Fresh Produce...It does a body good!

I thought this article in Better Homes and Gardens was very interesting.  The great part is, we are coming into the peak of veggie season here in Macomb County.  Now is the time to eat a little healthier and maybe drop a few pounds!    :-)

Today:  Summer picks such as juicy blueberries, crisp green beans, and sweet corn are delicious multitaskers.  They're bursting with flavor and they're largely composed of water, which means they satisfy while they slenderize.  In fact, sit down to a produce-packed lunch, and you'll eat about 10 percent fewer calories than usual at dinner, says registered dietitian Leslie Bonci author of The Active Calorie Diet.

In two weeks:  As your body is nourished by the rich stores of nutrients and fiber in fruits and vegetables, you'll feel noticeably more energetic, say Andrew Well, M.D., founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Health Science Center.  Many plant-based nutrients have anti-inflammatory properties, Bonci adds, so you might experience fewer aches and pains, too. 

In ten years:  A 2012 study found that people who ate the most serving of fruits and vegetables - about 3 1/2 per day - had a 21 percent lower likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes than people who avoided produce.  Weight control is one reason researchers say, but specific nutrients also might play a role. 

Get Started:  People tend to over estimate the number of fruit and vegetable servings they eat in a given day, Bonci says.  Her visual rule of thumb:  At every meals, reserve half your plate for produce.  If that seems too daunting, try adding at least one fruit or vegetable to every dish.  Stack a lean burger with lettuce and tomato, enjoy scrambled eggs with salsa, and toss peas into rice pilaf. 

It sounds like we all need to make sure we have a good healthy dose of veggies in our daily diet!  Stay healthy and we'll see you at the farm market!

2012 Summer Season Brings Back Old Friends

The farm market has been open now for a few days and how quickly we fall back into the old routine with our great customers and friends.  Many of our customers stop by to ask about the kids....They have seen them grow up...summer to summer.  Here's an update...our oldest daughter Amanda lives and works near Lansing, our son is married, with his own child on the way and our youngest daughter, who spent many hours on my back in a backpack while I worked at the market, is still helping around the farm.  Elizabeth prefers to be in the field driving tractors with her dad rather than work at the farm market.



Elizabeth helping to sort....eat the tomatoes





Amanda (with the blue bucket) and her friend Nicole
they are still best buds!

 

Joey doing what he does best...get dirty!










We are open 7 days a week with our fresh picked sweet corn and lots of other Michigan summer produce.  As it get ripe and ready in the field, we will get it picked and get it to our market.  Take a drive out to Macomb (17330 26 Mile Rd. - 1/4 Mile East of Romeo Plank) and get a taste of Michigan Agriculture.  And remember....buy fresh - buy local.

Ready, set...it's almost veggie time!!!

I thought I better take the time to write today since I have written in a few weeks.  Typing is much easier without a cast!



Sweet Corn....looking very good!



Things have been very busy around the farm.  Joe has been spending about 14 hours or more a day getting the fields planted, cultivated, and sprayed.  It seems like we should just be able to sit back and watch everything grow....but it's not that simple.  We are still planting many kinds of veggies in the greenhouse, so that we can continue to transplant them into the fields.  We do this so we will be constantly picking fresh veggies until it freezes this fall.  As a matter of fact, we just seeded more broccali and cauliflower. 

Joe is also spending alot of time these days moving irrigation pipe.  We have not had enough rain...so we are doing our best the make it rain from the pond!   So if anyone out there know of a great rain dance....go ahead dance away!!!

Our youngest daughter Elizabeth is out of college for the summer and has been a great help around the farm.  She can drive any of the tractors and do just about any job her dad can find.  This week she will be  and cleaning and painting benches so we can start getting ready to open for the season and culivating sweet corn.   She will spend many hours driving up and down the rows of corn getting rid of weeds.  This helps out a tremendous amount, and she thinks she is awesome driving around this big equipment.

Joe took some pictures today of one of the fields of sweet corn.  It looks good, but could use some more rain.  Remember to do your rain dance!





Tomatoes are coming along very nicely....I can't wait until this one gets just a little bit riper!

Almost Stuck in the mud!

Well this week's post is going to be short and sweet.  I'm rockin' the hot pink cast this week...went to the hand doctor after my little spill last week and I guess I have a finger with 2 fractures not just  a dislocation.   So typing is taking a bit more work since I only have two usable fingers on my right hand.  : -)

I didn't let that stop me from working in the greenhouse all day.  It was be beautiful outside today.  Joe got the trickle lines set up on the tomatoes, there are actually tomatoes on those plants...how cool.  We hope to be picking our own tomatoes by the middle of June this year!!!!!

Today was supposed to be a corn planting day, but we almost got stuck trying to get the field ready,  It was plowed before this last batch of rain went through, but it needed to be field cultivated to get it ready to plant.  I guess Joe will try again  tomorrow to get it planted.

