From Our Newsletter - 2009 Archives

November 17, 2009

Hi,

Last week we looked back at 2009; this week we look to 2010. As you may know, we only sell the fruits and vegetables we grow ourselves. Because of this, we must grow an enormous variety of fruits and vegetables. In a typical year we have enough apples, peaches, plums, pears, pawpaws, strawberries and black walnuts(this year was an exception) for sale. Some years we have a big enough supply of cherries, blueberries, hickories, pecans, chestnuts and/or apricots that we can sell them. With regards to vegetables we grow sweet corn, green and yellow beans, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, potatoes, beets, sweet onions, garlic, watermelons, muskmelon, slicing and pickling cucumbers, summer squash, winter squash, all types of pumpkins, cabbage, broccoli, radishes, Brussels sprouts, turnips, kohlrabi, carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, sunflowers for cutting, gourds, popcorn, Indian Corn and herbs.

The question is: Do you have any suggestions for another vegetable you would like us to grow? I do listen to suggestions. As an example of this about four or five years ago, I remember talking to a lady customer who either was visiting from California or moved from the Golden State. Well anyway, she asked if we grew garlic. I said no, although I mentioned to her that I was thinking at the time about elephant garlic. She told me elephant garlic isn't worth growing or using - no real flavor. She really sounded like she knew what she was talking about and advised me that garlic would be a good idea to grow for the market. That summer, I kept her suggestion in the back of my mind. When fall approached I decided to make a small test planting of garlic so I ordered five pounds of German XtraHardy garlic, which is the stiff necked type. I discovered through considerable research that the stiff necked variety had larger cloves than the soft necked type and was, in general, of better quality. It is interesting to note here that ten years ago nearly all soft necked garlic (which is usually the only type supermarkets sell) came from California. Today, it comes almost exclusively from China! We now plant both German XtraHardy and Music, both hard necked types. This year we became very fond of the garlic scapes (the new seed stalks) - they are tender and have a gentle garlic flavor that is scrumptious! It seems it may be worth growing garlic just for the scapes!

Garlic isn't the only new crop we started because of customer input. Another crop we made a test planting of this year, and hope to sell next year, is sweet potatoes. Several people each year ask us if we have any sweet potatoes. This year we test planted three different varieties of sweet potatoes: Beauregard, Georgia Jet and an unknown variety we picked up at a local supermarket. I kept careful records of the test planting, along with photos, with the idea of possibly writing an article in a magazine about growing sweet potatoes. I recently queried the editor at Grit magazine about an article and he was interested. I told him I would get a manuscript out to him by December 1. Well, it isn't a sure thing it will be published but there is a fair chance. I do recommend Grit magazine. For more information go to their website. I believe the editor mentioned he hoped to get my article in the May/June 2010 issue. This assumes, of course, he accepts it.

Again, I would really like to hear from you about any new crop you would like us to plant. You can email me at magiclandfarms@yahoo.com . Believe it or not, we already are receiving seed catalogs in the mail!

Just a reminder. We will be closing for the season on Wednesday November 25, the day before Thanksgiving. There is some indication that a cold spell will hit Newaygo County around November 23rd or 24th. This cold air will be unusual since it looks like it will get all the way down to southern Florida and perhaps even farther. Because of this, we may have to close a few days earlier than planned. Until then, enjoy the mild, October-like weather.

Nashle!

Tom

November 10, 2009

Hi,

Well, I sure am happy I had enough nerve to mention to Annemarie, in the early part of this week, that I would like to send out a special newsletter and let all the subscribers know about the upcoming Indian Summer that was about to bathe Newaygo county in sunshine and mild temperatures. It's just as important to give people good news as it is the bad news. However, I have to admit it is a lot safer to give people good news than bad news. The King's messengers of long ago as well as the prophets in the Bible learned that the hard way. Right now, it looks like Indian Summer will continue for at least a week although I doubt it will get close to 70F again, like it did on Saturday and Sunday, until March at the earliest. I truly hope we don't see any 70s during December, January or February. If we do, you know something is screwy. By the way, we took advantage of the beautiful weather on Saturday and planted our garlic. Everyone enjoyed planting this year, perhaps because of the stunningly beautiful day.

Now, we decided to officially close for the season on Wednesday November 25 (the day before Thanksgiving) and hope to open in spring again with apples for sale that we have stored in our cooler. Shortly after that, usually starting in early to mid June, we will be selling strawberries and possibly some early vegetables.

Since we are getting near the end of our season, I would like to look back at the high points of the season. The first high point has to be our Flamin' Fury PF1 peaches. This beautiful, delicious peach is ready so early in July that it is a shocker. When I saw it, I had a premonition it was going to be a fantastic season for fruit - and I was right. I feel bad there weren't enough PF1s to go around and not everyone reading this had a chance to taste it. Since the trees are young they should produce many more of these delights in 2010 than they did in 2009. I have to admit our peaches this year were unbelievably tasty. They are from a new orchard we started three years ago. The fruit from the last peach orchard, which froze out during the winter of 1994, didn't seem to have as good a flavor as this new orchard. The big difference was the soil: the old orchard was planted on clay loam, this new orchard is on loamy sand.

The next high point was our broccoli. While we grew some broccoli many years ago, this broccoli was superb! We plan on expanding our broccoli planting next year. Then there were the High Tunnel Sun Sugar cherry tomatoes. While this wasn't the first year for them, they really took off in sales so we had a hard time keeping the market supplied. You may have noticed that some of our Sun Sugar tomatoes tasted sweeter than others. We found that the ones growing in the high tunnel had a bit more sugar in their juice than the open air field grown ones. However, both are really, really good! Next bright spot was our Savoy cabbage. It isn't only tender and tasty, it was stunning in appearance. More customers took photos of our big Savoy cabbage than anything else at our market!

Now we are getting to the TOWERING high-the MIRAI corn! After listening to an ad last year for Illinois's Twin Garden Farms on Chicago's WGN (720) radio where they touted their MIRAI corn, I decided to make a large test planting of MIRAI. I chose three varieties of MIRAI (75 day, 77 day and 79 day) and planted roughly a total of just below 2 acres. Despite the warnings by the MIRAI seed producers that there were germination and early vigor problems with MIRAI the corn grew wonderfully for us. Taking the tip from Twin Garden Farms in Illinois we put out our own little advertising campaign which included the MIRAI logo. Advertising only helps in getting people to try something. The product must be good to get return customers...and boy did we get return customers seeking out MIRAI corn! Don't confuse MIRAI corn with SuperSweet corn! While I did grow SuperSweet years ago I never ate it. I thought it was absolutely terrible, although some customers loved it, many didn't however. In our newsletter and with our discussions with customers we mentioned that MIRAI might be too sweet for some tastes-and it was. But it was roughly only one out of twenty who felt this way. While it is exceptionally sweet, it also has good sweet corn flavor and it is tender-neither attribute of the old SuperSweet! Our only problem was that despite the good yield we didn't have enough corn to go around. Next year we plan on doubling the size of our MIRAI and also make more consecutive plantings so they ripen over an extended time.

Then came the squash! While we have grown winter squash for many years we have never, ever had such a bumper crop of beautiful squash that tasted so great! Almost as startling was the quantity of squash we sold. During mid September we looked over the squash patches and commented to ourselves that we wouldn't be able to sell even half of the good quality, harvestable crop out there. Well, we beat that long ago and we estimate we already sold 80% to 90% of the harvested crop. If one looks over our large piles of squash at our market you may not believe this, but it's true! We aren't only shocked; we are quite pleased!

The other bright spot have been the apples. We have a really good crop of nice apples-the largest and best we have had in years. Also our cooler, which uses the Smart A/C Room Controller (which I discussed in an earlier newsletter) has been working as designed and, along with our insulated cooler and room A/C, has kept our apples in much better condition than in years past. Also related here is our new variety peck of apples-this wasn't possible before the cooler was built. We have had many very nice comments about this variety peck of apples where each apple is labeled and the peck comes with a descriptive brochure of about 35 of our apples.

The last bright point that I will mention here is this newsletter you are reading. This is just one of many of Annemarie's brilliant ideas that turned out so well. (Another one that comes to mind immediately is encouraging me to plant sunflowers-that idea was really great!) While I write this Boss's corner, and Catherine is in charge of the photos and Rebekah along with Annemarie have tested out the recipes mentioned in the newsletter, Annemarie puts everything together, including recipes and editing, and sends them out.

Okay, what about the problems we have had. Two come to mind immediately-late blight of tomatoes and that horrid Western Bean Cutworm which didn't affect the beans but the corn. I believe I already mentioned these problems in earlier newsletters so I will cut it short.

Nashle!

