Tonopah Rob's Vegetable Farm

Here’s a recipe using fresh fennel, green garlic, chard, and lemon for those of you looking for something to use the fennel I currently have available. This combination of ingredients makes for a fantastic healthy side dish. I found the recipe at FineCooking with credit going to Nancy Oakes. I have modified it slightly.

• 3 lbs Swiss chard 
• Salt
• 3 to 4 thinly sliced fennel bulbs, plus 1/2 cup chopped fronds
• 2 medium lemons
• 6 Tbs. olive oil
• 6 medium cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced or green garlic to your liking
• Black pepper
• 1/2 cup freshly shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano (shave with a vegetable peeler) – I skipped this, didn’t have any!

Cut off chard stalks but keep them as we will use them. Thinly slice the stalks and set aside. Chop the chard leaves into large pieces. Keep stalks and leaves separate. Remove the stems of the fennel and thinly slice the bulbs. You can also use the stems if they are tender, bite into one to figure it out. Chop the fronds into pieces.

In a large pot, bring salted water to boil over high heat. Add the sliced fennel and chard stalks, cook for 3 minutes. Add the chard leaves and cook for 3 more minutes. Drain in colander and set aside.

Grate the zest from the lemons and set aside. Cut the top and bottom ends off the lemons, with the lemon standing on end cut the peel off, try to remove all the white pith. Cut the lemon segments from the membranes and set aside.

Heat the olive oil and garlic in the pot you boiled the water in over medium heat. As the garlic begins to sizzle, add the fennel fronds and the lemon segments, cook stirring often for about a minute. Add the chard/fennel mix and cook until hot. Stir in lemon zest, add salt and pepper to taste. If you have the parmigiano, sprinkle on the chard after dishing up this tasty treat.

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Veggie list in a just a moment. Today is a milestone on my blog as you can see that just above is the first video ever posted on my site. John Wise, my photographer friend and all around blog guy was out at the farm yesterday, March 3rd, and spent nearly three hours video taping bugs, chickens, flowers, veggies, and a bunch of other stuff. He was testing out his new camera, a Canon T2i that records 1080p high definition video (he’s the technical guy who told me all this). After recording about 17GB of short clips, he rushed home, uploaded them to his computer and spent the better part of the night and most of the first half of today assembling the finished six and a half minute long video. The music was composed by Joe Hisaishi for the movie Kikujiro and is titled “Summer”.

I hope you enjoy taking a peek at my farm from a perspective I have been able to enjoy over the years but that the casual visitor on a farm tour typically does not have the time to investigate in the detail that John has been able to capture. I would love to hear from visitors what they think about video on my site. John and I have discussed adding more video if there is an interest, so let me know – feedback is greatly welcomed.

On the tables this Saturday and Sunday are the following:

• Heirloom Spinach
• Fresh herbs – dill, cilantro, oregano
• Salad Mix
• Swiss Chard
• Radishes
• Watermelon Radishes
• Salad Sweeties
• Carrots
• Beets
• Red Onions
• Green Garlic
• Fresh Eggs
• Delicious New Red Potatoes
• Frenchies
• Mustard Greens
• Grapefruit
• Assorted Lettuce Heads
• and a few surprises.

Sunday at the market in the Ace Hardware parking lot on Estrella Parkway and the 10 freeway the following vendors will be joining me: Joe the fish man, Sassy Salsa, Great Harvest Bread Co., and The Tamale Store. Call 623-386-3033 if you have any questions. Enjoy the weekend.

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I am back. The short trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico for the farming conference was fun but there ain’t nothing more fun than picking fresh strawberry’s and this weekend I’ll have some. Be warned, my berries are popular, don’t be surprised if I sell out Saturday and come Sunday you don’t find any at the Estrella Parkway location – you could always just come out to the farm stand.

