Fall is here, but, in spite of the couple of frosty mornings, there’s still lots to eat.

I’m still harvesting summer squash, there may be tomatoes, and, joy of joys, it’s cool enough to begin harvest of cardoon.

For those of you not familiar with cardoon, it’s a vegetable that is related to artichokes, the difference being that, while the buds of the artichoke plant is eaten, the edible portion of the cardoon plant is the leaf stalk.

Cardoon is easy to prepare. The leaves are stripped from the stalk, then a vegetable pealer is used to remove the strings from the stripped stalks that have been cut into pieces small enough to fit into a soup pan. Boil in water for 20-30 minutes (until tender). The stalks can then be eaten with a dressing as you would artichokes, or you can bread, flour or dip in a batter and pan or deep fried until golden brown.

Cardoon prepared this way has a mild flavor reminiscent of artichoke hearts. But be sure to cook it in enough water, or you’ll be treated to a bitter vegetable. If you like a bit of bitterness, I do, then boil in a bit less water. A little salt in the boiling water will also help pull the bitterness out of the cardoon stalks.

Here’s what may be in your share this weekend -

• Potato (red, blue, red fingerling, white fingerling)
• Cardoon
• Tomatoes (ripe and/or green)
• Oriental mustard greens
• Brasica greens (brussels sprout, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower)
• eggs

I also have 4 large roosters that are still available. These roosters are 8 months old now, and are very large. They would be suitable for breeding stock, they are very tractable and good with the hens. They would also make wonderful stewing birds or for use in making stock (the meat would be great for chicken salad), and have a lot of fat on them. They are not suitable for roasting as you would with a young broiler. Slaughter is available for these roosters at no charge. The price on the roosters is $8.00 each. If you like, I can e-mail pictures of the birds so you can pick out the one you’d like.

We will also be starting emu slaughter next week. If you would like to try out some emu meat and/or oil, let me know and I’ll provide you with a sample to try. We will be slaughtering one bird next week, and will have at least 3 adult birds for sale at the end of the week.

Rabbit update: I have contacted a breeder in Portland. With a bit of luck I  may be picking up a couple of does and a buck in the next couple of weeks. Keep your fingers crossed….

Cool weather is back and while some crops are done for the season – tomatoes, summer squash, green beans, cucumbers, eggplant, etc. Others are just starting.

One of those is the Cardoon, a relative of the artichoke. These large, beautiful plants resemble the artichoke plant, but produce edible leaf stalks instead of flower buds. They have a long growing season and are supposed to be annuals, whereas artichokes are perenials. The cardoons were started in March or April, from seed purchased from Victory Seeds in Molalla, Oregon. They’ve grown since then and, whith the cool weather, have lost their bitterness and are now ready for harvest.

I picked a stalk, stipped the leave, removed the strings and large ribs from the back of the stalks and simmered them for 20 minutes yesterday. What I wound up with was a wonderful vegetable with a very mild artichoke flavor. I dressed it with mayonaise mixed with a bit of honey mustard and sweetened cider vinegar. Delicious!

These will be in everyone’s shares next Saturday. If I can protect the plants from frost and freezes,  they should last for a month or more.

Having never planted Cardoon, I only put 12-14 plants in the ground. Next year I plan to grow at least 40 plants, and if I have room, many more than that, so we’ll have plenty of artichokes in the spring, and cardoon in the fall.

Who said seasonality in growing and eating was a drag?

The cool weather is here, and with it the frost. Not too much yet, enough to crisp the squash and cucumbers. Most of the tomato plants are still hanging in there. The little currant tomatoes act as if it’s spring and they’re just getting started.

I’m putting up the tunnels over the tomato plants, cutting others back. I’ll be mulching them to see if I can’t winter them over. Depends on what kind of winter we have. It’s not like I can’t start several hundred in several months and still be innundated with tomatoes next year, but I figure as long as the plants are in the ground and I have the oportunity to give it a try, I’m gonna give ‘er a try. Tomato plants are perenials in warmer climes, and we’re able to winter over some tender bulbs as long as we don’t get a killer winter.

I’ll be test driving the cardoons this evening. If they’ve lost their bitterness, y’all will have some cardoons in the share this weekend. The beans are moving into shelly mode, and I might have some scarlet runner beans. I tried one off the vine this afternoon, and while they’re hairy, that really doesn’t interfere with fresh eating. Amazing. I also picked a very large pod, pulled the string on it, and what do you know? The seeds are huge and bright pink. A bit starchy raw, they’d be better cooked, but they’re not bad raw.

