Farmer's Market Challenge

It's time again for the Farmer's Market Challenge hosted by Squirrel Queen at The Road to Here.  The purpose of this challenge is to raise awareness for purchasing locally produced foods. Be it fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meat, or any related items we want to know what's available where you live.

I have too many posts on our garden crops to link here.  Please visit my earlier posts to see all the goodies we grow for ourselves.  This year we didn't sell any vegetables, since we planted a lot more variety of vegetables.  We only planted for ourselves and to give away.

This is the harvest edition.  All our crops have been picked and stored for the winter.   We have enough green beans and corn in the freezer to last until next fall's harvest.  There are also many bags of shredded zucchini in the freezer.  Mr J uses it to make his special bread.  We gave away most of our Tabasco chili peppers.  It was our first year for growing them and sweet potatoes.  Mr J built a rack in the basement to store the potatoes.

 Danger:  Intense Heat!  We don't use a lot of these...

 

 

 Our fruit harvest is small, but tasty.  The trees are still young.

 

Even though the leaves are mostly gone and the garden is tilled under, we still have home grown food.  Our hens are laying between two and three dozen eggs a day!  These we do sell.  We hope to make enough to pay for the feed.  The green eggs are popular with the kids.  They are super yummy!

We are blessed to be able to grow so much of our own food.  We know our hens are not shot up with all kinds of hormones and antibiotics.  We know our vegetables aren't tainted with pesticides.  Our fruit may have spots from bugs, but I know it won't make our grandchildren sick.

Today, farmer's markets are gaining in popularity.  Almost everyone lives close enough to one to enjoy fresh organic fruits and vegetables.  I encourage you to take advantage of these markets.  And don't just buy enough for dinner, but enough to freeze or can.  It's not only a healthier choice... it's a tastier choice!  Fresh without chemicals is always better.

Please visit Squirrel Queen's blog to find other posts on the fall harvest.

September Farmer's Market Challenge

Judy, a.k.a. Squirrel Queen over at The Road to Here is the gracious hostess for the Farmer's Market Challenge.

SQ states, "The purpose of this challenge is to raise awareness for purchasing locally produced foods. Be it fruits, vegetables, dairy products, meat, or any related items we want to know what's available where you live."


I finally took my camera with me down the road to a neighbor's farm stand. They have an awesome garden! They grow peaches, strawberries, melons, tomatoes, corn, peppers, sweet potatoes, and other veggies. Their stand operates on the honor system. On the main table is a set of scales and a chart to help you calculate the price of your purchase. There is also a box for your money. She says they have great luck with it, people pay for what they take.

Here is a load of melons
just brought up from the field...

This is my oldest grand, Dani, trying to decide
which tomatoes she wants to buy...

Sweet potatoes! Yum! We'll be digging ours this week.
They just brought these up while I was there...

The tomatoes are so colorful. They really stand out
between the neutrals of the melons and potatoes...

Here is some squash given to us by Hubby's boss. It was delicious. A family chef told us how to best cook it. Using a long nail, punch a hole to the center from top and bottom to release steam pressure, then bake it. No hard cutting! Scrape out the seeds after it is cooked.











He also gave us these banana peppers from his garden.























These are Hubby's Tobasco Chili Peppers!!! Tiny... but they pack a big punch!

Recently I posted about our first green egg.

We have fifty hens.
Here is a photo of our farm fresh eggs...

Here is a pear that came from one of our fruit trees. We have several apple trees, too. One of these days I'll add peach trees to the mix, and replace the plum trees we lost.

Here's a peek at our zucchini earlier this year...

Guess how much you'll pay to
send 3 loaves of zucchini bread
from Ohio to Florida, next day?

$42! ...but my dad and brother loved it!

Here is a shot of our sweet potatoes early in the season. Hubby planted two different varieties. I recently posted about the four-and-a-quarter pound potato. You'll have to visit my earlier posts to see pics of them.




















