Row cover: another reason organic costs are higher

Ever wondered why organic fruits & vegetables cost more? The main reason is increased labor and more costly materials.

One reason shown here in picture. We have a problem in this part od the country with an insect pest called the "flea beetle". It's not really a flea. Anyway, it loves to eat the delicious leaves of brassica crops... think arugula, mustard greens, all the asian greens, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. On a conventional vegetable farm, a low-cost insecticide chemical would be sprayed, taking a few minutes, and that would be it. On an organic farm, we use no chemicals. Instead, we fight flea beetle attacks by using "floating row cover", which you see pictured. Costly to purchase, and takes a lot of time & labor to lay it over the beds.

Pictured is just one of many beds being covered now at Wishful Acres Farm.

www.WishfulAcresFarm.com

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Good eating: bacon dressing over winter garden greens!

Good eating! Spinach, Asian Greens, and green onions harvested from the farm's winter garden. Homemade bacon vinaigrette dressing with onions! Using real bacon from our nearby local farm butchering facility.
So darn good!

A fresh salad from my garden in November !!

Planting seeds is not something you usually think of doing at the end of July / early August.

Yet, there I was.  Luckily, the summer had been cool and wet.  I wasn't sweating and swearing out in the fields on that early August morning.

It was enjoyable.  I was planting.

Fall vegetables.  Some vegetables grow best in cool weather, others will only grow in hot weather.  Some vegetables can even tolerate a frost or freeze, or even snow!

Veggies that grow well in fall are basically the same ones that grow well in early spring.  Lettuce, spinach, onions, radish, turnip, rutabaga, carrots, beets, and many, many more!

So there I was, on November 8, picking food from the garden at the farm.  Yep!  I live on the Illinois / Wisconsin border.  It gets cold here.  We had our first frost this year on October 5.  It snowed a bit on October 10.  We had a freeze warning in early October.  Yet these vegetables grew on.  These hardy few.  These wonderful few.

I picked many varieties of lettuce, some spinach, too many turnips to count, rutabaga, kale, and green onions.

So.... on November 9, my husband and I sat down to a lunch that came from our garden.  A delicious salad.  It started with the gourmet lettuce that we had picked the day before. So good.

Then I added some chopped green onion which we had also harvested the previous day.

On top of that came a yummy "watermelon" radish that had been chilling in our refrigerator since it's harvest in September.

I even had a garden tomato.  I wouldn't lie to you!  I had picked it green the first week of October and set it on my counter next to some winter squash.  I then, of course, forgot all about it.  Until today, when I was getting a cup of coffee and had to blink twice at seeing a red orb lying next to the coffee pot.

We topped the salad off with some leftover locally-grown, grass-fed beef in the form of a giant grilled steak.  Oh, yeah!

It was scrumptious.  Yes, it is possible to eat a fresh salad from your own garden in November.  I am now saying my thanks to myself for planting those seeds in early August.  And counting my blessings for such a great harvest!