Tom

November 5, 2009

Hi,

LOOKS LIKE INDIAN SUMMER IS FINALLY COMING TO NEWAYGO COUNTY!

I have to admit it. I'm a weather junkie. When I was ten years old my mother told all her friends "You know I can't keep a thermometer in the house! Tommy always seems to grab it and then, of course, he loses or breaks it!" Another hint about my weather interest is that the first book I had published was "Unique Electronic Weather Projects." If you want to see the cover of the book, follow this Amazon link. By the way, since the book is no longer published, I don't get any money from the book so this isn't a plug and is just for interest sake.

Well here's what I'm getting at: I recently noticed big changes in weather patterns as well as NOAA's long range forecasts. It seems NOAA forecasters are as sure as they can be that from Saturday November 6 to about the start of rifle deer season (November 15) it is going to be unseasonably warm. While they are not as sure about the rainfall, it looks like it won't be excessively wet like October has been. I will be positive and state it will be Indian Summer. Apparently there are two things going on. First there is going to be one humdinger of an intense storm that will hit western Canada in central and northern British Columbia the next few days and second, El Nino (a weather condition instigated by warmer than normal equatorial Pacific surface waters) has very recently taken a jump into being really significant - over 5F above normal. The fact that the sun's solar flux is going up again may mean something in the longer time period too.

What does all this mean to Magicland Farms? Well, it looks more and more likely that we will be able to meet our goal of staying open until the day before Thanksgiving. That means our last day will be November 25. Of course with this optimistic prediction, I must mention that Accuweather is forecasting a cold spell during the time period starting on November 17. If there are any changes to my prediction of being open until November 25 we will send out another newsletter.

Thanks for taking the time and effort to read my little note.

Nashle!

Tom

November 3, 2009

Hi,

IMPORTANT NOTICE: PROJECT FRESH COUPONS EXPIRED ON HALLOWEEN OCTOBER 31. WE WILL NOT ACCEPT PROJECT FRESH COUPONS FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR AND 2009 COUPONS ARE NO GOOD FOR 2010. ALL 2009 PROJECT FRESH COUPONS SHOULD NOW BE DESTROYED! PLEASE TEAR THEM UP OR BURN THEM!

This year Halloween wasn't at all spooky for us! In fact, there were more nice people down at Magicland Farms on Halloween than any other Halloween in our record books! These nice people also purchased more apples, squash, potatoes, sweet onions, cabbage and, oh yes, a few pumpkins and other stuff, than ever before! October has set new records for us and, I believe, so did September. This is despite being one of the rainiest and cloudiest Octobers in memory! September, of course, was absolutely beautiful with day after day of better than perfect weather with nearly 3 consecutive weeks of 110% of possible sunshine. The year in total, though, was a bit less busy than last year (which, by the way, was our best year ever). We believe there were four primary reasons for this downturn. The first, and primary reason, was the lateness of corn ripening. This year we started selling corn on July 24; about two weeks later than normal and a week later than last year. While in general sales of sweet corn are less than a quarter of our total sales, during the last two weeks of a normal July this ratio jumps up to over 50%. The second reason was probably the late blight of tomatoes. While we were successful in finally combating it and we always seemed to have enough slicing tomatoes for sale, during late August and early September we had very few canning tomatoes for sale which is the peak time for selling canning tomatoes. The third reason was M37 road construction. Most customers from up north use M37 (or at least need to cross M37) and for a long while there were extreme delays. We were kept up to date on conditions from customers who some times needed to wait a half hour to get through the construction to get to our place. We noticed for lengthy times that traffic traveling south on Gordon was practically non-existent. The final reason was the simple fact that the economy and poor summer weather kept many summer residents from coming up to their cottages and campgrounds as frequently as in years past. While this definitely had an effect, it wasn't as important, we believe, as the first three since this only affected the sales from the time corn starts to Labor Day and the sweet corn was the latest ever this year.

Last week a man came and showed us two aerial photos of the Magicland Farms sales area he took on Sunday October 18. He asked if we were interested in buying them. My first impression was no. Then I thought that we could take digital photos of them and send them in the newsletter so all of you can see them.

I had numerous questions directed to me concerning when we will be closing the market this year. My answer was always "Right now it depends upon the weather." We still have a good quantity of a large variety of apples (I believe we are only sold out of Stark's Jumbo and Honeycrisp. Of course our summer apples such as Zestar and Paulared are long gone.) and a big supply of winter squash and a fair supply of potatoes and sweet onions. As I mentioned before, if the daytime temperature stays at or below freezing we will have to close. If the weather stays relatively mild we will try to stay open until the day before Thanksgiving. WE WILL DEFINITELY BE CLOSED FROM THANKSGIVING THROUGH AT LEAST FEBRUARY. By the way, NOAA has just issued a revised November forecast and they are calling for above normal temperatures and normal precipitation. Let's hope they are right.. Right now it looks like this week will be about normal with regards temp and rain and next week might just be warmer and drier than normal. Let's hope so.

Have a wonderful week and we hope to see you down at Magicland Farms.

Nashle!

Tom

October 27, 2009

Hi,

Halloween is almost here which means the beginning of the end of the apple harvest for us. We have several varieties of apples that are so late that we don't usually start spot picking them until a few days before Halloween. We call these apples our "Halloween" apples since we usually are picking them on nice Halloweens that don't fall on a Sunday. We will discuss these apples as well as several other interesting very late ripening apples.

This year it looks like we will have nice crops of the "Halloween" apples. While the Halloween apples don't taste alike, they are similar in one respect: they keep exceptionally well during the winter. They usually keep nice and crisp in our cooler until May or sometimes even Memorial day.

Probably the very best keeping apple we grow is Fuji. I still remember a few years back a beautiful mid November day. As everyone who lived in Michigan for a few years knows, sunny skies and November are normally dichotomies. Well, this mid November day I remember was different, there was clear blue skies with intense sunshine and a temperature near 60. The real reason why I remember this day was that when I stopped my pickup in the Fuji grove, I suddenly felt as I stepped into a time warp since the orchard where I stood looked like our normal August orchard; Fuji trees were lush with dark green, healthy leaves along with branches holding tasty-looking, dark red apples. Moments before I stepped out of the truck, I had driven past nearly leafless apple trees. The few leaves that tenuously hung on the mostly bare branches, had a yellowish brown cast to them. This day, perhaps, is why I feel Fuji apples are really special. Practically speaking, in addition to keeping so well (some claim you can keep them 12 months) Fuji are exceptionally sweet and quite crisp. Many like to add it to cabbage or kohlrabi coleslaws.

A bit of Fuji History...Fuji is a cross of Red Delicious and Ralls apples and came to us from the Tohoku Experiment Station in Japan. It was released with the name Tohoku 7. Originally thought not to be suitable to Michigan growing conditions (Washington State propaganda?) it does well, during most years, in the central and southern Michigan apple growing regions.

Another Halloween apple whose leaves also stay nice and green until bitter cold weather is the now widely available Granny Smith. I planted my first Granny Smith apple back before most west coast apple growers knew about this apple. ( Most Granny Smith apples come from California and Washington). Why did I plant this variety? Well at the time my late sister lived in London and she raved about this apple. She loved the hard crisp, tart flavor. At the time, all Granny Smith apples in England were shipped in from Australia, the country where it was discovered growing in a waste spot old Granny Smith threw her old apple cores in. While Granny Smith is often recommended for pies and such, we found Northern Spy, Idared, Jonathan and, of course, Calville Blanc D' Hiver, are a lot better. If you like a hard, crisp and tart apple in late winter and early spring this is a good choice to have stored in a cool spot.

Our all around favorite Halloween apple has to be Splendor (also spelled Splendour). The reason is its taste. It is exceptionally sweet and juicy with very thin skin. The reason why I purchased Splendor trees was that I saw it featured in a fancy gift pack from Harry and David. I knew Harry and David would only pick the very best tasting varieties for their gift packs. Splendor isn't grown commercially now because its skin is so tender and bruises so easily it can't stand commercial handling which is the way supermarket apples are treated.

Splendor is a cross between a Red Dougherty and a Golden Delicious. It is a nice sized apple perfect for people who prefer pink to red since its skin coloring is closer to pink than red. It is sweet and juicy with white flesh. This is probably the best tasting dessert apple you will find in December through February, although properly stored Golden Russet might top it in early spring.

While we don't consider them "Halloween" apples, some other of our very late ripening apples include Mutsu(Crispin), Northern Spy, Golden Russet, Idared and Calville Blanc D'Hiver. For a printable pdf file of descriptions for these, and many more of our apples CLICK HERE.

This year we are making available a peck basket consisting of variety of some of our rarer apples (minimum of 10 varieties per basket). Each apple is labeled with a removable sticker. Also included is a booklet with the description of each variety.. The cost per peck is $7 for just the apples (plastic liner included) or $11 with decorative basket included, which makes a nice gift.

