Early Winter '25 chilled out lettuce relief
The seasonal clock has ticked into Winter and steady rain has made the grass grow, formed puddles on the driveway and is filling up our water tanks for our gardens and house and the dam for the animal troughs. The temperatures are starting to drop, with a cold snap arriving today. Being in Northland, when I say 'cold snap' it means a high of 13 and a low of 5 (brrrrr ... out comes the beanie), that's pretty cold for us. Each winter we might get an occasional light frost, but it rarely gets truly cold.
I understand it's easy for people to think of lettuce as a summer crop, because we all like to eat a refreshing salad when the days are hot. And we do grow lettuce all year round, but it's definitely a challenge to grow in the heat. Once reliably cool temperatures set in - like now, the lettuce grow in a calm and orderly manner ... so right now we're feeling pretty PHEW - it's a relief that they have chilled out after hectic summer growing. Year-round eating of lettuce is more popular than it used to be when I was a kid in the 70s, salads aren't what they used to be and there are many winter salad recipes in which leafy greens play a star role.
It's a never ending part of our job to make sure our crops continuously produce. Generally, as long as we're sowing both in-ground beds and pots for the hydroponics every week, we have a constant supply. We usually harvest and pack in the morning until early afternoon, then do sowing and other garden tasks in the afternoon. Cooler day temperatures make it ok for us to harvest later into later in the morning, as the produce stays cool. Harvesting crunchy, cool produce is a pleasure!
Daryn got some very nice calves at the sale yards. 24 calves from 3 different pens ... and they're a mix of breeds and colours. Visually, the standout calves of this group are of Speckled Park breed ... with black and white smudgy dotted patterns with fluffy ears and soft coats. It's always interesting to meet new calves because they all have their own personalities and it's entertaining to watch them as they make new friends and learn to be a herd together on a new farm. It doesn't take long for them to understand that Daryn will come and shift them to a new paddock every couple of days. We don't use barking dogs or motorbikes to shift them so life here is calm and quiet. Daryn just calls them and they learn to follow him to a new paddock.
As a general rule of thumb there is always in the herd: a smart intuitive leader, a couple of friendlies who'll come right up close, and an annoying thick one who over-analyses everything and takes forever to follow along to a new paddock ... or totally freaks out and takes off in the wrong direction! Sometimes there will be a 'friendly' with a ear tag that's got an actual name on it instead of a number. Of course the calf can't tell us their past - and we wonder ... were they a calf-club calf, or someone's herd favourite? Often we get an impression by the way they act they were something special to someone. When I was a kid we used to spend Winter school holidays at my Aunt and Uncles on their dairy farm. We helped feed the calves and would spend a bit of time trying to decide our favourite calf and a name to call it. It wouldn't have had anything to do with good breeding traits, more the colour and pattern on their coat and length of their eyelashes!
Probably our biggest news right now is that we have new stockists ranging our salads. This is what we've been planning and working towards to a while now and is another milestone for our business. Being able to stock more shops means we need to grow larger quantities, so we've been building more hydroponic and in-ground beds. It takes a while to do this, because we're self funded and our normal workload doesn't leave us much time for building.
Selling larger quantities of our products means longer days of harvest and packing. We're pretty much working every day of the week right now ... and I mention this not as a moan but because we have readers of this blog who want to know what it's like for us as small market gardeners. The truth is that there are periods of time that we have to work really hard to achieve the next step for our business. During these busy times we often work out more efficient ways to do our work to speed up the process. Bonus.
We're excited to announce our new stores:
Sabato ... legendary foodie heaven in Mt Eden/Newmarket. It's the most incredible food store ever, packed with the finest Artisan products sourced from around the world and here at home. Most of their suppliers are small businesses who use traditional methods of production. It's certainly an honour for Salty River Farm to be gracing Sabato's fridge. If you haven't visited Sabato before, allow some time to take in this culinary wonderland ... plenty of carparks right outside the door.
4 FARRO stores ... GREY LYNN, MAIRANGI BAY (constellation dr), SMALES FARM and MOUNT WELLINGTON. Having Farro stocking our salads means it's easier for our customers to get hold of their favourite Salty River Farm salads throughout Auckland.
It's just the beginning of Winter but the little changes of season are everywhere on our little farm. Early one morning I headed outside to begin the morning harvest. As I walked out I saw spiderwebs on fences and in trees, illuminated by the strong early morning light and cold morning's dew. During the morning as the dew dried and the sunlight softened and spread across the sky the spiderwebs became harder to see and it seemed they had magically disappeared.