For the weekend:

• Heirloom spinach mix-best I’ve ever had!!
• All lettuce mix
• Mustard greens
• Salad radishes
• Watermelon radishes
• Salad sweeties
• Green onions
• Cilantro
• Basil
• Rosemary
• Dill
• Oregano
• Sweet, really sweet carrots
• Beets
• Fresh Eggs-oh my, the girls have been busy!!
• Strawberries-huge red berries and some smaller
• Grapefruit
• Tangelos
• Assorted lettuce heads
• Frenchies
• Maybe if all goes as planned — new red potatoes, beautiful fresh cut flower bouquets, fennel, green garlic, baby red and green onions. No surprises this week.

The farm stand opens at 8 a.m. to noon. Cash, checks, credit/debit are welcome but no wooden nickels – sorry. Please come early for the good stuff, I mean it’s all good. BTW, I have opened two new spots for my CSA program.

If you can’t make it to the farm stand then come on out /over to the Ace Hardware store on Estrella Parkway in Goodyear on Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. There will be plenty of veggies and lots of great vendors selling all kinds of good food. See ya.

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Dear Veggie Lovers,

This weekend sees Jerry the Farm Manager and me, Tonopah Rob going to New Mexico for the annual Farm to Table Organic Farming Conference. Without us here there is no way for me to offer fruits and veggies for sale at the two markets, hence the markets will be closed this weekend February 20 and 21. Rest assured, the following weekend business returns to normal. My apologies for those who may have missed the chance to stock up for this week. I hope to see you all again come February 27 and 28.

Sincerely,

Tonopah Rob

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I know, our parents told us we’d grow carrots in our ears if we didn’t keep them clean. I swear I keep mine clean, have so for many a year, but I admit, somehow I have broccoli coming out of my ears. Don’t try writing me to correct me, I am certain it is not cauliflower ear that afflicts me, never been a boxer. So I am sure it is broccoli. Don’t pity me, I am not here looking for donations for medical help (although after reading this a second time I can see some of the readership thinking that might be just what I need) but I am hoping for a few strong shoppers to come along and help relieve me of this burden of more broccoli than any one person should be in possesion of. For your efforts, I promise not to get into the details about the snowballing cauliflower I have going on out here. Ok, that was farm humor, get it, snowballing as in the type of brassica, Snowball Cauliflower – keep your groans to yourselves. Guess my humor is kind of cornball, OMG isn’t that funny too, you know, CORN – the kind you eat, not the band, youngsters. I better get serious here or the people who are visiting my blog might get impatient with this nonsensical banter and get the idea a good beeting around the head and shoulders might help get things serious around here….beet, head (like lettuce), I kill me. [20 minutes later] – I sat here trying to find some way, any way, to come up with some quality Swiss chard or radish humor and have been left short. If there are any aspiring writers out there who could help with future blog entries and some side-splitting laughs regarding veggies, I’m all ears – aaaahhhh there I go again, ears, as in corn.

And now for something completely different. This Valentines Day weekend all my fruits and veggies will be heart shaped for your loved ones. You may never have thought of giving veggies as a Valentines day gift, then again never before has a farmer delivered heart shaped lettuce, beets, carrots, even the eggs were laid in heart shape – some I have even pierced with a little arrow and Jerry has been busy writing little messages on them just like on the candy hearts, things like; Two Hearts, Kiss Me, Marry Me, and the ever popular Love Me Tender. So come out to the Farm Stand out here in Tonopah on Saturday or the Farmers Market we have set up on Estrella Parkway on Sundays and feel the love, share the love, be the love.

Attention: Yes I am open Valentines Day weekend – but I will be closed February 20 & 21 to attend a farming conference – sorry, it is not a writing conference. The veggie list:

• Swiss Chard
• Cilantro
• Amazingly sweet carrots
• Other fresh herbs
• Salad Sweeties
• Beets
• Frenchies
• Watermelon Radishes
• Daikons-you should try crock potting a roast and use one or two for seasoning
• Super delicious broccoli
• Snowball Cauliflower
• Assorted Lettuce Heads
• All kinds of really sweet citrus
• The freshest eggs-all laid in the U.S.A.
• Salad Mix
• Green Garlic-this variety has been in my family for over 95 years. Great-Great Grandma brought it over from the old country-Sicily!!
• Super duper yummy red green onions.
• So stock up on your veggies this week because we won’t see you for two weeks.