Right now, the weather maps look for a nice, mild week for harvest although the weekend is still questionable. This brings up a question several have asked.

  • Q: Can you notify your newsletter readers several days before you close?
  • A: Right now we plan on staying open until Thanksgiving. However, if weather turns severely cold (temperatures in the low 30s during the day and below 28F at night) we will be closed until it warms up. I hope to send out a special newsletter BEFORE this happens. However, it might just be the night before. If it gets much colder than this, we will be forced to close for the season since our produce, if left in the unheated market, will be damaged even with the door closed. If there is a significant snow which sticks to the road, we will either open late that day or close until the snow is completely gone on unplowed roads. We will also immediately send out a special newsletter for this eventuality.

Nashle!

Tom

October 20, 2009

Hi,

We are now entering late October and that means winter isn't that far away. How will winter be? I will give you my, and several other views, on the coming winter at the end of the following little spiel.

Since very few vegetables or fruit can be harvested during most winters in Michigan, one needs to store or preserve the summer/fall harvest. The canning of tomatoes, corn, beans and peppers has already been discussed in earlier newsletters. Anyway, it's too late to do anything about these warm weather crops because of the frosts and besides, they are fairly expensive to keep through the winter, whether you freeze them or can them. We grow quantities of several vegetables and fruit that can be easily stored. Apples, potatoes, onions and winter squash are not only easy to store they are very nutritious and you can live all winter just eating these four types of produce. (By the way, potatoes and squash have more potassium per ounce than bananas.) We now also have rutabagas, which also store great although these are new to us so we have little personal experience with them. We found the following are the best storage conditions:

The best temperature to store apples is at 33F (they won't freeze until their internal temperature drops below 30F); they also like some humidity so they don't shrivel. Of course, this is hard to reach so keep them as cool as possible without letting them freeze. An unheated room or basement will sometimes work except during occasional winter warm spells. One possibility is to keep them in an unheated attached garage and seal them in one of those inexpensive plastic totes that has a minimum size of 10 gallons (just over a bushel). Keep an eye on the temperature and if it gets extremely cold-say close to 0F outside-- you may want to bring them in until the weather moderates. Which apples store best? Idared, Empire, Northern Spy, Granny Smith, Fuji, Mutsu and Golden Russet.

Onions like a similar temperature although they can take it a bit colder than apples and they like it nice and dry-they are fine hung in a mesh bag-don't put them in a tote or they will rot! We found most of our sweet onions will store OK into January.

Potatoes seem to store best between 40F and 45F. If they are colder, some of their starch will change to sugar and they will become sweeter and possibly discolor after cooking although they are still great to eat! They also will keep OK at a warmer temperature-below 60F. However, they must be kept in the dark. If you keep them in a basket make sure you cover them with newspaper or something. When light hits potatoes they turn green (you often see green potatoes sitting on displays in supermarkets because of all the light.) My grandmother Anna, who was brought up on a farm in Nebraska, often said "green potatoes weren't even fed to pigs!" Well a little green won't kill you but if you eat enough of them they could give you a tummy-ache. Normally, we still enjoy our potatoes through mid April. Then we have a choice: plant our potatoes or eat them. Well, while they are still OK to eat, the thought of fresh, new potatoes flashes before our eyes and tickles our taste buds so planting the potatoes usually wins out and we are then left potatoless until late June when we start digging new red potatoes.

Squash like it a bit warmer than the rest-anywhere from 50F to 60F is the best temperature range. They also seem to like it a bit dry. The squash varieties that store best seem to be acorn and the hubbard-especially the blue hubbard. One year I kept blue hubbard to April and they were perfect. However, I wouldn't figure on reliably storing squash past Christmas. Keep an eye on the squash and if you see a bad spot try to eat it within three days. Almost always, all you need do is cut the bad spot out and the rest will be perfect. Here is something interesting about squash we just discovered the last few years. They apparently have an enzyme which turns starch to sugar AFTER THEY are harvested. What this means is that squash eaten in October, November and December will be sweeter than the fresh squash you eat in August and September! This is especially obvious with the buttercup (the one with a cup, the light brown ones are butternut).

Now let's discuss the coming winter. Right now the temperature of the surface seawater in the Pacific ocean in the equatorial region is somewhat above normal ( a couple of degrees F). This usually brings about an "El Niño" climate change across the Americas. El Niño is Spanish for The Little Boy. It refers to the Christ Child and was named by Mexican fishermen, who noticed the climate pattern often formed around Christmastime. NOAA is forecasting the El Niño to strengthen, several meteorologists think it might fade. A strong El Niño almost always brings mild winter weather across Michigan. Few disagree with this. The disagreement has to do with what El Niño will do. NOAA says it will strengthen; a few others say it will stay the same or weaken. One hint here: notice that the Mexican fishermen found that usually the El Niño started around December 25. I have to go along with NOAA here since it is the most logical deduction. Now said this I am going along with a milder than normal winter, overall. However, no doubt at least one of the months of winter may be slightly colder than normal, and which one is a guess. Also it is hard to know the exact snowfall although it is likely that the lake affect will be reduced this year. Here is what some forecasts are for Michigan: The NWS (National Weather Service) says Michigan will be slightly warmer than normal with slightly less snow than normal. Accuweather, headed by the justly famous Joe Bastardi, says it will be warmer than normal with less snow. It seems the "snow/cold monster" Bill Steffen from WOOD TV says it will be very cold and lots of snow, I think he says that at least it sounds like it. And George Lessens from WZZM seems to agree with the NWS. Here is an interesting note about a possible dispute over the blogs of Bill Steffen and George Lessens (who once worked together at WZZM). According to Bill Steffen, an unusually cold October is indicative of a cold December and January while George Lessens says a cold October implies a warmer than normal-or at least normal-winter. It is interesting to note that Bill implies a cold October (which we definitely have had-so far anyway) means a cold winter but he doesn't say that explicitly, he just makes it sound like that even if you read his blog very slowly. George Lessens is talking about the whole winter (December, January and February). Interesting? No wonder our family has given Bill the title of the "snow/cold monster"!

Before I shut up, I'd like to tell a story about a local reporter from northern Minnesota who interviewed an elderly Native American living on one of the reservations during early October many, many years ago.

  • The reporter asked "Chief, do you have any idea on how severe this winter will be?"
  • The old man nodded his head.
  • "Well, uh, will it be severe?" asked the reporter.
  • Another nod.
  • "Oh...well what tells you that? Have the local black bear fattened up more than usual? Or was it that the woolly bear caterpillars have strange stripes?"
  • "No. White Men have huge wood piles."

Hoping the milder forecast for the coming week comes to pass.

Nashle!

Tom

October 13, 2009

Hi,

Apples, apples, apples! We are right now into the very heart of fall apple picking time. (We start picking apples in mid-July and finish up from Halloween to as late as November 15, in some years.) The reason it is the heart is that the bulk of our apple crop is ripe from about October 5 to October 25. Last year our crop was small due to frost in spring. This year it is good sized and good quality; although a bit late perhaps due to the cool, cloudy summer. (If you have only lived or visited Newaygo County for a year or two you must realize this summer was really strange! For the real info on Newaygo County's summer weather read my website. A good decent rain in the summer here is rare and usually comes at night. My grandmother spent many, many summers here and she often referred to it as "a green desert" because while things stayed nice and green, they also got real real dry because of the near total sunshine and lack of rain. The central part of Michigan is notorious among farmers for being the driest area, east of the Mississippi, in the whole country and me thinks Newaygo County might just have the driest summer weather in the state! )

Getting back to apple harvest...When you stop by the market and see all those beautiful dark red Jonathans at such a low price ($6.00 a half bushel for nice ones) you might wonder why. Well, it's because of my late mother. She loved her Jonathans so I planted more Jonathan trees back when I started the old orchard than any other variety. (I now have more Honeycrisp planted than Jonathans but they are just starting to come into bearing.) Why did she love Jonathans? Well they are a great tasting apple that have more true apple flavor than any other apple, period! (Their texture is OK, but some other apples have better texture, as some in our family think, for fresh eating.) Companies such as Sara Lee and most others pay the very highest price for Jonathans, probably because they have so much flavor they don't need so many apples in their baked delicacies. The real low down about Jonathans and my mother probably had to do with one of her uncles on her father's side of the family. Apparently this uncle lived in Washington State and sent them a big box of big beautiful Jonathans for Christmas every year. They really relished them. Keep in mind my mother's family lived in Chicago and only spent the summers in Michigan so Michigan Jonathans weren't that easy to come by. (They were in the coal business so summer was the dead time in Chicago.)

