We hope you’ll join us on the farm on Saturday, November 4th from 9am-12pm for the Live Well Health and Fitness Expo! Hosted in partnership with the Jordan Ranch Lifestyle Team, this event will feature 20 local vendors, live music, activities, food trucks, and of course, our Farm Stand. We’ll be offering special veggie kits and recipes at the event to inspire you to cook with our seasonal produce. This event is free of charge and open to the public so we hope to see you there!

Fall plantings continued this week as we prepared more of our beds. We were excited to direct-seed a row of snap peas in the field, and as you can see below, they’re already germinating! Just like with our bush beans, we’re able to sow both spring and fall successions of snap peas in our climate. These snap peas will take between 50-60 days to yield the first harvest. Assuming we don’t get a hard freeze before the end of the year, we should have some for you by mid-December! 

In order to have a steady supply of crops throughout any given season, we seed multiple successions in the greenhouse. It’s hard to believe we’re already on our third round of fall planting! This round included scallions (one of Farmer Anna’s favorites!), spinach, kohlrabi, fennel, lettuces, and Tokyo Bekana (pictured below). All of these crops will thrive in the cooler temperatures of fall and early winter and lend delicious diversity to our harvests.

In Season at the Farm Stand: Bok Choy, Swiss Chard, Arugula, Radishes, Eggplant, and Okra

Coming Soon: Bush Beans, Kale, and Turnips. 

We are incredibly excited to announce that we will have rainbow carrot bunches for you at the farm stand this weekend! While the freeze at the end of last year slowed down their growth, it also left them nice and sweet. Certain crops like carrots will convert their starches into sugar in freezing weather as a way to protect their cells and prevent damage. Lucky for us, that natural defense mechanism yields a sweeter carrot! Farmer Alex recommends picking up a bunch and either roasting them with za’atar or pureeing them into a smooth and silky soup along with some coconut milk and your favorite spices.

Are you curious what it takes to grow food year-round in our climate? Or maybe you’re interested in immersing yourself in the environment of a small local farm? Come volunteer with us! We welcome volunteers on the farm on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays from 9am-noon throughout the year. Our awesome volunteers help us with myriad tasks around the farm planting like planting, weeding, and harvesting. If you’re interested, please send us an email at JordanRanch@Agmenity.com.

Sugar snap peas just made their way back into season as well! While peas are often grown as a spring crop, our high tunnel allows us to extend their season. That means we’re able to grow and harvest peas for you during the winter! Sugar snap peas are one of our favorite veggies to snack on raw, especially with hummus. If you’d like to enjoy them cooked, Farmer Anna recommends stir-frying them with some of our other veggies and hoisin sauce for a quick and flavorful side dish.

In Season at the Farm Stand: Sugar Snap Peas, Rainbow Carrots, Arugula, Scallions, Lettuce, Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, Kale, Purple Broccoli, Cauliflower, Beets, Turnips, Watermelon Radishes, and Cilantro.

The sun is plentiful and the temperatures are pleasant making it the perfect time to catch up on some transplanting this week. This will be our last round of winter crops for the season before we shift gears for spring. Among the varieties planted thus far are Romaine lettuce, kohlrabi, dill, and cilantro. We also seeded a colorful mix of orange, yellow, and purple carrots along with some beets.

New to the lineup this week are sugar snap peas. Their crunch and sweetness has been a delicious and welcome contrast to our winter vegetables. We have a mix of purple and green snap peas that are perfect for snacking, adding to salads, and a quick stir-fry. Or, you could try them in this pasta dish alongside lemon and ricotta. Make sure to stop by the farm stand to get your own first taste of spring!

We have several crops on the harvesting horizon that we’re super excited to share with you. Here’s what you can expect over the next few weeks as we transition from winter to spring: radishes, arugula, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, spring onions, and cone cabbage. Check out the baby radish just beginning to peek out of the soil in the photo above!

Did you know that you can use our self-serve farm stand option anytime you have a hankering for some of our produce? While we love being able to see everyone in person at our farm stand on Saturdays from 10am-noon, we also want to make it as convenient as possible for you to shop. That’s where our self-serve option comes in! There are detailed instructions above the I-pad so that the process is quick and simple.

In Season: Sprouting Broccoli, Kale, Cabbage, Spinach, Beets, Snap Peas, Rainbow Chard, Collard Greens, and Little Gem Lettuce

The peas in the high tunnel are flowering which means we’re really close to the first harvest. Check out the beautiful flowers on our Royal snap peas in the photo above! We have a mix of snow peas, sugar snap peas, and shelling peas growing. Both snow peas and sugar snap peas yield peas in edible pods. Shelling peas don’t produce edible pods and must be shelled (hence the name) in order to be enjoyed. We can’t wait to share the first pea harvest of the year with you!

The arrival of another frost kept us busy with preparations this week. This involves making sure both the greenhouse and high tunnel are sealed and susceptible crops in the field are covered with frost cloth. Though freezing temperatures have the potential to damage our crops, they also have some benefits. They help to eliminate or lessen certain pests like margin beetles and aphids. And, they can enhance the taste of crops like carrots and kale since their cells will begin to convert starch to sugar in order to protect themselves from freezing, which adds a delicious sweet note to their flavor.

The time has finally come to bid farewell to the tomatoes in the high tunnel. These tomatoes were planted as a fall succession last year and have been giving us a steady supply of fruit throughout fall and winter! We’ll be removing them in order to make way for the next round of tomatoes. Before they go, we’ll be harvesting as many green tomatoes as we can. You’ll be able to purchase both green and ripe tomatoes at the farm stand this Saturday. Make sure to stock up because we won’t have any tomatoes for you for a while!