The peas are still doing well, and the kale’s coming back. I also cooked up some of the brussels sprouts leaves in a stirfry along with broccoli and cauliflower buds. Really good. The brussels sprouts leaves are a bit bitter when tasted raw but turn almost sweet when cooked. I haven’t tried steaming them but I imagine that if steamed part way to soften they’d be great for cabbage rolls or wrappers to hold about any kind of filling you could think up.

You can follow the farm on Facebook, just register or log in and go to http://www.facebook.com/joanne.rigutto

All sorts of things going on this week.  I’ve been trying to track down a pair of meat rabbits for breeding. I’m looking for either  New Zealand or California breeds. I wouldn’t mind having a buck from one and a doe from the other breed as I’ve heard that you can get good hybrid vigor, which will increase the feed conversion efficiency. So that’s one project thats in progress.

I’m also working on gathering materials to make a chicken plucker as well as building a killing/processing line. I’ve decided to raise some broilers, turkeys, and perhaps some pheasant and geese next year for slaughter. I plan to raise 25 broilers for our own use here, and if any of the CSA subscribers would like me to raise some birds for them, I’ll do that as well.  Spending over 1 hour processing one rooster yesterday really drove home the fact that I need to streamline the processing.  In times past, when I butchered for my own use, I just skinned the birds, but if you want a wonderful, juicy roast chicken, or pan fried chicken, you really want that skin, which takes the labor involved in processing to a whole ‘nuther level.

In the CSA shares this week you will finde a selction that may include (depending on your preferences), tomatoes, peas, Mizuna, Michihili, green beans (you may see some Dow Gauk – yard long beans), potatoes (red, blue and/or fingerling), a couple of young beets (bull’s blood – very tasty, I ate one the other day and was spitting red for a half hour ), summer squash (Genovese, patty pan, zuchinni).

Next week, if the weather remains cool, I may have Cardoons and some more kale. With the warm weather, the mature kale aquired a bit of bitterness, and of course, the Cardoons need cooler weather to get rid of their natural bitterness. I’ll be cutting a stalk and cooking it about mid week to see how they are coming.

Edit – I figured I’d add a bit to this post instead of writing a new post.

I’m going to see if I can’t get the tunnel up over the tomatoes this week. With the rain having come back at the start of the cool season, I’m going to try to keep the fruit from splitting too bad. And I need to get the temps in the ground up so that the harvest will last a lot longer. My goal this year is to be picking ripe tomatoes in the tunnels at Christmas time. If we have a mild fall like we did a couple years ago, that should be possible.

I also want to get things ready for the really cold weather. Hopefully, I’ll still be able to keep peas going through out the winter with the tunnels, as well as some of the cabbages, etc.

If I get ‘em up this week I’ll post a pic.

Time flies when you’re having fun, or not….

It appears that the server I was using at the old hosting service was infected by malware, which was residing in the script that I installed for the farm’s online store. I was accused of installing the malware, at least that’s how I took the corespondance from the hosting services IT person. The script I installed was one provided by the hosting service using their auto installer, so I don’t know exactly what was going on. I tried to obtain a new subscription to their hosting service, which was denied. So, for the time being, at least, this blog will have to serve as the sole website for the farm, which is fine for now. I am still looking for a new hosting service for the Mulino Hamlet’s website, which is down right now as well. So if you have a hosting service you’d like to recomend I’d appreciate it.

Things are ticking right along out here, on the farming front at least. I was out picking the other day and noticed that the new pea vines have pods ready to pick on them. So, here’s the rundown on the contents of this week’s produce box.

• Snow Peas.
• Green beens – a selection of rattlesnake, blue lake and romano beans.
• Cabbage – Michihili.
• Pak Choi – these may be offered on stalks as they were last spring, the warm weather has encouraged the plants to bolt, although there may also be a head as well.
• Mizuna – Chinese mustard greens which are great in stir fries, or as my personal fav., using them as a green in salads. Don’t use them as the only green unless you really like mustard greens.
• Sweet Corn – Peaches and Cream white and yellow bi-color.
• Tomatoes – a selection of large and small, tart and sweet, yellow, red, and black (maybe even a Green Zebra here and there).
• Asian Pear – These are a small bright yellow variety.
• Apple – This is a small Fuji cross that is crisp with a wonderful mix of tart and sweet.
• Sweet bell peppers – some are red and some are red and green.
• Eggs for those who have elected to receive eggs with their regular share.