While Jonathans aren't my family's first or second choice for fresh eating (it is for just about everything else, especially fried apples - try using them in the Michigan Fried Apples recipe in the September 21st issue of the newsletter), it is pretty unanimous that Jonagold, which is a cross of Jonathan and Golden Delicious, is the family's favorite fresh eating apple. Apparently, they aren't unique here since in nearly every taste test done Jonagold was at the top, and always in the top 5 apples for fresh eating! What is my favorite? It has to be a Jonalicious (a Jonathan, Red Delicious? cross), but I like an apple with refreshing tartness. Jonalicious, it is agreed among horticulturists, would be an important apple variety for those who like an apple on the tarter side EXCEPT it hardly has any apples on its tree-ever. This year our five Jonalicious apple trees have the biggest crop in memory but still not nearly as many apples as most trees. If you grew only Jonalicious apples, you would have to get $10 a pound just to break even!

This year, like several previous years, we are selling a number of apple varieties by the pound. Some of these varieties, like Mutsu (Crispin) are in good supply so we are also selling them in larger containers (we pick the nicest out for sale by the pound), but many other, like Ashmead's Kernel, Candy Cane (Surprise), Court Pendu Platt for instance, supply is very limited (we only have a tree or two of these varieties) so we will ONLY sell them by the pound. We also plan on selling variety packs of apples (peck size, I think) with each apple labeled along with a pamphlet describing each apple in the pack. I hope to iron out the details and get this down to the market by Saturday. This brings up a slightly different subject - quality. In order for apples to stay nice and crisp for longer than a week or two (some are better room temp keepers than others) they need to be kept below 45F - preferably between 33F and 40F. In the past, we tried to do this by keeping them on our apple shelves (just to the south of the market) and relying on cool fall weather. This worked well when the fall was unusually cool but not so good when there was a warm fall. Well, we now have a walk-in cooler. What we did was partition off and insulate, with 1-1/2" foam, a space in the red building which we call the "house" although we don't live in there-it is a storage area. Now looking into a suitable cooling unit we discovered it ran into thousands. Well, what we did was get a $100 room air conditioner and then bypassed the controls (its built-in thermostat only went down to 60F) with a jerry rigged one. The problem was that once it got down to 50F (55F with humid weather) the evaporator coils (cooling coils) iced up and it stopped working. Since I have been into hobby electronics since I was 12 and got a MSEE, I decided to make my own controller - this time using a Microcontroller (embedded computer) circuit. This controller uses a Picaxe (an easy to use form of Microchip's PIC chip) and detects an ice condition and then will shut the compressor off until the ice melts and then start it up again. I also came up with a way of not having to re-wire the A/C - the controller heats up the A/C's sensor making it think the room is warmer than it is so compressor turns on using its own controller. Well it works. It worked so well I wrote an article about it and it was published in Nuts and Volts magazine in their October 2008 issue. I also sell the PC board for the controller but not yet a completed unit or even a kit although I am thinkin' about it. For more information on the controller and what I have available check my website at Magicland Electronics. For information on Nuts and Volts magazine and purchasing back issues, see Nuts and Volts magazine. I also plan on taking a couple back issues to the market for those interested. By the way, if you are interested or know someone who is interested in setting up an inexpensive walk-in cooler let me know. I will be happy to discuss the issue with them.

Getting back to one of my other loves, apples...all this mumbo jumbo means is that Magicland Farms' late fall and winter apples will be of higher quality this year than in years past because of the walk-in cooler.

Hoping for good apple picking weather,

Nashle!

Tom

P.S. We ran out of questions customers have been asking about Magicland Farms. If you have a question we would like to hear from you. Send question to magiclandfarms@yahoo.com. Thank you.

October 6, 2009

Hi,

Well, we picked our largest two pumpkins last week. They weighed 269 and 197 pounds. The largest pumpkin we ever grew was 285 pounds. We picked that monster in 2007. Before this we grew two 205 pound pumpkins back in the mid 90's. This year we planted two patches of giant pumpkins-one inside the electric fence and one outside it in an area that had a history of not receiving significant deer damage-perhaps it was because it was located in a spot surrounded by higher ground that we had planted to corn-the deer didn't feel safe in there. It was also the same spot we grew that 285 pounder in 2007. Well this year the vines in this unprotected spot grew fabulously over-- 25 feet long-- but the deer ate every single pumpkin even before it got any size to it! The giant pumpkins growing within the electric fence's boundary weren't hurt at all! The deer damage is getting so bad that we wouldn't have sold any beans at all this year if we didn't have that fence! ( As an interesting note here it has been found through studies that hunting out a small area-say a hundred acres, will actually increase the deer damage! Speculation has it that deer from all around will move in because the "native deer" are gone and then pig-out on all the gourmet food they aren't use to!)

Getting pumpkins over a 100 hundred pounds requires special effort. First, you must use the right genetic matter (seed). Second, the soil must be fairly rich. Third, you must add fertilizer and water during dry spells. Getting pumpkins over 200 pounds also usually means you will have to use some sort of protective care to get them growing real fast early in the season so their leaves can soak up 14 to 15 hours of sunlight during late May through mid July. We use what we call a portable, folding pumpkin house, which also serves as an inexpensive, portable cold frame. For details on how to build it you might want to refer to my book Snowball Launchers, Giant-Pumpkin Growers and Other COOL CONTRAPTIONS. This book is available at some local libraries. It also can be purchased at many book stores as well as online at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

Nashle!

Tom

September 29, 2009

Hi,

We had a real good sales week last week thanks to our wonderful customers. Over 99% of our customers are delightfully nice and it is a pleasure to be able to help and serve them. Thank you!

It's unbelievable but we still have real nice tomatoes out in the field. To be honest, back in mid and late August we thought there was a chance, because of the late blight, that we would be real short of tomatoes, even by the pound, by Labor Day and then we would have nothing worth picking by September 10th. (When people asked us in mid August if we would have canning tomatoes, we replied "Maybe, we're not sure." A few people took offense with our evasive answer figuring we should know. Well, we were just being honest although we didn't go into long explanations.) Our fungicide applications after we saw signs of late blight must have really helped...and then out came the sun--practically 100% of possible sun for around 3 weeks--starting a few days before Labor Day. Many tomatoes lying right on clay ground look just like they came off nicely staked vines-just beautiful! Looks like we will have nice tomatoes until frost this year-which is unusual. (Again, average frost at Magicland Farms comes the first week in October and by inland lakes the last week of October.) Also, we might even have a few canning tomatoes on some days, although there won't be any real quantity of them that's for sure! We still estimate our quantity loss this year was about 2/3rds -which means we had a huge tomato crop coming until the blight came!

I promised to mention our sweet potato test plot in the last issue. Well many people don't realize that you can grow sweet potatoes in Michigan. Many years ago I didn't know that either-until I visited the Benton Harbor Retail Fruit Market. That was a fascinating place-too bad I heard it was no longer in operation--they apparently just have the wholesale market going there now (I checked a few years ago, and the retail market was no longer there-but things might be different today, who knows). Well anyway, I stopped there on the way back to Chicago and one of the vendors there had huge piles of big sweet potatoes all over the place and they were all grown locally. That surprised me. I then found out that there are enough sweet potatoes grown in Michigan so that MSU includes sweet potatoes in their weed control and insect control guides. While writing the proposal for my vegetable book (Grow With a Pro..) I decided to include sweet potatoes in it and in order to do this I needed some hands-on experience so decided to try to grow sweet potatoes. Well, I did and it does look like you can grow sweet potatoes in Michigan! Two things you absolutely need for sweet potatoes in Michigan-full sun (sunup to sunset) and sandy soil. (These are the same requirements for another crop thought to be only grown in the south-watermelons.) Since sweet potatoes are grown with rooted cuttings and not seed like watermelon or planting small sweet potatoes like you do with Irish potatoes, I had to find a way to do this. One way is to order them from places that sell the little plants. The other way is to buy some sweet potatoes from a supermarket and get them growing and then root the cuttings from the vines. I did both and both methods worked!

Freshly dug sweet potatoes are only moderately sweet when baked. However, they have an enzyme which slowly changes the starch in the sweet potatoes to sugar. This means a sweet potato that was dug and put in the kitchen a month or two before baking will be much sweeter than a freshly dug one. We ate them fresh and everybody still thought they were tasty-but not extremely sweet. This brings us to winter squash-especially the Bon Bon buttercup squash. We have found that Bon Bon buttercup squash get sweeter than most sweet potatoes. They also have delicious tasting smooth flesh. The only problem we found with them is the high cost of the seed-often over a hundred bucks a pound! Well, that's our problem. Early in the season, say late August, ripe Bon Bon taste great but they aren't nearly as sweet as they are now-and it has nothing to do with ripeness it has to do with curing. Remember, you cure both squash and sweet potatoes by just letting them sit-as long as the temperature is above 50F and below 80F-in other words room temperature. This is usually real easy to do by just sitting them in a kitchen or another room in a house. Last year I thought some of our acorn squash became as tasty as the buttercup. It seems to me that all winter squash improves by sitting a while. Right now the squash on our piles are curing just nicely and they are getting tastier and tastier. However, a frost will be becoming shortly and we will need to find a place for them. While they will keep OK at temperatures as low as 40F, they won't get any better tasting. I figure, this week, and perhaps next, they will be near their prime.