For the Sunday shoppers at the ACE Hardware parking lot where we set up the old blue tents the following vendors will be joining me:

• SASSY SALSA
• JOE THE FISH MAN
• GREAT HARVEST BREAD CO.
• MADE BY BEES – Oh my!! You’ve got to try his home made honey mustard. I was a ketchup freak and now I’m going mustard freak.
• THE TAMALE STORE
• THE FUDGE LADY
• CROW’S DAIRY-The feta is yummy.

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Best market ever! That is how I would describe this last weekend. So many of my veggies sold out, so many familiar and just as many new faces lining up to partake in the best farmers market in Phoenix, Arizona and beyond.  Your support for what I do and the enthusiasm you greeted all of the new vendors to Sunday’s market is nothing less than wonderful. For those of you looking for a little extra prod to get up and come out to Buckeye on Estrella Parkway this Sunday, maybe it will be the Cupcake Lady and her People Chow or those scrumptious Red Velvet Cupcakes that will motivate you. Joe The Fish Man and his smoked salmon,  just think about it. The Great Harvest Bread Company has already gotten great reviews by some of my visitors and is filling a gap left open when we all lost Joanne the Bread Lady from last years market. The Tamale Store handed out samples galore that sprung open wallets to buy tamales galore. Sassy Salsa was set up next to my tent and let me tell you, that tent next door was nothing if it wasn’t SASSY! Fabulous Fudge will be back, I have heard it on good rumor that the Dark Chocolate with Raspberry will have you swooning for more. And finally, Made By Bees, just what the heck is that? Let me tell you, these guys make sugar-free fruit butters with apple juice as the sweetener. If you want to taste the best fruit butter since jam and you think that all too often jams and jellies taste too sweet and not fruity enough, well, you get over to the Made By Bees tent and demand to sample all of the fruit butters – the Sugar-Free Apricot Butter is to die for, or is it the Cherry Almond or maybe the Blackberry or…..

Oh yeah, then there’s my vegetables, and fruit, eggs, and a bit of honey. First to disappear last weekend were the Rainbow Mix Carrots – woosh and they were gone. I might have taken 10 pounds of cauliflower home with me. Keeping up with the spinach flying off the table was a busy helper who raced around all morning ensuring my customers were being helped by Jerry and I while the fresh veggies stayed well stocked for your shopping fun – thanks, Caroline. This Saturday here on my farm in Tonopah, where free farm tours are still free, and then on Sunday on Estrella Parkway, I will be offering the following:

• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Assorted Lettuce Heads
• Mangtanghongs – Chinese rose radishes
• Spinach
• Swiss Chard
• Corn Mache
• All Lettuce Mix
• Basil
• Cilantro
• Dill
• Rosemary
• Baby Beets
• All kinds of citrus
• Salad Sweeties
• Frenchies
• Watermelon Radishes
• Daikon Radishes
• Carrots
• Green Tomatoes
• Fresh Eggs
• Maybe a surprise or two.

Yes, I take WIC and FMNP. I also accept credit and debit and that other lovely green stuff – cash. Call 623-386-3033 if you have questions or need directions. Of course you can find directions below in most of the other veggie lists and above on the link that says, “Directions To The Farm”. Looking forward to another great weekend with all of you truly great customers.

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Kneeling in the dirt, knife in hand I cut fresh cauliflower in the morning light as the rooster reassures his girls that indeed the new day is here. The white crispy heads of this brassica seem to grow more beautiful with each successive plant as I pull back the leaves before making the harvest cut.

It is still a brisk 52 degrees as I get to the tomatoes, inside the hoophouse it is a toasty 82 with nearly 90% humidity – I’m sweating. Beads of perspiration form salty streams that run into my eyes and drip from my brow as I stoop over fragrant tomato plants picking red and green fruit.

