September 2017 - Archie's Acres

September 28, 2017

Farmer’s Market Season is quickly coming to an end.

End of Season One as Market Gardeners

Fall seems to finally be here and we’re happy to have it! Tomorrow will be our last farmer’s market of the year, which is just in time since the cool evening temps and dwindling day light have our garden winding down for the year. Stop by and see us at Rockford City Market tomorrow evening.

It really is hard to believe the season is over already, and what a great season it’s been! The relaxed pace of the Rockford market allowed us to work out display, setup and marketing kinks that we wouldn’t have had time to learn in a Chicago market. And we met some great local farmers who had booths near us who shared some great growing and selling advice. All in all, the Rockford City Market was the perfect 1st time market for us.

Great Lessons for the Road Ahead

We both agree that our first year of farmer’s market participation has been a great success. We learned so much from the farmers/vendors we met, and the customers taught us through their purchases what we should be growing more of. Plus, the garden itself taught us endless lessons about farming. We figured out what produce to focus most of our attention on in the future (people LOVE beets!). Some plants didn’t make the cut for next year, like broccoli and cauliflower; they take up too much space and extremely hot weather sends them to seed if you don’t happen to be standing next to them to cut them at that exact moment. Designer heirloom tomatoes – 25% are all color and no taste, so we’ve kicked out the ones that are strictly pretty. We want color AND taste! And people love snap peas and colorful carrots! I’ve heard that every farmer says this but, we mean it, we can’t wait to plant our garden next year! It’s going to be awesome!!!

Other highlights from this past summer is that we’ve mastered the art of packing up our car in less than 5 minutes at the end of the market. We have figured out a market display that gets a lot of attention from customers. (Mainly because we have pictures of the chickens, goats, Tilly and Archie all over the place.) And most importantly, we had fun! We make the Rockford City Market a “date night” where we just have fun and enjoy the live music while hanging in our booth.

Thank you to all our customers, friends and family who came to visit our booth this summer! We’ll see you again next year!

September 14, 2017

Hops Harvest Time!

We told you last week about all the creative ways we used the pears and apples coming out of our orchard. But now we’re focusing on our ripening hops. We have Chinook, Cascade and Centennial varieties reaching maturity.

We grew hops – now what?

The first step is to cut down the bines. They climb 14+ feet up ropes that we attached to our garage. Then we take each hop cone off the bine and lay it out on a screen to dry for 3 days. A few times a day, we fluff and move the hops on the screen to make sure they dry evenly. Bonus – our hands smell like hops!

You don’t want to let them dry for longer than that because the longer they are out, the more they oxidize (and lose their hoppy goodness).

We’ve been weighing out the hops and packing them into vacuum-sealed bags to freeze for use in future batches of home-brewed beer. But we’ve also been grinding them up and using them to scent our homemade candles! We have a cascade hop scented candle that is out of this world! If you love the smell of fresh hops, you’ll love it! In the next few weeks, we plan to have some of our candles available on our Shop page. They’d make great Christmas gifts for any beer lover!

Our plan is to add a few plants every year until we have enough for ourselves and to share with other beer brewing nerds. Eventually maybe we’ll even sell to some of the great craft breweries in the area.

September 8, 2017September 8, 2017

September is Pear & Apple Harvest Time!

So much deliciousness, so little time

It is harvest time here at Archie’s Acres since our pears and apples are all ready this week. And like most plants on this farm, when they’re ready we have to be ready to pick them. This farm is filled with hungry opportunists looking for a quick meal. And our orchard is DELICIOUS!!

This orchard came with the farm so we’re not entirely sure what kind of pears and apples we have. Our guess, based on their soft, sweetness is that they are Bartlett pears. Since they all went ripe on Saturday we’ve been frantically trying to eat, use or preserve them.

We made a cider.

And Pear Apple Sauce!

And the chickens get the mushy ones!

It’s a win win win!

We’ve identified 2 varieties of trees in our orchard as Golden Delicious and Jonathan apples. The Golden Delicious apples are great for snacking. While the Jonathan apples are perfect for pies since they’re quite tart. We have 2 other varieties of apples that we’re still not 100% sure about. We’re using them for apple sauce, pies and the pear apple hard cider that we made yesterday!!

This is our first go at hard cider and we can’t wait to try it!! If it works, we’ll be sure to share the recipe with everyone.

We’ll be at the Rockford City Market today. Please note the hours have changed and the market closes at 7:30 now; it’s too dark for it to stay open until 8:30.

Also, if you’re interested in participating in our CSA next year (farm fresh goodies delivered 1 or 2x/month), please complete the short form on our Shop page so we can tailor next year’s seed order.

Month: September 2017