This year we planted some Heart of Gold winter squash which looks a bit alike a cross of Sweet Dumpling and Acorn-which it is. Well we and several customers tasted it and agree it is better than either of its parents! We do have quantity specials for acorn squash for those who wish to keep them for Thanksgiving and perhaps Christmas--$4.00 a half bushel and $7.00 a bushel. We also are selling mixed varieties of winter squash for $8.00 a bushel.

Hoping for a glorious, but continued genteel fall,

Nashle!

Tom

September 22, 2009

Hi,

Well, tonight and tomorrow we might actually get a taste of rain. Way back in late August I commented that it would be nice if we had at least two weeks of sun and dry weather-well I sure got my wish! We had only a couple drops all September so far! A light to moderate rain will be very welcome.

While we started picking apples shortly after 4th of July weekend, (our first "quality" apple to ripen is Quinte), our fall apple season starts with McIntosh. Well, we started picking that on September 9 and we have many more to pick. As many of you know, we have over a hundred varieties of apples planted and this number has actually increased the past few years to over 110. The exact number is hard to list because it depends if you think of Red Delicious as one variety or separate it to different strains-we have Red Prince Delicious (basically the old fashioned Delicious), Red Chief, Imperial, Starkrimson and others. We even have three different types of Jonathan-Jonnee (dark red), Double Red (not so red) and a couple other ones.

Before I even purchased the north half of "Magicland Farms" back in the late fall of 1970, I had planted three rare and/or heirloom semi-dwarf apple trees: Calville Blanc D'Hiver, Cox's Orange Pippin and Granny Smith. While Granny Smith is a common apple today, back then they were mainly grown in Australia and shipped to Great Britain and were unknown in this country. After I purchased the farm and started the orchard, I moved the apple trees to the new orchard. A few years later mice killed the Cox's Orange Pippin tree. However, the Calville and Granny Smith are still growing well and although they are around 40 years old they aren't big trees because they are on semi-dwarf rootstock. Why did I purchase the Calville Blanc tree? Well, its description in the catalogs had something to do with it. A typical nursery catalog description goes something like this:

"This is the gourmet culinary apple of France, excellent for tarts. Uniquely shaped medium to large size fruit, yellow skin with light red flush. Flesh is tender, sweet, spicy, flavorful, with a banana-like aroma more vitamin C than an orange. Grown by Le Lectier, procureur for Louis XIII; continues to be served in fine Parisian restaurants."

I was so enthralled by the description I decided I wanted some more but didn't want to pay the huge price for these rare trees. Since I already had one tree I used the scionwood from it to graft onto a dwarf rootstock. I used the traditional whip and tongue graft and now have 6 Calvilles Blanc trees all of which have a nice crop this year.

We have been enjoying pies, apple crisps, apple coffee cakes and other delectables made from Calvilles for many years. I now have some comments of my own about Calvilles: first, it's really, really hard to get a good looking Calville. They are really scab prone and have other appearance problems. Only one Calville in 50 I would bother taking photo of. They aren't the best eating fresh picked right off the tree but by Thanksgiving they are quite tasty and perhaps deserve their gourmet reputation. While there may be a hint of banana aroma, this is hard to detect. They obviously are loaded with Vitamin C, if you have a good palate and tried to taste a Vitamin C tablet you can easily "taste" the apples Vitamin C. They are the best fall/winter apple for pies. They are even better than Northern Spy which is generally regarded as the best common apple for pies. By the way, it seems that the Northern Spy is a seedling of Calville-they look a bit alike and they also are loaded with Vitamin C, although about half as much as Calville. Northern Spy though are easier to grow and are generally more attractive. Last fall I got an email from a chef at some big-time restaurant in New York City wondering if I could ship him (or was it her?) Calvilles. He apparently visited www.magiclandfarms.com and saw it mentioned. Well last year we had a terrible crop and I told him there was no way. Besides, he probably wanted more apples than I even have on the trees this year! When do the Calvilles ripen? Not before October 20 and usually around Halloween. They do keep well.

Some other of our heirlooms includes the oldest known variety of apple Court Pendu Plat. We jokingly refer to this apple as "The Garden of Eden " apple since some reports of its history date it back to before the time of Christ. When fresh, this is not the best eating apple around. The flesh is very dense, not soft but not crisp either. Cutting into it with a knife feels a bit like cutting into a hard cheddar cheese. There seems to be very little juice, and its flavor is fruity and strong when first picked but mellows later. While we only have one tree of Court, its crop looks nice. This is another very late apple which we pick just before Halloween.

If you really like something different you might want to sample one of our rare heirloom apples called Surprise. It even tastes nice, if you like a bit of tartness, when you bite into it. But its not its flavor that is a surprise, it is its pink/red flesh color. The surprise comes because its skin is greenish with almost know red or pink showing. its main problem is that it's a small apple. Kids are especially fond of this apple! This apple ripens in mid October.

A relatively rare new yellow skinned apple that has quite a following among several customers is the Hawaii apple. If you like a pineapple flavor you might like this apple since well ripened specimens often have a hint of a pineapple taste. We only have two trees of Hawaii apple but they both have lots of apple-perhaps too many. When a tree has too many apples the apples tend to be small and sometimes don't ripen to perfection. If the apples do get large on a heavily loaded tree breakage often occurs. While it is a bit late to thin, I hope to get to it this week at least it might stop breakage. Next year the thinning will be more timely It looks like the Hawaii crop will ripen in mid October.

Tolman Sweet is another heirloom that is hard to find today. We have several customers who ask us to save our crop of Tolman Sweet for them. Because of this, we usually only have a sampling of this variety at our market. If you want to make hard cider, this apple for you. Its 15% sugar ferments to 7% alcohol to make a delicious cider with a good kick! The one tree of Tolman Sweet we have has a nice crop on it. It ripens in early October.

Right next to our sole Tolman Sweet tree is another really old apple from England called Ashmead's Kernel. This apple is absolutely loaded with flavor, sugar and tartness and Vitamin C! It is really something to eat and is some of the kids favorite apple. It ripens in mid October.

We have lots more rare/heirloom apples that I will mention in upcoming issues of the newsletter. These include Kindil Sinap, Golden Russet, Roxbury Russet, Stark's Jumbo, Tompkins County King, Splendour, Jonalicious and Jonadel.

Just wanted you to know we will be picking Cortland and Spartan apples shortly. Cortland are famous as a salad apple since they brown very slowly when cut. They also are deliciously refreshing eating!

While I am reluctant to mention health benefits of eating some specific food, studies have shown that the old adage "An apple a day will keep the doctor away" should actually be changed to "Two apples a day keep the doctor away." Since the studies which showed that people who ate apples every day visited doctors less frequently used two apples a day in their research. The following information is given with no recommendations from moi just some data that is out there. Keep in mind here that apples are high in pectin.

  • CANCER - The American Cancer Society recommends a high-fiber diet to help prevent several forms of cancer, particularly colon cancer. Pectin binds certain cancer-causing compounds in the colon, speeding their elimination from the body, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
  • DIABETES - Physicians also recommend high-fiber diets to control diabetes. Several studies show that apple pectin helps control blood sugar (glucose) levels in diabetics. Traditional Chinese physicians have used apple bark for centuries to treat diabetes, another use supported by modern science.
  • LEAD POISONING - European studies suggest apple pectin helps eliminate lead, mercury, and other toxic heavy metals from the body. Cleansing the body of these poisons is yet another reason for people who live in polluted cities to enjoy the proverbial apple a day.
  • WOUND INFECTION - Although the pectin in apple fruit is this herb's major medicinal component, apple leaves contain an antibiotic (phloretin). If you cut yourself out in the orchard, crush some apple leaves and press them onto the wound as first aid until you can wash and bandage it.

Nashle!

Tom

September 15, 2009

Hi,

So far this September, the sun has sent its warm rays and bathed Magicland Farms with its photosynthesis inducing electromagnetic energy from sunup to sunset. Clouds have been scant and fleeting and liquid sunshine has been absent replaced with the genuine stuff. This sunny, dry weather has really helped our tomatoes and it hurt the Phytophthora infestans fungus/mold, more commonly referred to as late blight.