The flats of tomatoes look a bit rough. The freezing nights and high winds that ripped into the hoophouse a month ago have taken their toll. Some customers will turn away at the less than perfect sight of these nightshade fruits but I still prefer my winter grown little uglies to the red sacks of water stores dare call tomatoes.

Crowns of broccoli reach for the sky as I step into their plot to arrest them, cutting them down before parading them off to the market. The sheriff farmer’s work of corralling these tall green outlaws never seems to end. By the end of the roundup I’ll probably pull in a couple hundred pounds of broc.

Over in the carrot plot the shovel slices into the earth and with the downward pressure the garden tool is pulled close to the chest wedging a scoop of soil to break the grip of the carrots below. Bunches are taken up by the handful with a yank of the greens, upward and out. The carrots try to hold fast to the clumps of dirt binding them together, but will soon emerge to see their first light of day. Stacked in roughneck containers they’ll be dropped into a cleansing bath of fresh cold water before being packed for the weekend market.

The containers start to stack up near the house. Two, three, four containers of cauliflower, I could probably pick more. My best looking broccoli in eons is abundant, dark green, and sweet – not using chemical fertilizers or pesticides there is no fear of popping a small crown into my mouth unwashed to sample and be certain that what my eyes see, my taste buds can be in concert with.

The harvest continues. The onions could have used another week or two. But these petite table onions are going to please and sell out to those lucky few who arrive early on market day to snag the few bunches that will be on hand. Two months from now the remaining onions left in the plot will have hopefully matured to full onionhood, embodying everything a fat bulb onion should be.

I inspect the beets again. Poor year for beets. Oh the greens look good and there are those folks who still appreciate a nice saute of beet greens with a little butter, honey, and walnuts. But the beets below are tiny at best. Won’t see much profit from this crop.

A new vegetable to the farm this year that is performing fantastically is the Daikon radish. Pulling an edible root that has crept down to as much as two feet into the desert soil is a sight and sensation maybe only someone familiar with the difficulty in making food grow in such a hostile environment can truly appreciate. Many will ask, what do I do with it? May I suggest making a Daikon Slaw: grate the Daikon, add some thinly sliced red onion, some crosswise cut snow peas if you have them and sprinkle with a small amount of sesame oil, rice vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar, salt, and a shake or two of black sesame seeds.

One of my helpers busies himself hand cutting peppery mustard greens. Osaka purple, India curly leaf, and broad leaf mustard leaves are bound together, secured by rubberband, stacked in a container to be rinsed and put into cold storage for the next 24 hours. Another poor seller that customers don’t much understand, these greens are terrific in a simple saute with onions, garlic, olive oil, and a small dash of sesame oil. Rachel Ray over on the Food Network recommends braising them in a large skillet over medium heat: brown a few slices of bacon, add chopped mustard greens, 2 tablespoons of white vinegar, 2 teaspoons of sugar, coarse salt and 2 cups of chicken broth, simmer for 20 minutes.

In the lemon tree one must avoid thorns of extraordinary puncturing length that seem intent on making a skewering of the hand that reaches in to steal the tree’s fruit. Grapefruits on the other hand welcome the picker as it appreciates the lightening of its heavy burden supporting hundreds of pounds of the plump sweet yellow orbs.

Throughout this routine the chickens continue to cluck in announcement at the successful laying of yet another egg. The first half of the day is the most productive for these prolific fowl who offer their eggs to our breakfast tables. Every so many hours someone with basket in tow makes the rounds to collect the still warm brown and white eggs.

Back to the citrus, oranges are ripe for picking, tangelos not quite yet. My new peach trees might begin to produce harvestable fruit next year. Still to go into the ground are my new plum trees (three different varieties), apricots, desert gold peach, ruby red grapefruit, Bartlett pear, Lisbon lemon, and tangerine.

Still to be harvested this afternoon will be the spinach, chard, salad mix, and cilantro. Finding room in the walk-in where free space is becoming rarer by the hour will be the challenge of the day. The bad weather that kept us from harvesting last week has left the farm with an abundance not often seen here following the week to week picking that can leave me wondering if I will have enough for the farm stand the next week. This weekend the customers will be offered a bounty of fresh all-natural winter harvested veggies that are a unique treat for us desert dwellers who can grow nearly year round. And you thought only cactus and cranky hermits grow out here.