In Season: Cauliflower, Cabbage, Broccoli, Carrots, Beets, Kale, Little Gem Lettuce Heads, Green Slicer Tomatoes, and Ripe Slicer Tomatoes.

November 11th, 2021

‘Tis the season for all things green on the farm! We currently have 9 different leafy greens in season at the moment, including the newest on our harvesting list, gai lan (pictured below). Gai lan, also called Chinese broccoli or Chinese kale, yields thick bluish-green leaves with thick stems. If you look at the image above, you’ll see all of these leafy greens laid out. Here are the varieties from left to right: collard greens, arugula, Tokyo bekana, gai lan, kale, tatsoi, baby bok choy, mustard greens, and lettuce.

Our slicing tomato varieties are just starting to yield mature fruits which means both slicing and cherry varieties are in season. Tomatoes can easily be preserved for enjoyment during the winter months through canning or the more simple route, freezing. When preparing them for freezing, you can either cook them down into a paste or sauce first, or roast them until caramelized. We highly recommend picking up extras at the next farm stand because they won’t be in season for much longer depending on how low our overnight temperatures get!

Our fall succession of snap peas is coming right along. Snap peas are yet another crop we can plant in both spring and fall in our growing climate. As you can see in the photo, the snap pea plants have just reached the bottom of the trellis. At this point, they’ll continue their vertical climb up the trellis using their tendrils. We expect them to start flowering within the next week or two!

Currently In Season: Cherry Tomatoes, Slicer Tomatoes, Kale, Tokyo Bekana, Arugula, Lettuce Mix, Tatsoi, Baby Bok Choy, Collard Greens, Mustard Greens, Gai Lan, Hakurei Turnips, Shishito Peppers, Eggplant, Yellow Squash, and White Icicle Radishes

April 14th, 2021

We planted four rows of peanuts this week! We are trialing four different peanut varieties: Texas Red and White, Tennessee Red Valencia, Carwile’s Virginia, and Georgia. Both the Texas Red and White and Tennessee Red Valencia varieties are suited to growing in clay-heavy soils like ours so we will be eager to see how they perform compared to the other two. Peanuts are members of the legume family and like most legumes, they are capable of fixing beneficial nitrogen to the soil. This allows us to simultaneously improve our soil fertility while growing a food crop.

Remember our Hopi Turquoise corn that we planted? It has put on a lot of growth over the past couple of weeks! We decided to get a head start on our winter squash crop and interplant our corn with acorn squash. This is a nod to the “Three Sisters” system of companion planting among various indigenous groups in North America. The Three Sisters consisted of the three main agricultural crops: winter squash, corn, and climbing beans. Each crop provided a benefit for the others as they grew and once they were harvested and enjoyed together, they provided a source of complex carbohydrates, essential fatty acids, and all nine essential amino acids.

When we planted our sugar snap peas earlier in the year, we decided to trial an English shelling pea variety called Mr. Big. Typically, English shelling peas do not like our growing climate as it often gets too warm too quickly here in the spring. We were pleasantly surprised to see this crop succeed and give us one humble yet sizable harvest! These peas will be going to James Beard Award-Winning Chef Justin Yu so that he can work his culinary magic. As for our sugar snap peas, this will most likely be their last week at the farm stand so make sure you stop by on Saturday to scoop some up!

Our spring crops are beginning to wind down so here’s what’s on the harvesting horizon: green beans, tomatoes (check out those Midnight Snack cherry tomatoes in the photo!), summer squash, potatoes, cucumbers, and peppers.

If you’re out and about and want to support restaurants that are using our produce, check out the following: Ostia, UB Preserv, Nancy’s Hustle, Better Luck Tomorrow, and Brasil.

March 31st, 2021

We are pleased to report that we will be making the first official sugar snap pea harvest this week which means these lovely spring veggies will make their debut at the farm stand on Saturday! Though our sugar snaps were set back a bit due to the freeze, they recovered beautifully and are now yielding plenty of sweet pods. The sugar snap pea produces an edible pod which means you can eat the entire thing rather than shelling them for the peas inside. Sugar snaps can be enjoyed raw in salads or as a vehicle for your favorite dip. They can also be cooked, just make sure to keep it brief so their vibrant green color and sweet flavor stays intact.

Remember the perennial beds we mentioned back in this post? We planted them this week with Mexican mint marigold, lavender, lemon thyme, sage, onion chives, rosemary, and bay laurel. We left four feet of space between each herb so that we have room for annual intercropping. For the current season, we’re intercropping our herbs with zinnias. Our goal with this bed is to eventually have a steady supply of fresh herbs throughout the year for our farm stand, to provide food for pollinators, and to attract predatory insects that will help to keep unwanted pest populations in check. The zinnias we’ll be growing this season will also give us a source of beautiful cut flowers.

Our blackberries put on quite a bit of growth over the past month so we took some time over the past week to ensure the canes have trellis support. Though blackberries can grow and sprawl on the ground, trellising ensures adequate air flow and makes it much easier to harvest when the time comes. The variety we have growing is “Ouachita”, a thornless variety that yields large, sweet berries. While trellising, we spotted quite a few blooms on our blackberries which is a sign that we’re not far from our first berry harvest.

If you’re out and about and want to support restaurants that are using our produce, we delivered a lettuce mix to Yelo and mixed greens to Squable.