We have a freezer full of green beans and corn on the cob from the garden, along with some shredded zucchini for making bread during the winter. (It does quite well, as long as you use it as soon as it thaws.) We also grew tomatoes, cucumbers, muskmelon, green onions, and chives. The shelves in the basement are now full of enough sweet potatoes to get us through the winter.

Visit Judy's blog and add your link to Mister Linky and participate in this worthwhile challenge!

Farmer's Market Challenge

My Farmer's Market

Squirrel Queen, over at The Road to Here, is hosting another Farmer's Market Challenge. The purpose of this challenge is to raise awareness for purchasing locally produced foods. Be it fruits, vegetables, dairy products or related items we want to know what's available where you live.

I've been under the weather again or I would have taken some photos from around my 'neighborhood'. I'm a country gal. We live on a mini-farm just outside of town. Up the road is a farm market. He grows peaches, strawberries and a lot of the usual fare... corn & tomatoes. There are lots of farms around here that sell their excess produce.

Here's a look at our usual bumper crops... These are bush beans (stringless!) and of course, my cucumbers. Hubby grows them just for me!

On some past posts, I showed pictures of our tomatoes. Heirloom Brandywine is my favorite! The cool weather we had here in July really hurt the tomato harvest. We also raised our own hens from day-old chicks to layer. The babies are just now starting to lay on a daily basis. We have over fifty hens. We sell our excess eggs, too!


Here is our typical set-up for when we have surplus to sell. Last year we sold bush beans, white half-runners, tomatoes, cucumbers, & corn. Notice the garden in the background. That's Hubby, a.k.a. Farmer Ray, under the 'big top'.

This is our raised bed where we grow our Tennessee Muskmelons. They grow oblong, like a watermelon. I'm fearing the weather has really taken a toll on the melons. I do hope a few mature on the vine.

We put 250 ears of corn in the freezer this past week. This year Hubby went back to growing my favorite... Golden Jubilee. It is the yummiest, most tender corn ever! I eat it right out of the garden.

For more on our farm fresh vegetables, check out my my other posts for a previous Farmer's Market Challenge: Part I and Part II ...or just scroll through all my posts and see the chicks grow!

Please visit Squirrel Queen's Farmer's Market Challenge to see other Farmer's Markets from everywhere. There are usually lots of participants posting pictures of fabulous markets from all over the world!

This Farmer's Market... Part II

First my green speech... We try to live green. I like to re-purpose as much as I can. You'd be amazed at what I've used skids for... People are happy to have you haul them off! Free wood! A nearby bath-makeover place has skids that have five 2x4x10s each. You'll find some of those in the walls of the chicken house. We found a place that had stacks with really nice wood, not weathered and splintered. It's going on a wall in my basement bath. Whole skids make great fire-starters. OK, they're a little big for the fireplace, but outside they're wonderful. Stuff them with the important papers you usually shred, pile some limbs and logs on top, and light!

What does that have to do with a farmer's market? Glad you asked...

We have sold vegetables from our farm in the past. Selling at our local markets is not an option for hobby farmers that don't have much. By the time you pay for the permit and insurance (required) you'd have to sell an awfully lot of beans to break even! So we decided to sell our surplus right from home. We live back a long lane, so we wanted a sign at the road to advertise what we had available. I don't buy materials for projects like that. I use what I have. And what did I have? Skids!

So, here I am painting the skids that will make my sign. (Left-over paint of course.)

This is a terrible picture of me, but I had to include it as a tribute to Bob Dylan.I engineer, Hubby labors. Here he is using skid boards to fasten the sides of the sign together...

TADA! Doesn't it look nice?


Now, let's measure out some beans...

Here is our farm stand, complete with my recycled Frappucino boxes, 5 gallon paint buckets, and a $10 WalMart canopy. We couldn't survive without at least 20 paint buckets. Notice the table? Yep, recycled wiring spool. If you ask people at construction sites, they sometimes give them to you.

We also sold corn, tomatoes, and whatever else we might have ripe that day. It helped pay for the seeds for next year's crop. That's really all we want... free food!
Well, there you have it... our own farmer's market.


To see more farmer's markets, check out Squirrel Queen's challenge.