News and blog
While scouting our orchards for pests and diseases, I came upon this interesting apple anomoly in our Crimson Gala block on the Weaner Farm. Consider this pic something akin to Jon Stewart's "Moment of Zen". Enjoy!
10. Why can I never remember the last verse of Woody Guthrie's "Dust Bowl Blues"?
9. What time did you turn the pump on?
8. Which sections are we irrigating tonight?
7. When are you going to be done with that pump, I'm gonna need it back.
6. Did you backflush the lines this morning?
5. How long should we extend the suction hose?
4. "How in the heck can I wash my neck if it aint gonna rain no more"
3. What time did you turn the pump on? (we'd been over this one a lot)
2. There's a chance we're gonna get some (rain) tomorrow.
1. When the #&*@%! is it going to rain?
Glad to finally have a little rain! Can I order a little more for next week?
FB
Among the more commonly asked questions at our market stands gets at the heart of an age-old debate.
Ok, so I'm exaggerating a little. Regardless, people wanna know which peaches are sweeter: yellow fleshed peaches or white fleshed peaches?
Peaches come in many shapes and size. The two most distinguishing features are yellow fleshed or white fleshed. Peaches can also be clingstone or freestone, but we've got that debate all wrapped up in this entry (link, "Ask A Grower III"). For the purposes of being thorough, I'll add that a few new peach varieties are listed as yellow fleshed and sub acid. This not withstanding, the main difference between a yellow peach and a white peach is the amount of acid in that peach.
Yellow-fleshed peaches have a rosy red cheek over a soft yellow background color. These are your "standard" peach varieties - that peach flavor you grew up with. They are very juicy, very sweet, and have a good acidic, peachy "bite". If you were using your peaches paired with something sweet like cream, ice cream and they like, you'd definitely go for these peaches. Yellow peaches are often preferred for baking pies, cobblers, and other similar deserts.
White peaches are commonly a darker, redder cheeked fruit whose background color is a soft, creamy white. These too are sweet, juicy treats. The white peaches, contrary to the yellow peaches, will not have that "bite" - that tangy, acidic counterpoint to the sweetness of the peach juices. Conversely, if you are mixing peaches with a more acidic yogurt - plain yogurt, or a mildly acidic vanilla, you may find you prefer white peaches in these instances.
So stop skirting the question, guy! Which are sweeter? Well, in the interests of full disclosure, I've always been a "yellow peach guy". That's the side of the debate I fall on. White peaches, by virtue of their lack of "bite", will seem sweeter to many. To me, they're a terrific mix-in after a few weeks of munching my favorite yellow peaches. And they are terrific if you are pairing them with a little acid. If you were measuring total sweetness by total sugars, both kinds of peaches would be similar. The best answer is that the sweetness of a peach is determined more by where it's grown, when it was picked, where it was on the tree, and which variety it came from than white or yellow. If you think the lack of acid makes them taste sweeter, you're probably right. If you think yellow peaches are just as sweet as white peaches, but with a little acidic "kick", then you're probably right too! Try both and choose for yourself!
There's a frequently vague answer to a frequently asked question!
Picture, if you will, another hot day at Three Springs Fruit Farm. Temperatures are nearing 100 and you have workers to check on before it gets too hot to continue. My Uncle John found himself in such a situation earlier this week. You're driving up to the big Honeycrisp block in Gardners to check up on somebody when you're faced with this image (left). The tops of your trees are dying! Just the tops, just one row. Your heart sinks and you start thinking what you might have done wrong. Is it fireblight? Mildew? You see the end post of the trellis is split from top to bottom and you wonder - did someone 
back in to my trellis? Did someone turn too short and whack it with a tractor or mower? Did that uproot the trees? The more you investigate, the more you start to discover that, hard as it might be to believe...
These trees got fried by a lightning strike! AC/DC might liken it to being "Thunderstruck". Either way, it's the only solution for this anomoly. The row is at the top of the hill (shortest distance for lightning), it's isolated to only one row, and it shattered every support pole and bamboo conduit in the row. The singed leaves are isolated to the places closest to that high tensile wire. There are no signs of impact on any of the split support poles - instead, they look like they were split by the maul-weilding cousin of Thor himself; right down the middle, vertically! Here are more pictures documenting this oddity! These Honeycrisp trees are going to be stunted for life. It's only a bit of consolation to have an interesting story to go along with it.
Peaches are on everyone's mind as we delve into the first pickings of the season. Curiosity with these fuzzy summer treats yielded this question, via our Twitter account:
"Is there a way for me to determine if a peach is freestone or cling just by looking at it?" - asks Kelly "Miss Peach" G. of Washington DC (@kgdc1)
Great question from a true peach enthusiast! The short answer is no, there is no sound way other than to know the variety and know its tendency. Let's examine things a little closer.