Depending on how they are producing, there may be some eggplant and cucuzzi in your share as well.

Delivery on Saturday will be between 11:00am and 2:00pm

Pickup at the farm will be available on Sunday between 10:00am and 5:00pm

Also, if there are any fall/winter crops you might be interested in, let me know in the next week or so, so I have time to get the seed started in the greenhouse.

I’ll be digging potatoes over the weekend and I should have red, blue and fingerling potatoes in next week’s share.

Again, thank you for your support

Joanne Rigutto ~ The Little Homestead Farm

I finally got a response from the webhost on just what happened regarding the farm website etc. Apparently some malware (malicious software) made it onto my server necessitating the shut down of my websites and the elimination of my hosting subscription, which is why the farm email address as well as my other email accounts associated with www.jrigutto.com were no longer available.

I received instructions from the hosting company to remove 3 specific files, but given the fact that the account was eliminated that isn’t possible. I’ve opened a new account with them under the same domain, which I still own, and hope to have the farm’s website back up and running in a couple of days – along with the Mulino Hamlet’s website.

In the mean time, I’m working on the subscription invitation and subscriber survey so that everyone interested in signing up for regular deliveries will be able to taylor their subscription to their preferences. You should receive your invitation and survey this evening or tomorrow morning. Thankyou everyone for your patience in this trying time.

As they say, “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Hopefully this will make the farm’s business model stronger while providing the subscribers with a more stable and dependable supply of high quality, nutritious and tasty range of foods.

Thanks again for your patience -

Joanne Rigutto

Well, hello and welcome to the new blog for The Little Homestead Farm. 

For those of you who have been customers of mine over the summer, you’ve probably been wondering what happened to the farm’s website and online store. You’re not alone, I’ve been wondering the same thing.

Here’s what’s been happening over the past several days. On Wednesday, I noticed that my website was down. I figured it was due to some finantial problems that I had just straighteded out. Oh, well, no problem, the bill’s  paid, or rather it will be when the check clears, which happened on Thursday. I’ve been trying to access or at least find my website ever since then. When the site was still down on Saturday, I tried to contact my webhost and their website was down as well. Ah, I thought, here’s the problem. Either they’re doing maintenance or there’s some kind of problem on their end. Over the weekend I checked to see if their website was up, and I’d be able to get there, but when I’d long in to the help desk, the site would be down.

People have had problems like this accessing my websites and the Mulino Hamlet’s website when I’m updating files, etc., so I wasn’t too worried. It’s inconvenient, but sometimes you have to work on the website, and that’s just what happens. The host is usually very reliable and I’ve been using them for years without a problem, so I just dealt with the situation. This morning at around 2:30, I was able to log in to the help desk and sent a message to them asking what’s up with the hosting service, and by the way, where’s my website? Actually, people in the Mulino Hamlet are probably wondering where’s their website too.

In the mean time, to keep everyone informed on the farm goings on, what’s available, etc. I started up this blog on WordPress. I was going to do one over at Blogger, but I like the WordPress format for commenting, etc. better. There’s also an RSS feed for the blog, so you can subscribe and check your feeds folder to see if there is new content on the new farm blog.

Regardless of what happens with the original website, I’ll be keeping this blog and posting regular updates about goings on out here, and what’s available. Speaking of which, how I’m selling produce is changing. I currently don’t have an online store, so I’ve decided to distribute produce in a regular share arrangement. There may still be some ala carte ordering in the future for meats, and extra eggs, etc. but what I’m going to do is to take a certain number of shares for produce. I’ll be offering a $10 share box and a $20 share box. The $10 box will be at least as much produce as you’d be able to get for that ammount at the store. I’ll have each share subscriber fill out a survey so I know the types of vegetables, herbs, fruits, etc. that you like, and you’ll be able to schedule reguar deliveries of eggs in your share box.

Weekly shares will be available on a pay as you go basis, and you’ll be able to pick up your share on Sundays again if you like, or if you’re out of the delivery area. You’ll need to sign up for weekly shares, and notify me if you won’t be taking delivery ahead of time. If you like you can arrange to have delivery every other week as well if you like.

The contact email is different now too, at least until my main website is back up and running. You can email me – loiosh@molalla.net