It’s now after 4:00 pm. Lunch, which was also breakfast, came late at 3:00 pm. Picking 75 pounds of broccoli florets was a longer process than hoped for but they do look awesome. The lettuce is being hand cut. This allows me to selectively take the best and largest heads. Anyway, you don’t want any of the greens to stay in the ground too long as sooner rather than later they are going to bolt, meaning they will send a stem up the middle of the plant bearing seeds with the end result that the veggie will become bitter or fibery. I have two and a half bins of lettuce and as always the nagging feeling that maybe I won’t have enough.

Jerry is cutting spinach in the next plot with my little electric harvester. After that is finished, the spinach will be dumped in a large trough that looks roughly like a hot tub where it will be washed and to the best of our ability we try to remove the majority of weeds. But time and daylight only goes so far. Of course a herbicide could solve this problem, then again the people who shop with me do so precisely because of the nurture, care, and love I pour into my farm.

The late afternoon sun sets the farm aglow. The various plants with their myriad of colors standing at different heights all catch and reflect the light in a million different ways. By now the chickens are quiet, the birds’ songs have changed, they are lighter, maybe chirpier than the complex morning songs. The doves add their song to the soundtrack and the movie of life on the winter farm rolls on. This golden hour of light makes me take a step back and I realize the luck I have to be here and the honor I feel that so many of you entrust me to offer you some of the best food I can possibly produce.

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We gotta purple carrots, ana da orange one’s a too, you’se guys sees dose yellow one’s, well I can tell yea they are sum ah duh best carrots you gonna try. Don’t make me make you try ‘em, cuz you know what happens when you’s make someone make you do something you know you should be making yourself do, well it makes someone angry you don’t want to be makin someone angry so just do the right ting and make yourself go to my buddy’s farm stand this weekend and trya deeze carrots – or someone’s gonna get whacked. Dat’s right, the old two carrot fongula – one for each nose hole and you know that’sa gonna hurt.

Hey Uncle Guido, get outta here. Sheesh, the stuff I have to put up with here, one week it’s the cat hacking my account and posting blog entries, and then the slightly off center brother of my father who watched one episode too many of the Sopranos begins to think he has the chops to write for my website. Where do I find good help around here?

Sorry again about last week’s closing, the rains, as many of you know, were torrential. Matter of fact, my farm is still not dried out. The local dry riverbed, the Hassayampa, was running heavy last week filling nearly the breadth of the river bed. The good news is that the cauliflower looks spectacular, none of the aphid problems that I had last year. The broccoli is AWESOME and I have a ton of it. While I was catching up on chores this past week I dug a bunch of new holes for the wide variety of fruit trees I’ll be planting in the next days. I’ll try to tell everyone more about that development in the next days. For now I need to post a quick veggie list and get some sleep, it’s almost 11:30 p.m. as I write this….zzzzz.

• Sweet Carrots
• Large Daikon Japanese Radishes
• Watermelon Radishes
• Amazing Broccoli
• Beautiful Cauliflower
• Beet Greens with Baby Beets
• Salad Sweeties
• Frenchies – Baby Flat Top Turnips
• Lemons
• Grapefruit
• Oranges
• Chard
• Salad Mix
• Red Radishes – sweet and crunchy
• Corn Salad – also known as Mache
• Mustard Greens
• Fresh Eggs – Some Jumbo!
• and of course a surprise or two.

Oh sure there’s something I’m forgetting to tell you here, but I’m sure if there is anything else you need to know, like a reminder to bring back egg containers, or bring your shopping bags, or maybe that I accept checks, cash, credit, and debit cards, well it could be I’m forgetting to tell you my phone number is 623-386-3033 and I’ll be open this Saturday at my farm in Tonopah and Sunday on Estrella Parkway, if I’m forgetting any of that, I hope you can find just what you are looking for by reading more of my website below. Seeya this weekend, The Sleepy Farmer.

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