Canning Tomatoes

Tomatoes are usually canned using the hot water method, which is well known by most of our customers. It is also known that while tomatoes can be successfully canned with this method beans can't be. Why? It has to do with the acidity and the problem of botulism and other bacteria. While it is impossible to get a jar of tomatoes hot enough using a hot water bath to kill the botulism organism, the botulism bacteria can't survive in an acid environment. How to you measure acidity? Using the pH number. A pH of 7, like distilled water, is neutral, vinegar is an acid and has a pH below 3 while baking soda is an alkaline with a pH above 9. In order to can tomatoes safely, the tomatoes must have a pH BELOW 4.5. Every tomato of ours we tested tested below 3.8 which means they are plenty acid enough. (By the way our beans test around pH 5 which means they must be canned with a pressure canner.) We looked up about the USDA's recommendations concerning blight infected tomatoes and they say it is OK to eat them fresh BUT THEY SHOULDN'T BE CANNED!!! Why? The USDA never said in the bulletin although we think it is because tomatoes picked from dead vines aren't as tangy (less acid) than those from healthy vines. WE NEVER PICK TOMATOES FROM DEAD VINES!!! If you have a question about the acidity of your tomatoes, our tomatoes or any other vegetable or fruit, stop by our market and we can give you, free of charge, a little paper test strip that will let you know if the acidity of the fruit or vegetable is below or above pH 4.5. We also can show you how to use it-this takes about 20 seconds to show how. In short, there is a tiny sensitive area in its center where you put a drop of juice. This sensitive area turns color and you can then tell what pH the juice is-the color coding is right on the strip so you don't need another color chart. Nice little thing...

Late Blight

First off, late blight generally infects only tomatoes and potatoes. This is the same disease that caused the horrific Irish potato famine of the 1840s. It is caused by the Phytophthora infestans organism and loves mild (60 to 80F) temperatures and lots of wetness. It is the same thing that killed Martha Stewart's tomatoes in Connecticut and did the same to millions of other tomatoes across the eastern part of the country this year. I have never seen it before on our farm and a 85 year old woman who grew tomatoes all her life in Newaygo County never saw it before either. What happened? Well, Lowe's, Home Depot, Kmart and Wal-Mart all sold tomato seedlings with late blight in their garden centers from April to June this year. They obtained their plants form several southern growers who grew them outdoors and apparently didn't take care of them right so they got full of late blight. This explains how the blight got started but not how it spread to people who grew the tomatoes themselves and didn't plant infected tomatoes (like us). The other culprit here is the weather-the lack of sun and the cool, rainy and wind. The two working together-the diseased plants all over the place in home gardens and the weather-did many, many tomatoes in this year.

Late Blight and Magicland Farms

My middle daughter, Rebekah, called my attention on August 6th to something funny on a couple of tomato plants in our #1 patch. It was late blight. That same day we removed and buried hundreds of plants, in all three patches, that had any sign of blight on them The next day I put on a fungicide on most tomato plants. Apparently, the blight had already spread and a week later it was visible on many, many more plants in all three patches. However, the fungicide and the warmer, dry weather worked together to stop the blight in its tracks and about 2 weeks later the tomatoes grew on and now look healthy with delicious blight-free tomatoes-however, we lost about 2/3rds of our potential crop since the blight really set the plants back and while they are growing well now it's very late for tomatoes since the days are growing shorter and our usual frost is just a little over 2 weeks away (October 1). (By the way, while at the farm the average killing frost is in early October, next to inland lakes it is the end of October.)

Just to reassure you: we never knowingly picked a blighted tomato except to toss it and we don't pick tomatoes from dead plants!

Liking the sunny dry weather for now but have a secret hope for some rain soon

Nashle!

Tom

September 7, 2009

Hi,

The Jury Is IN regarding Mirai Sweet Corn!

At roughly a 10 to 1 ratio our customers think Mirai is a great corn and worthy of being planted again. The only objection to Mirai, among those who didn't rate it favorably (only 3 out of dozens), was that it perhaps was a bit too sweet. Those who are really regular customers-those that come several times a week-know we actually grew three types of Mirai. We personally prefer Mirai 301 since it not only is very sweet and is great tasting, it has the largest ears and has grown exceptionally well for us. This brings us to a different topic.

Last fall we planted winter rye in the field we planted the Mirai corn in this year. (Winter rye not only looks nice and green from late fall to early spring (when there is no snow on it) it makes great green manure, especially in heavier soils. However, one must use a moldboard plow to bury it. This spring while plowing, we noticed a Western Meadowlark nest (could possibly have been an Eastern Meadowlark-both types are found in Michigan) with eggs in the middle of the field and with the noisy mama running around and trying to protect her eggs against a 85 hp tractor! Well we made every effort to avoid the nest and left an area around it untouched. Whether the mama moved the eggs later we are unsure but we didn't plow them in-that's for sure! Well anyway, the patch of Mirai corn did better than our other corn despite the fact Mirai is notoriously hard to grow-especially in heavy soils-and its yield is usually quite poor. To put it short, it was a shock how great the Mirai corn did! One other point. While we had little corn borer or ear worm damage throughout our sweet corn patches this year, the Western Bean Cutworm devastated many of our mid-season patches. For instance, I remember picking 10 ears of Sugar Pearl corn and finding that each ear was infested with the brown striped caterpillar. (By the way, to the untrained eye the Western Bean Cutworm caterpillar looks like and acts like a corn borer!) So in some fields we had to throw out 75% of the corn we picked (we dropped the corn right in the field we were picking if we noticed the damage) because it obviously had a worm (actually caterpillar) in it. However, the Mirai corn had only 10 to 15% ears damaged! Did saving the nest have something to do with it? Another story: Shortly after I purchased the north 38 acres (the one with the orchard and woods) I decided to plant a good sized patch of Blue Hubbard squash. (This field now has good sized apple trees growing on it.) The soil in our apple orchard is heavy bluish clay (almost identical to the type of soil in the Ridge area north of GR). At the time I used a Howard Rotovator to till the ground and I noticed several Meadowlark nests scattered in the field. I worked around these nests. I had the best darned Blue Hubbard Squash ever! And they were of great quality-keeping in perfect shape into April! And they were really good. Are these two happenstance coincidences? Is there really such a thing as a coincidence? It's something to ponder. This brings us to a similar topic--Hubbard Squash.

One of the problems with growing Hubbard Squash is deer. They love to nibble at them, taking just enough out to ruin them Well, since we now have a electrified deer fence covering 25 acres, I decided to plant a good quantity of Hubbards-Blue, Golden, Green, Warted. Well they grew wonderfully this year and we have a great crop of them coming. We also have a great crop of acorn, butternut (both regular and jumbos) and buttercup coming. We will again be selling them by the ½ bushel and bushel at very reasonable prices.. Our favorite squash is the buttercup. Unlike many vegetables, buttercup taste even better a couple of weeks after picking than freshly harvested. They get so sweet that they exceed sweet potatoes in sweetness. This brings up another point - we have made a test planting of sweet potatoes this year and they grew fabulously. However, we haven't dug any up yet. We hope to be able to sell some but we shall see. We are in the learning stage here. The primary reason we grew them was so that growing sweet potatoes can be included in my book Grow With a Pro.

Watermelon Are Now IN!

Several issues back I wrote about our watermelon. Well, we are now picking them and they are in good supply. Since we have two patches, we should be able to keep our market supplied for several weeks.

We planted three varieties of watermelon:

Jadestar (nearly round with dark green skin)-this is an ice box watermelon and usually weighs less than 10 pounds. It has dark green skin and is similar in appearance to Sugar Baby. However, it is sweeter and better tasting. It has deep red flesh.

Crimson Sweet (nearly round with dark green and light green striping)-this delicious melon averages 15 to 25 pounds but we do have some less than 10 pounds. Its flesh is pink and only gets really red when it is overripe. This is our family's favorite because of its flavor, sweetness and crispness.

Allsweet (elongated, with striping similar to Crimson Sweet)-this is our latest ripening melon and we are just starting to pick them. They get quite big (sometimes over 30 pounds). The quality is similar to Crimson Sweet although the flesh is a bit redder.

Note on ripeness: We try to pick only ripe melons. This is usually done when the tendril next to the melon turns brown. It is not possible to tell a ripe melon from an underripe melon by thumping. We know we have tried dozen of times and it just doesn't work. We do thump them because we sometimes can figure out that the melon is overripe if the sound is hollow. A ripe melon has seeds that are dark or at least starting to turn dark. If you are disappointed with your melon, let us know and pick up another melon of the same cost, free of charge. Please taste the melon before you decide it isn't ripe. There is no need to return the melon-just let us know you weren't pleased with it and why.

