Oak Slough Farm

San Diego

Last weekend, I went to San Diego to visit my folks.  I missed the cooler weather here, but San Diego was so cold I forgot it was even summer.  While I was gone, Sadie, Asa, Kat, Cisco, and Jess held down the farm.  When I returned, I was amazed to see how much things had grown in the short time I was gone.  The vegetable rows have filled out and are growing into one another.  The corn and sunflowers are botanical skyscrapers.

Field mice

Besides watering, harvesting, weeding, and delivering last week, the team tried to focus on fertilizing.  Jess and Kat went to Kinney Nursery and Topsoil in Vina to pick up some organic fertilizer and soil amendments.   Jess was excited because it has been hard finding the right amendments that are allowed under our organic certification.  Lo and behold, they are just a few minutes from Corning!  It is a family-owned business, and they are very knowledge and helpful.  When they realized New Clairvaux was right around the corner, they stopped in to check out the tasting room.  So, along with the bags of powdered fertilizer to side-dress each plant and some liquid amendments that can be sprayed on the plants, they brought back three bottles of wine.  We are trying to correct a potassium deficiency that has caused a pollination problem in the zucchini and need a longer acting overall fertilizer to support the plants under the stress of the heat (and now smoke).  We learned that foliar feeding is a great maintenance method, but that the powdered fertilizer at the root zone is better when more nutrient support is needed.

New old mower

One of the biggest tasks the crew took care of while I was gone was picking up a new rotary mower.   As reported previously, the starthistle we are battling got the best of the last mower and killed it dead.  Luckily, I found a new/old mower on Facebook.  It is 15’ x 15’ and over 50 years old.  Hopefully, the fact that it is still running means it is a good one, although the person we bought it from never used it to mow starthistle.  I procrastinated on making an offer to buy it mostly because I was scared to try and move it home to our place north of the Jelly’s Ferry Bridge from their place down Reed’s Creek Road.  10 feet wide is a wide load, and the traffic lanes are only 12 feet wide.  I don’t know if it is a good thing, but Jess and Asa don’t share my fear of things going horribly wrong and chose early Sunday morning when traffic would be light to make the trek.  Thankfully, they made it; although, Asa and Kat spent most of the rest of the day trying to get it off the trailer and through our farm gate.   However, that is Asa’s story, so you’ll have to ask him.  

Recipe – How to cook Shishitos peppers…and baked eggplant

I brought a little bit of produce to San Diego, but missed all the farm veggie meals while I was gone.  While Dad baked his chicken, I cut some eggplant in half, coated the cut end with olive oil, garlic powder and some salt, and cooked it in the oven, too.  I cooked them until the eggplants were soft.  Then, for about five minutes more, I topped the eggplants with tomato slices.  They were good like that, but I also liked sprinkling on some parmesan cheese.

Sadie has been making us shishito appetizers.  They are delicious and everyone should buy some shishito peppers.  Heat a pan with cooking oil (we use coconut) on med-high heat.  The oil should be hot enough so that when the peppers are thrown into it, the peppers sizzle.  When the oil is hot, throw the peppers in, stir them, and allow them to pop and blister.  They will turn a little black, but you do not want to blacken them.   When blistered, remove from heat.  Sprinkle the peppers with some salt and serve—voila!

Be well – Josh