The Reason I don't go out on Saturday Nights. . . .

Farm Markets are hard work, here is a fun little time lapse that shows my setup, don't forget I have to pack it all away, and unload it later, oh and sell stuff for 5 hours too!

Why is a Farm in Sonoma County Called Quetzal Farm?

The Quetzal is a beautiful bird and the national Symbol of Guatemala. In the 1990's Guatemalan refugees were trying to get back to live in Guatemala from Mexico, unfortunately their government considered them guerrillas and the long civil war there had not yet ended.  At the time, I was thinking I would go to law school and become a human rights lawyer.   I ended up living in the first refugee resettlement as "accompaniment,"  someone who would stay in their community and let the outside world know if anything happened.   The refugees began to re-establish agriculture, which unfortunately meant the burning down of the rainforest to plant corn.  This began my education in sustainable agriculture and led to me planting my first garden in the jungles of the Ixcan region.  A career change was slowly taking place, next I planted a garden in South Texas where I did para-legal work on political asylum claims, then I was enrolling to study sustainable agriculture at the UC Santa Cruz Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems.  I never made it to law school, and 15 years later the name Quetzal Farm still helps me remember the idealism that started this crazy and wonderful farming adventure.

If you are interested in learning more about the current struggles in Guatemala http://www.nisgua.org is doing great work, support them if you can.

Dried Chile Descriptions

Quetzal Farm

Dried Chiles

Ancho Generally mild with a raisiny flavor.  Ancho adds depth to lots of dishes and is the base for Mole Poblano.  Also available smoked.

Espelette A Basque chile  from Southern France, it is very hot and sweet with a bright fruity flavor.

Chipotle A classic Mexican chile that is a favorite in many dishes, including salsas and dips.  It is a red jalapeño that has been smoked in apple wood.

Cayenne ‘Joe’s Long’   A cayenne that is long and sweeter than traditional cayenne, not quite as hot either tends towards the milder side of hot.

New Mexico A lot of different varieties that are bred in all regions of New Mexico.  They generally are of mild to medium spice with  the classic “Red Chile” flavor common in New Mexican cuisine.  A favorite for enchilada sauce, it is believed to originate from the Guajillo chile from Mexico.

Sweet Varieties  (Gypsy, Carmen, Jimmy Nardello) There is no heat in these varieties, great for Romesco sauces or bringing down the heat level by mixing with hotter chiles.  

For recipes and more information visit quetzalfarm.com

Summer Begins

Spring Labors are beginning to provide a bountiful harvest. . . .

We will now be at the Saturday Berkeley Farmer's Market Weekly

Though we have been out of the market the last few weeks, things have been very busy at the farm.  Our early crops have been needing lots of watering and weeding.  After weeks of soil preparation, seeding, and hand transplanting our canvas is just about full.  Now our job is to steward the plants so we can get a continuous harvest of our favorite foods.  We are happy to be returning to market and to see our favorite faces every weekend until December.

This Week's Offerings

Pimiento de Padron
New Mexico Chiles
Red Torpedo Onions
Genovese Basil
English Cucumber
Lemon Cucumber
Mixed Summer Squash
Lacinato Kale
Salsas
Dried Chiles

Berkeley Civic Center Farmers Market
Saturdays 10am-3pm
Center Street Between Martin Luther King and Miliva Street.

Beginning of Bounty

Summer is coming early this year, especially in our protected hoop house.  As I prepare for our first regular season farmers market, I get to enjoy the earliest harvests that are too small to sell.  After years of frustrating trials and errors, our plantings are finally giving us results that we like to see.  Our basil is bursting out, we will have trouble keeping up with the harvest, a few English cucumbers are appearing, and some tasty cherry and yellow roma tomatoes are beginning to ripen on the vine.

Lunchtime is a big treat, I go into the hot greenhouse at noon and gather all I can carry, a  couple pieces of bread and a couple eggs or some turkey, and I end up with some delicious treats to enjoy.  As the bounty increases I will probably have less cooking time-- but for the month of June, I will enjoy these wonderful mini harvests.

Planting Preparation

Our pretty display at the farmer's market is the very end of a long process.  I have talked a little about the planning in previous posts, but this time of year (or later in our frequent rainy springs) is most exciting time of farming for me--soil preparation.

Cover Crop of Bell Beans, Vetch, and Oats.

We try to have a balanced agro-ecosystem, a challenge that requires us to build up the soil to withstand the disruption that is part of annual cropping systems.  We do bring in some inputs of organic matter and minerals, but our ultimate goal is to have the farm sustain itself, much of our efforts are to preserve the resources we have and build up organic matter the we grow on site.  Many of our crops are happy with open soil around them, they have less weed competition and the soil warms up more and reflects more ripening heat.  When we look at the time that our plants are growing, it is a relatively short season, the rest of the season the soil is resting, and I want vegetation to cover the soil and protect it from loss of nutrients to wind erosion or leaching.

All that means:  in spring I have thick vegetation to incorporate into the soil, and I then encourage it to break down and become a rich food source for crop plants.  This involves the farmer's favorite tool: the powerful tractor!  We do use an electric tractor in the summer season for weeding, but for our primary tillage we use two diesel tractors, using a mixture of fuel that contains 20% biodiesel.