Hoping the sunny dry weather will continue this week.

Nashle!

Tom

August 31, 2009

First off I want to thank everyone who came down to Magicland Farms Friday and Saturday between the rain showers and in the rain showers. It was amazing! Thank you!

I honestly believe that this fall will be one of the delightful Michigan falls with plenty of sun and mild temperatures. The forecast for this week looks like it will start off right. (By the way, fall is defined three different ways: meteorological fall runs from September 1 through November 30, economic fall runs from the Labor Day weekend to Thanksgiving and astronomical fall runs from about September 21 through December 21.)

We are in the middle of our Mirai sweet corn season. While some customers think it is a bit too sweet for their taste, most think it is really great! Let us know what you think we should do. We still haven't made a firm decision to plant it next year but it looks like we just might! The second planting of Mirai, Mirai 301BC (BC stands for bi-color), will be ready for picking this week. My family and I have sampled it and found out it has bigger ears and even more flavor (although perhaps not quite as sweet) as the first type. By the end of the week our third planting (Mirai 350BC) should be ready. For more info on Mirai Sweet Corn go to Mirai Corn, Twin Gardens Farm, and Magicland Farms. One thing I must make clear, Mirai is not GMO (genetically modified) corn. It was bred using old-fashioned corn breeding techniques. This brings up one of my hot points-the wide use of BT GMO sweet corn! This GMO sweet corn is now the predominant corn you will buy in supermarkets. Conveniently for the farmer, BT corn makes its own pesticide and it is present all through the corn-the leaves, husks AND THE PART YOU EAT WHICH IS THE KERNELS! Research conducted by the companies who sell it (who else?) say it is safe. They say the toxin in it is natural, not man made, and only kills certain caterpillars, like corn borers, and nothing else. They claim it isn't even a poison but a protein. Well Ricin, one of the most toxic substances known and can kill by just touching it, is a natural protein from the Castor Bean plant. Before these experts use words like "natural" and "protein" to make things sound nice and fluffy, they should do more research. Truthfully it is scary how ignorant these "experts" are! As a personal aside, about 15 years ago I planted a few New Leaf potatoes, which are also BT enhanced. Well I remember my first meal with them. They felt like they sat there in my tummy for over day. They just sat there. By the way, normal potatoes always digest so well I don't even know I ate - which sometimes is a different problem! Well anyway, figuring it was just one of those days I ate them again - same thing. Then a few weeks later I ate them again - same thing. That was enough for me I never ate them or grew them again! One other anecdote: Farmers who raise milk cows or cattle have experienced the fact that the cows much prefer normal corn to BT corn. At least one farmer experimented and planted a field of BT corn next to a normal corn. The cattle were then let loose in both fields and they wouldn't touch the BT corn until every ear of normal corn was eaten! Despite what you may hear, there is much controversy about BT sweet corn. For instance, the state of Maine won't allow BT sweet corn and many top seed companies refuse to sell it. A few years ago, when the price of the BT dropped substantially and my sweet corn was infested with ear worms, I thought perhaps of planting some BT corn to try. Well my wife Annemarie put her foot down and said effectively "No way!" Well, I'm glad I listened to her because I found out even more about it and what I found I didn't like.

Hoping the week's weather forecast is accurate except for that part which mentions the possibility of patchy frost tonight and tomorrow night.

Nashle!

Tom

August 24, 2009

Last August I happened to be listening the Chicago's WGN 720 AM radio (the voice of the Chicago Cubs) and I heard an ad about a place northwest of Chicago that sold sweet corn that they grew on their farm. The announcer made it sound like the corn was really special - I found out that they were selling it for around $7 a dozen which means they must have thought it was special! The type of corn was Mirai corn, whatever that was. Well, I knew there were three types of sweet corn-regular old fashioned type (SU), the supersweet (SH2) type and the enhanced sugar (SE) type, which is the primary type we have grown for over 15 years. Actually we have grown all three types but we have preferred the enhanced sugar type. Well, there is a new type of corn Mirai, which has some of all three genes mixed in. It was claimed in the ad (from Twin Gardens Farm located near Harvard Illinois) that the Mirai type was the best tasting corn around. I had to try it so I planted three bi-color varieties of Mirai corn. (To be honest, two of the varieties have Mirai in their name, with a number like 301 as a suffix, and one is actually named Optimum which is the same type of corn as Mirai but put out by a different seed company so they couldn't use the Mirai name.) Despite the warnings that Mirai corn was hard to grow, it has done fabulously and we have just taste tested it. It is truly a revolutionary corn. About the sweetest corn I ever tasted. If you like it sweet you should try it (by the way we are selling it for the same price as most of our corn, $4 a dozen). To be honest though, my wife and I think it is so sweet it is almost too sweet! While I expect it will be a big hit with most of our customers, not everyone will go for it. However, it is definitely a lot tenderer and more flavorful than the old-time Supersweet, which I personally didn't like at all! The Mirai type is a good corn and if you think it's a bit too sweet let it set in the kitchen a couple of days and it will lose some sweetness. For more information check out: Mirai Corn or Twin Garden Farms.

I would really appreciate that if you do try Mirai you let me know what you, and all the members of your family, think of it. This will help us plan for next year as well as a help for my book I am writing which I mentioned in the Boss's Corner a few issues back.

The summer has been cooler, wetter and less sunny than average. The oddest thing about this summer was the lack of the day in and day out sunshine that we normally receive. I've been around these parts most summers of my life and I don't remember so many cloudy summer days. The summer weather this year reminds me of coastal New England summers. The meteorological cause has been several upper air (over 5 mile high) closed low pressure areas. It may be interesting to note here that a similar upper air low is supposed to form near southern Texas real soon and they are expecting weather to be much below normal in the upcoming days. This is after an unbelievably hot summer! What a relief for them! It appears right now that the fall in Michigan will be warmer and drier than normal. NOAA agrees with that assessment and so does Joe Bastardi. I remember summers that were a bit like this summer and the following fall was quite nice. Let's hope this comes to pass this year.

Hoping for sunnier days ahead,

Nashle!

Tom

August 17, 2009

Well, it's almost watermelon time down here at Magicland Farms! The proof of this is that we picked and ate our first watermelon of the season! It was as good as I remember from last year, and that is saying a lot!

Watermelon time is probably more exciting for moi and most of the kids than any other harvest time. There is something about fresh, vine ripened watermelon-preferably chilled-on a warm sweaty day that words find hard to describe. Watermelons are an especially beloved treat on days when we come back from the farm after a day of intense sun draining all the sweat from our bodies-normally this occurs all summer and well into September, although this year July was more comfortable than usual, which was fortunate since watermelons weren't ripe!

Another thing about watermelon was that it was the first crop I ever sold-even before I bought the farm. I used to grow them in a sandy, sunny spot near Pickerel Lake. But watermelon won't grow there anymore since the trees have gotten so large the sunny spot is now not so sunny. Watermelon have not only made us money by selling those juicy, luscious things, I have written and sold three articles on growing watermelon. The hook for these articles, which no doubt sold them, was the fact that I grew them in Michigan! As you may know, Michigan isn't famous for its watermelon. In fact, there are many people out there in areas of the country outside Michigan that are convinced it isn't possible to grow a crop of watermelons in our great state. I've heard this from several sources the one that comes to mind first was from a monk at St. Procopius Abbey near Lisle Illinois, in Du Page county west of Chicago. I remember my late uncle, the Reverend Luke J. Ouska, OSB, telling me about this monks experience in their huge garden where they grew a huge variety of vegetables for the monks. He tried many times to grow watermelon. After years of struggling he told my uncle straight out, "It's impossible to grow watermelons where they live, it's too cool." Well if you know about Du Page County you know it gets hotter and stays hotter longer than Newaygo County does. The monk's problem, I have little doubt, was the soil. The soil we search out on the farm to grow melons in is just right-actually it is a bit too sandy for a good crop of corn, so things work out here.

This year we are growing three types of watermelons, small ice box size dark green ones that some call Sugar Baby (although they taste a lot better than the original sugar babies), large 15 to 20 pound fairly round jobs with dark/light green stripes (Crimson Sweet) and our largest, 20 to over 30 pound ones that are similar to Crimson Sweet although they aren't only larger they are longer. We hope to have a few of the small watermelons available for sale on Saturday August 22. Next week we should have a good supply of all types and by September 1 we hope to have huge piles of melons sitting there! Keep an eye out for them. Our melons are a lot, lot better than supermarket ones since we try to pick them ripe. You can pick a melon green and let it sit and it will turn red inside-but it will taste like nothin'.

