Old Otter Holler Farm

Alderson Community Market Grand Opening a Success

The grand opening of the community market in Alderson, West Virginia on Saturday, May 14, 2011 was a success. The organizers and market manager did an excellent job setting up, promoting, and managing the event. From 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM many people stopped by the market to browse, purchase local products, and to see what all the excitement was about. There were six to eight vendors selling annual and perennial flowers, woodies, vegetable plants, fresh seasonal produce, eggs, meat, beeswax candles, crafts, and a variety of baked goods to include glazed doughnuts, fried pies, and fresh sourdough bread using 100-year-old mother. For entertainment, there was face painting for kids, kids games, an appearance by Leonard the Alderson Lion, and fantastic guitar music and singing. The Alderson Community Market will take place every Saturday from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM until mid-October. Stop by and join in on the fun, catch up with your neighbors, and leave with some of the best local food, plants, and crafts your community has to offer.

Alderson Farmer's Market Grand Opening

Well, it's a done deal according to my sources.  The new Alderson Farmer's Market will open Saturday morning, May 14th with the goal of running year-round.  The addition of this market makes four farmer's markets within 25 miles of OOHF, one in Union open on Thursday mornings, one in Hinton open on Friday mornings, one in Lewisburg open on Saturday mornings, and of of course the new Alderson market also open Saturday mornings.  This gives local residents the opportunity to purchase fresh vegetables, plants, and a variety of other locally produced agricultural products three days each week.  It is also a boon for growers who now have several local markets for their products.  If anyone in the area is interested in selling at the new Alderson market, please contact me via this blog and I'll put you in contact with the right people.  As far as I know, there will be a grower's meeting soon to discuss the market rules and determine what products the market will offer. Stay tuned for  more information.

Why Do We Garden?

Everyone who gardens has their own reasons.  Some folks do it for the excercise, to become more self-sufficient, or to have a few fresh vegetables and fruits over the growing season.  Here at OOHF, we garden for many reasons, not just to be more self-sufficient.  If you are contemplating gardening next year, here are some compelling reasons to start planning now.

• Grow the vegetables, fruits, and nuts you want.  Don't be a slave to the small selection and bland taste of the commercially grown vegetables, fruits, and nuts you find in the grocery store.  Grow varieties that are more nutritious, healthier, tastier, store longer, or for whatever characteristic you desire.
• Gardening is exercise.  In fact, it is not only a good aerobic exercise, it is also good for the mind and spirit.
• Create an edible landscape around your home.  Instead of planting traditional landscape ornamental trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants, go ahead and plant something that you can eat or use.
• Gardening improves your property value.  A nice garden with good soil is like money in the bank as is a well-planned edible landscape that provides beauty, utility, and food for you and wildlife.
• Plan and prolong the harvest.  Growing your own vegetable, fruits, and nuts allows you to plan your harvest. For example, you can plant early, mid, and late varieties of certain vegetables or fruits.  In addition, you can extend your growing season using many inexpensive season-extending techniques.  This gives you more control over your food supply and food security.
• Supplement your livestock's diet with garden waste.  Nothing from the garden should go to waste.  Overripe or blemished fruits and vegetables make a fine meal for your livestock.
• Sell or barter the surplus.  Most of us grown too much on purpose, or maybe we just had our best year ever for a given crop.  Regardless, sell the surplus for a little extra income, or trade with a neighbor.
• Add value to your garden bounty.  Vegetables and fruits can be made into other products such as wine, vinegar, canned foods, insecticides, juice, etc.
• Propagate or grow your own stock from seed.  We're sort of in a unique position here at OOHF since we grow and sell bedding plants from the greenhouses in the spring.  We grow most of these plants from seed and end up planting our garden with the leftovers.
• Grow heiroom varieties and save your own seeds.  Open-pollinated varieties of fruits and vegetables often taste superior to hybrids and will come back true to seed.  You can also carefully select the vegetables and fruits you want to save based on a number of characteristics you wish to continue.
• Plant trees in your forest garden to serve many purposes.  For example, we plant trees for windbreaks, firewood, wildlife value, erosion control, shade, food, animal feed, fiber, etc.
• Grow a garden for craft supplies. Almost all of the perennial plants we grow, sell, and plant at OOHF can be used for dried flowers, fresh cut flowers, natural dyes, wreaths, etc.
• Reduce the size of your lawn.  Since moving to OOHF, we have reduced the lawn size by at least 50% by making pasture, chicken areas, gardens, flower beds, naturalized areas, and orchards.  We still have a long way to go, but as the lawn trees we have planted grow and mature, we'll be able to fill in under them with shade-tolerant species such as elderberry, blueberries, etc.  Besides food, the next best thing will be less grass to mow!

I'm sure I could think of a few more reasons why we garden, but I am interested in hearing from others on why you garden.

 

 

      

 

 

Last Apple Pressing for 2010

This past Saturday was a beautiful day to press apples for the last time in 2010.  The weather was sunny with the afternoon temperature reaching the low sixties.  After gathering up all the supplies and servicing the apple press, we started pressing apples around 12:30 PM and continued until around 3:00 PM.  Seven bushels of apples yielded 16.5 gallons of juice, which we halved with our friends from Big Branch Farm who came out to the farm to help out and enjoy the wonderful fall day.  The apple blend we used for this batch of sweet cider included Rome, Nittany, Pink Lady, York, and Granny Smith.  This combination of apples made a nice blend that was both tart and sweet, and had a wonderful apple aroma.  Now it's time to clean up the apple press for the last time this year and store it until next fall.  This was our best year yet for apple pressing with a total yield of just over 50 gallons of sweet cider for the year.  It is surely a sad time, but I'm glad to be finished with apple pressing for the year and am ready to move on to the next adventure.

Yields from New Seed Garlic

Last fall, actually in late November, we planted seed garlic from a variety of new-to-us types and have broken up the bulbs for replanting today.  Before replanting this year, we decided to weigh the cloves just to see what our yield was for last year.

Georgian Crystal:  Two pounds of seed garlic returned 2.75 pounds of seed

German Red:  1/2 pound of seed garlic returned two pounds of seed

Romanian Red: 1/2 pound of seed garlic returned 1.25 pounds of seed

Siberian:  1/2 pound of seed garlic returned one pound of seed

Thermadrone:  1/2 pound of seed garlic returned 2.5 pounds of seed

Even though the yield seems a little low to me (I don't have anything to compare it to though), we are pleased with the results and hope to increase the yield substantially next year.  This crop saw some real weather extremes this past season with snow covering it for three months, then no moisture and high heat from late May to mid-July.  Because we rotate our crops, I'll be planting the garlic in a place this year that has traditionally returned higher yields on most crops.