Ok...that's enought typing for tonight.  I'll be back next Sunday with planting updates.

Green Thumb!

So I thought I would be the wonderful wife and let Joe go ride his trials bike one more time with the guys before he gets to busy....Well, that didn't work out so well for me.  I had just moved some hoses around in the greenhouse to water the last bay of baskets and I was walking over to turn on the water and kabam!!! Down I went, tripped over a hose or something, and when I went to get up, found a finger going in the direction it really shouldn't!  Well an urgent care, then ER and it's back in place and will be as good as new in a week or so.  I guess I'll be right back working in those greenhouses tomorrow!  Life is full of unexpected fun times here around the farm.

It was a great day to be outside and working around the yard.  We did a little bit of that this week too.  We also hope to plant more sweet corn this week, I guess that will depend on how much rain we get.  We have the greenhouses overflowing with our vegetables that we have seeded to plant into the fields.  It is just a guessing game now.  Will there be any more frost/freezes  We take a chance every year on when is the best time to plant them.

It's time to get your hands dirty and dig in the dirt!  Plant a flower garden to spruce up your yard.  Maybe have the kids plant one so they can help take care of it and watch it grow.  Kids love to get dirty so give them a shovel and a few plants to have their own garden.  They can keep the weeds out, water it, and pick the flowers or veggies when they are ready.  They might discover they have a green thumb!

Family Farms....The Next Generation

I don't know if our non farm neighbors realize how important it is for our children to be part of the family farm.  Most family farms are passed along from generation to generation.  Even if children grow up on a farm and then strike out on their own, they have the experience and knowledge from years of working with mom and dad, or dad and grandpa, or aunts and uncles.  This is what is needed to make owning a working farm possible.  There is so much about farming that you must experience in order to learn, and with the Department of Labor trying to keep our children from doing simple things from chores, to helping load a wagon of feed for the cows, this could have made producing enough food for the next generation in this country a very difficult task.


A strong work ethic is something that comes from being responsible for chores on the farm.  Everyone in the family helps out until the job is done.  Where would the family farm be in 15 years if the children of farmers were not allowed to be around the animals, to learn how to care for them or equipment, to learn  how each piece works and what it is used for.  The years spent helping around the farm help children who want to make agriculture their career, learn about what seeds need to be planted first, how to tell if their animals aren't feeling well, when to take care of bug problems in the crops.  There are so many things that most children don't learn about but that the kids that grow up on a farm learn.... as second nature.  How to plow and disc a field and when the crops should be planted and harvested.


This issue created a huge uproar in the agriculture community.  The over reaching rules could have prevented kids from raising their 4-H projects, to helping out on Grandpa & Grandma farms.  Many in the industry used our grassroots system of contacting our legistlators to let them know these laws that the DOL were working on implementing were not good for farmers in Michigan or any other state.

For now, our children can keep going to the fair, showing their 4-H projects and enjoying life on the farm.

The President of the United States said...not on my watch!  These proposed rules/laws will be put on hold while the Obama adminstration is in place.  This is good for now, but we need to keep working on eliminating those nonsense laws from coming back.  While safety and caution should be used when we give our children tasks to perform on the farm, we also know that the farm is a tool to teach our children a strong work ethic, hard work and the care and protection of animals and the environment.  There are so few family farms feeding an ever growing population now.  We need to encourage our young people to stay on the farm and keep agriculture alive in Michigan and the United States.  Let's keep the ability of the next generation of farmers learning from their parents, grandparents, aunts & uncles, friends and neighbors!

Busy Spring

Doesn't it seem like the weather will never decide if we should have it warm or cold, but soon enough things will settle in for some nice warm weather....I hope.  We have one planting of sweet corn in the field, but it won't be growing much with these cold nights.  Actually we don't want to see it poke out of the ground to soon....at least not when we are are still getting such heavy frost/freezes in the mornings.  We are working on getting the fields worked so we can get more corn in, then once it warms up we can start planting, tomatoes, peppers, cabbage and all those other veggies.   For now....we can enjoy the sweet smelling and colorful flowers in the nice warm greenhouse!

This week is Project RED.  (Rural Education Day)  This is a educational program I work on with Macomb County Farm Bureau.  For this years event we are bringing 850 third graders to the fair grounds this Tuesday and teaching them a little bit about farming in Macomb County.   We have lined up presenters to talk to the children about diary cows, honey bees, fruits and veggies, goats, rabbits, poultry, beef cattle, and  miniature horses.  They get a quick blast of info at each station.  Macomb County farm bureau volunteers, together with local 4-H and FFA kids, master gardeners and Farm Bureau Insurance Agents have been providing this educational program for about 15 years now.  I like to refer to it as controlled chaos!  It's a great day and fun and learning, if your childrens school doesn't participate....they should!  The kids love it, the teachers love it, and our presenters and volunteers love to help with this program.