Incorporating Cover Crop with Spading Machine

This is a fun time of year for the most part.  Going back and forth on my spot on the Santa Rosa Plain in Spring is beautiful:   green hillside vistas, sheep in their pastures, grapevines budding out.  I often see several species of birds follow the tractor looking for newly exposed treats and juvenile raptors learning to hunt.  When conditions are right the soil looks and smells wonderful, it is much like making a dough, when the temperature and micro-organisms create a perfect harmony.  The season is still all possibilities so optimism can run wild.  I must admit it is not all a joy--soil preparation involves many long hours in the sun, lots of noise dust and pollen, lots of bumps and back and neck twisting.  After a long shift of enjoying the sights and feeling of spring, one can be quite beat up and exhausted.

Rough Shaped Beds, almost ready for planting!

Happy Spring!  Enjoy some photos of our soil prep,  our blank canvas is being created so we can have a great harvest in 2013.  We will be at the Berkeley farmers market this Saturday, March 30, we will just be at a market or two in April before we take a break before our summer/fall season.

Final Shaping pass, ready to plant

Happy Winter

Lazaro with the Harvest

Now that December is upon us I can get off the tractor/van/phone and post pictures and talk about the season past. . .and ahead to the future.  In the summer and fall I get to see a lot more of my customers at the market and elsewhere, now that the winter season is upon us these connections get a lot rarer.

Our season lasted until late November and then we were hit by a good frost then some amazing rains, no question about a change in seasons this year!  We have cleared our fields in a hurry and even walking them is a soupy challenge now.  Time to retreat into the greenhouses to grow our winter market crops and plants for next year, and do some needed maintenance and planning in the dry barn.

Coming Soon to Market. . .

I am very excited about the prospects for our winter farmer's markets, my extra hard work in planning and planting in August and September is showing results, our greenhouses are bursting with tasty stuff. We will be at the Berkeley Market on Saturday and many more Saturday's this winter with a happy selection of lettuces, arugula, radishes, turnips, beets, carrots, kale, collard greens, snow peas. . .Salsas, Roast Tomatoes, Pasta Sauce, Bloody Mary Mix and dried chiles too!

Making Salsa

We had some great harvests this year, onions heaved the soil out of the beds and peppers of all kinds did really well in the mild summer, lasting deep into fall.  All of the crew did an excellent job this year, we were a smaller team with a lot more experience, we are leaving the farm in great shape for the coming season.  Spring rains delayed our harvest but folks were ready for us, both our wholesale customers and our market regulars bought everything we could  produce.  Our tomato crops suffered a bit but we learned a lot this season and had help from Robert Gilbertson, a  plant pathologist at UC Davis, we should have much better production in the coming years now that we understand more about the Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus that has been vexing us.  Excitement for the prospects of 2013 are buzzing around the farm, early this year and a great indicator of farming morale as we enter into the short days.

"Summertime"

Dry Farmed Tomatoes Basking in the field. . .

This season I don't really need to put summertime in quotes, on day two of another mild heatwave I can almost hear the sweet peppers and lemon cucumbers growing and I imagine little blushes of red forming on the tomatoes.  With some regret I sit at my computer while the cool morning fades quickly to the white heat of the day.  This is good weather,  for the last few weeks it has been as close to ideal conditions as I have seen.  If I wanted to complain about the weather I would have to reach back into April and May.  It has been a spring absent of disaster and troubling weather, this smooth sailing can make one worry a bit but I also can't help but be excited with all of the possibility that the season holds.

This week I'll be coming back to the Berkeley Farmers market on Saturday.  It should be a fun mix of things, many will be in short supply this week and get more abundant as the weeks roll on.  Our onion crop this year has been incredible, I can't believe the quality and consistency of the fat yellow and red bulbs, and I can't wait to start sharing them.  We will also have basil, english cucumbers, and summer squash.  There should be a few padron peppers and some green sweet peppers for the lucky few who get to market early.

I look forward to seeing you all at market again,

Happy Summer
Kevin McEnnis and the Quetzal Farm Crew

Sonoma "Spring"

Rough beds being shaped to prepare for Transplanting.

"Spring" belongs in quotation marks here on the Santa Rosa Plain.  In recent years we seem to have quite our share of rain in the months of March and April.  The rain is generally good for the ecosystem we farm in, but it makes the logistics of farming difficult.  When the soil is worked with too much moisture we squeeze the air out of the soil and create a compacted mess that will not support plants. The last two seasons have had lots of heavy spring rains that have delayed planting in the field until May, and delayed our harvest until very late summer.


This year has started out with an interesting pattern.  Super dry conditions in January and February made it possible work the soil much earlier than normal.  This should help things tremendously, especially in our tomato and pepper field that has been fallow for a year and had a very thick cover crop/sod layer that needs lots of time to break down before planting.    I am hoping that there is an extended dry period soon so I can form up beds and get ready for planting onions in the next few weeks, planting onions in May has really reduced our yields in the last couple of years.