Have a nice, pleasant and peaceful week,

Tom

August 10, 2009

You know the old saying "Too much of a good thing." Well, rain is a good thing but we got too much of it the last couple of weeks. The forecast now is for beautiful sunny weather with normal temps (highs in the 80s) for as long as one can see.

As some readers may know, I've written articles for numerous magazines, including gardening articles for gardening magazines. Well, about a year ago I got serious about writing a book on growing vegetables. The working title is Grow With a Pro - a Farmer's Practical Advice for the Home Vegetable Grower. While I haven't yet found a publisher, I found a wonderful, enthusiastic agent named Catt LeBaigue. She works for the Heacock Literary agent which is one of the most reputable agencies there is. One simple tip if you are ever looking for an agent-you don't want one that charges for reading or extraneous expenses. The good ones only get money as a percentage of the royalties on the book. Catt had many invites from publishers for the book and so far only one rejection. She took a trip to Europe the past month and should be back in about a week. She says most publishers take "holidays" during July and August so she didn't expect to hear anything further until after Labor Day. I will keep the readers informed on anything new. By the way, the book proposal that Catt is sending to the publishers took lots and lots of work. It was over 100 pages long and included photos and was in Word format. Catt says that publishers read the proposal on their Kindle.

In the book I discuss different vegetable varieties and include recommendations of specific seed varieties. I would appreciate it if some of the newsletter readers would email me their favorite varieties as well as the ones they don't like, especially regarding sweet corn, tomatoes and potatoes. We normally try to inform the customer on the varieties we have for sale but if you are interested in helping me out I can provide additional information on the particular varieties we are selling. This year we are growing Kentucky Wonder and Blue Lake beans to see how they compare to our famous Magicland beans. I would appreciate it if you could try these bean varieties and let me know what you think.

I noticed my wife earlier in the newsletter mentioned my favorite all-time meal-Chicken Vesuvio. Back umpteen years ago I lived on the southwest side of Chicago. My favorite restaurant was Club Corsica located at 87th and Western. My dad had a war buddy that ran the joint and that's how we started going there, I think. While they served all kinds of Italian food (as well as steaks and stuff) , my favorite was the Chicken Vesuvio. The recipe we have now came directly and indirectly from Corsica's owner. The best thing about the meal were the potatoes and the loads of garlic sautéed in a white wine sauce. I remember talking to the owner one day about how he made it and he mentioned they used their deep fryer to partially cook the potatoes before they put them in the oven. Well, we found it works nearly as good by omitting this step. We cook them something like our oven fries but not coating them with butter/garlic. One thing that comes to mind when thinking about Chicken Vesuvio is when one day I had a toothache and my family stopped by Corsica for a meal. As usual I ordered the Vesuvio. Well the toothache went away. I figured it would return later that day but it never did return. That was strange. By the way, Club Corsica no longer exists. What a bummer!

Hoping and praying the weather forecast for the coming week is right on the money.

Nashle!

Tom

August 3, 2009

This coming Tuesday (August 4) starts our Bon Appetit sweet corn. I recommend that you give it a try. While we will have corn a bit sweeter, such as our famous Candy Store, this is my favorite corn and has been many customers favorite for several years now. (By the way, we have made three plantings of the newly famous Mirai sweet corn. While we haven't tasted it yet, there are some claims out there that Mirai is one of the best tasting sweet corns around. For more info on Mirai corn go to www.twingardenfarms.com )

It's interesting why we first planted Bon Appetit. Well, it has to do with its name and the fact that the kids were learning French when we first found out about it. Boy, that was a coincidence (if you believe in such a concept) that really worked out. In addition to being really tasty, it has big ears and many customers love big ears! It also is relatively early. This year we made four good sized plantings of this top variety so we should have more Bon Appetit than ever. Oh yes, translated Bon Appetit means "good appetite" which probably has more to do with its ear size than its wonderful taste!

We are now nearing the middle of our green and yellow bean harvest. Over the years, we have had even more compliments about our beans than our corn! One customer even sent a half bushel to Alaska to a friend that moved there and craved Magicland beans! While we have grown, and still grow, a number of varieties of beans, our primary variety is a secret. When a customer asks the name of the bean my wife sometimes says "If I told you I'd have to shoot you!" It not only is exceptionally good to eat it bears well for us.

The other varieties of green beans we will have coming are Blue Lake, Kentucky Wonder, and a green French Fillet. We also have yellow beans and a yellow French Fillet. If the variety is not named you can assume it's our secret variety!

It looks like, as I speak, a heat wave is about to break out across Michigan. No one but God knows for sure or how long it will last and He isn't telling, He's just hinting! My winter forecast will come out in a few weeks.

Nashle!

Tom

P.S. Why Nashle? Well this means "so long for now" in informal Czech. Despite my last name, all my ancestors were from Bohemia, which is located in the western part of the Czech Republic. When my Grandpa (my dad's father) came to America, around the turn of the last century, he had to change his name because his original name began with an F and is not used in polite company in this country. My dad only found out about this when he had to research his birth certificate for Social Security purposes. Boy, that was a surprise and shock to everybody in the family! My dad knew his original name wasn't Fox but he had no idea what it really was!!

July 27, 2009

Our sweet corn this year started real late, because of below normal temperatures so far this summer. It wasn't until last Friday (July 24) that we started selling it. This work week, which starts on July 27 and ends on August 1, we will start on two patches-one yellow and one bi-color-and finish up the two patches we started last week. All in all we planted 36 different patches of corn. Unless September and early October are much above normal, we plan on having nice tender sweet corn until frost. (Also see my closing comments).

In addition to the start of our sweet corn harvest, this week also starts the week of our apple harvest with the refreshingly tart, juicy and crisp Quinte variety-which is our first apple to ripen. Our apple crop this year is outstanding! Most of our bearing age apples have a nice crop and since we have over 100 varieties of apples, it looks like we will have a great selection this year. Keep in mind that our apples start ripening in late July starting with Quinte and end with Fuji, Granny Smith, Braeburn and others in early November. Since the apples ripen consecutively, at any one time between these dates, there will be at most 20 varieties for sale. Many times, especially early in the season, we will have just a few varieties available.

We also have a nice peach crop. Me thinks we will pick some of our earliest ripening peach, Flamin Fury PF1, this week. This peach is great eating but it is a clingstone. Also we plan on picking Candor this week. Its outstanding characteristic? It doesn't brown after cutting! It too is a clingstone. In a week or two we will have Early Red Havens (a different variety from the regular Red Haven, which we will have later) and these usually do tend to break free from the pit when the are very ripe. Our golden plums are also nearly ripe.

I promised last week a hint of what Joe Bastardi thinks about the fall forecast. To be perfectly honest, you have to read between the lines he writes to figure it out-he's more into winter forecasts since that's where the money is. But as far as I can determine, I believe he figures on a mild fall and perhaps a bit dry. This is what me thinks as well. A mild fall is nearly perfect for us. The worst scenario is a cold fall when everything freezes early. The next worse scenario is a hot fall when all the apples get soft way before they should. This too warm fall scenario has happened more frequently the last ten years than the frigid one. To combat this we put in a walk-in cooler. This cooler is cooled by a room air conditioner that is controlled by an external microcontroller based device which I designed and built. I now am selling kits for this device which I call A Smart Room A/C Controller. I wrote an article detailing my design and it was published in the October 2008 issue of Nuts and Volts magazine. You can find more information about it by visiting Magicland Electronics.

How about this winter? Well I will write about what Joe Bastardi thinks, as well as NOAA, in an upcoming newsletter.

Ciao, Tom

Next week we should have a good supply of bi-color sweet corn and yellow sweet corn. While we plan on having sweet corn until frost this year, our supply runs down after Labor Day because our late patches are smaller in size. (We planted 36 patches of sweet corn this year!) Also next week, our large and tasty slicing tomatoes should be in abundance. These first tomatoes are from our high tunnel which is really a tall unheated greenhouse where the tomatoes are planted directly in the ground. It won't be long after this when our field grown heirloom, Roma type and coanning tomatoes should be ripe.

Talking about fruit, we have a real nice crop of peaches, plums and apples. Next week we plan on picking our earliest peaches (Flamin' Fury PF1) as well as our Golden Plums and Quinte apples.

(The very latest on Flamin' Fury--I just tasted on of the first of these peaches. Boy was it good! Sweet yet sprightly with lots of flavor! Not at all bland. I hope the rest are as good. Of course they will only be of medium size. This is our first year for PF1s.)

Weather News

Joe Bastardi, probably the very best long range meteorologist around, thinks Michigan, for the rest of the summer, will average out about normal. In other words, the second half of will be warmer and sunnier than the first half. In the next issue, I will mention what Joe thinks about the fall. Hint: It's the same view I hold and I am usually quite optimistic about the coming weather--though perhaps a bit too optimistic!

Ciao, Tom