.
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    Pablito
 

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Contact Valerie through voicemail at (530) 756-2800, or e-mail Goldenbell@aol.com.  Include your account name in full (what's on the sign off sheet).

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MAILING ADDRESS:
Terra Firma Farms, Inc
P.O. Box 836
Winters, CA 95694
(530) 756-2800
www.terrafirmafarm.com
Goldenbell@aol.com

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