This Saturday will be our last farmer's market of the winter/spring season.  We will harvest the last of our salad crops from the hoop house and start planting basil and English cucumbers for our summer season.  I have really enjoyed coming to market in the winter months with our collection of greens and root crops, I have enjoyed eating such good vegetables in the winter myself!  We have not come to as many markets as planned this year because we were not able to produce much salsa, roasted tomatoes, or dried chiles last year, we hope for a more abundant 2012.  We are almost sold out of many of our processed products so stock up now, fall is still a long way off.


See you at the Berkeley Farmers Market Saturday,
Kevin and the Quetzal Farm Crew

Birth of a Pepper

 Hotter than a Pepper Sprout. . .the miracle of seeds

Like the little lambs being born around Sonoma County, it is the season for pepper plants at Quetzal Farm to start their life.  With nights near 30 degrees and blustery days, they do not belong outside but live in our cozy greenhouses.  Their journey has begun but it will be quite some time before they will bear fruits large enough to bring to market.  

Sprouted and Growing, these peppers are about to be transplanted into individual cells.

Chile Pepper First Aid

Well, it finally happened, after years of warning folks about the dangers of chopping chiles and rubbing your eyes, I made a serious slip. . .


On a trip to the mountains for some backcountry skiing, my friend Todd and I were making jambalaya and having a great time, I chopped up a few dried cayenne peppers, threw them in the pot, had a sip of home made wine, and then a burning sensation. . . .it came on fast so I realized this was not just a little wipe on the face but the real deal.


My first thought was dairy, that can help a lot with chile on the tongue,  but a yogurt compress did little after a few minutes.  I initially feared that water would make it worse but I decided to give it a shot.  I stuck my head in the sink and opened my eye under cold running water.  It felt better instantly and I stayed there for about 10 minutes with the coldest water I could get out of the tap.  It worked!


I was laughing at myself most of the time but I was a little worried that it would go on for hours, hopefully this advice will help someone else in this situation.  For the more common too much chile in the mouth situation, dairy is about the best solution.  If you have some raita on had it can be wonderful but any yogurt, milk, or ice cream will do.  Crackers, Bread and Chips work too.  Water does not help!  Really!  Just remember, picante passes and you will be back to normal in a little while. . .

Winter Farming

Mid-winter at the farm is a very different pace than any other season.  There is still plenty of work to be done but much of the urgency of Spring, Summer, and Fall is absent and some days lead to a blissful complacency that makes it hard to get anything done on these short and often cold days.  It is easy to start wandering the fields and greenhouses and realize that I've "wasted" and hour.  Those wasted hours are important times for the farmer to be introspective, to play with ideas and start planning how the farm will look, and think of new ideas for the coming seasons.

Apart from spying on the egrets and watching the cover crops grow, there still a lot to do in the winter.  Plans must be made!  I spend many hours working and re-working my crop planning spreadsheets to satisfy the needs of many people and trying to produce the right amount of so many different crops and varieties.  With 14 years of data and some pretty well developed tools it is easier than in the past, but there remains so many things beyond my control, a good or bad year could mean the difference in several tons of crop and demand can go up or down because of a trendy article or several new farms deciding to grow the same thing.  The crop planning requires lots of hair pulling and gnashing of teeth but it is far more fun than the mountains of taxes and agricultural and regulatory forms that seems to land in the first quarter of the year.



There are also many hours spent fixing and maintaining equipment.  It is often cold and dreary for this work, to make it a better time I catch up on NPR listening or enjoy some rock and roll.  This  year I'm making some improvement to the battery pack of my electric Allis Chalmer's G tractor (I'll post about that later), and doing some important maintenance on the diesel tractor and several implements.

January Farm Market

Hoop House Under Construction

This Saturday will be Quetzal Farm's first time coming to the farmer's market in January.   The last couple of years I have been putting more energy into winter production in our  "hoop house" a a 30 by 100 foot greenhouse where I grow crops in the ground.  It has been a challenge to learn both how to grow and what crops to grow in the indoor environment.  I have tried many different things, starting with flower crops, late and early warm season peppers and tomatoes, and plenty of weird and unusual things that are supposed to grow well in the greenhouse.   The last few years we have found that the english cucumbers and basil were great crops to grow in the warm months, but winter has been the trickiest time of year to get anything to grow.

Lettuce in Hoop House

At the Ecological Farming conference a couple years ago I saw Elliot Coleman speak about his hoop house growing in Maine, bought his book, and began another round of experimenting.  I focused on cool season crops and began planting as more of a winter vegetable garden for myself and the farm crew.   When there was particular abundance, I went to market to sell the extra stuff along with the Salsas, Roast Tomatoes, and dried chiles from the previous season.   The reception of our mix of baby-head lettuces, Kale, Collards, radishes, arugula, turnips, and a few other random vegetables has been very warm, we hope to come every 3-4 weeks this season with our offerings.

Happy New Year 2012

Welcome Quetzal Farm's new blog!


When I come to the first farmers market of the season so many people ask, "what to you do for the rest of the year?"  I hope to help answer that question with these postings as well as tell the story of what happens on a farm throughout the seasons.    My ultimate goal is to help connect the many consumers of Quetzal Farm's food to the land and people that produce it.