The difference between clingstone peaches and freestone peaches is little more than what you would think. For clingstone peach varieties, the flesh of the peach will cling to the stone (or pit), making it more difficult to remove. Freestone peaches separate easily from the pit, making it easier to pull out once the fruit is sliced in half. Some peach varieties, as we'll discuss later, advertise themselves as "semi-cling". As much as I'd like to tell you, our valued customers and random web watchers, that "this peach is semi-cling, not clingstone", the truth of the matter is so very few semi-cling peaches ever separate from the pit that you might as well not even make the distinction.
At the time of this writing, at the start of the 2010 peach season, our earliest ripening peach, our 'Baby Juble' peaches are clingstone. We have several earlier varieties planted who will also be cling. 'Rising Star' and 'Sentry' are next, both reportedly "semi-clingstone" and you remember what that means. 'Red Star' you will get a few more freestone peaches than other "semi-clings" but our first true freestone peach is 'John Boy'. From that point forward, all of our peaches are freestone. 'White Lady' is our first freestone white peach. We grow a mid-season clingstone called "Baby Gold #5" to make our canned peaches. If you ever had a notion to can some for yourself (to deploy some good rural verbiage), you can special request some Baby Gold #5's from us!
So which is better? Well, everyone likes freestone better, mostly because they like to pull out the pit. Truthfully, there's nothing about a freestone peach that tastes better than a clingstone. If one peach tastes better than another, it's because the variety is good, not necessarily because it fell off the pit. 'Rising Star' and 'Baby Gold #5' are two of my favorite peaches for flavor and they are clings, but I understand the preference folks have for freestone.
So to wrap things up, no, you cannot tell a clingstone from a freestone merely by a peach's appearance. You'd need to "Ask a Grower" to learn about the peaches he or she brought to market! Thanks for the question, enjoy the peaches, and keep those questions coming!
-Farmer Ben
You're reading the third entry in the series of blogs devoted to our growing methods entitled "Growing Greener". My wish for these entries to to assure you through our candor and transparency that we truly are going out of our way to provide the very best produce for you and your family. Feel free to comment or contact us with any questions. Links to other GG blogs can be found at the end of this entry.
A recent study, as published in the medical journal "Pediatrics", cites childhood exposure to organophosphate pesticides as a possible link to ADHD. As strict IPM (Integrated Pest Management) growers, a pesticide such as an organophosphate would be one of the last things we would ever want to have to spray and as a result, I'm proud to say that no organophosphate is sprayed on our crops. We would never sell anyone anything that wasn't safe to eat. Since this topic is a point of discussion in light of current events, I found this to be a terrific opportunity to address the "whats" and "whys" of the spraying we occasionally must do to prevent the failure of our crops.
First, the most difficult things we need to control in our tree fruits are diseases, not insects. We control many of our most damaging insect species with Pheromone Mating Disruption, the subject of an earlier blog. When we spray an insecticide, it's only after the results of hours of scouting and insect data has been evaluated and some sort of remedy is required (another blog topic covered earlier).
The determination of what to spray when an insecticide is required is not made on a whim. It's made based on whatever species needs controlled. We intend to control only this species and leave other species flourish when we can. During three different summers home from college, I collected insect data at the Penn State Fruit Research and Extension Center Entomology Department. The USDA and state funded program my wages supported was known as R.A.M.P (Risk Avoidance Mitigation Program). This program was devoted to the very topic in the news now - finding alternatives to organophosphate insecticides (OPs). OPs control insects because they are neurotoxins - they affect the central nervous system of the insects they control. OP insecticides have the same effect on an agroecosystem as a cannon shot - every insect is susceptible to nerve damage when these products are sprayed, whether their population was high or low, whether those insects damaged our crop or protected it. The newer products in the RAMP study might attack the insects' 
eggs or their ability to create an exoskeleton. These materials, to complete the above analogy, are like a single arrow shot directly at the problem insect ("pest"). Working in the RAMP program, I learned there was a better way than these OPs. As a volunteer in the RAMP program, my father learned how to use these softer pesticides (if an insecticide only works on eggs, you have to spray when those eggs are present - sometimes just a few weeks per year). In short, the RAMP program proved that these greener insecticides could be as effective as OPs if they are applied correctly by folks who are studying their agroecosystem and can study the lifecycles of these pests. Since these greener products are targeting specific insects, they pose very little threat to human health... I mean, except for the ones birthing offspring in external egg masses and the ones with exoskeletons, for example (if you meet this description, you might have a problem... and it'll have little to do with fruit). Having learned from these experiences, we were able to move away from these compounds years ago. While the OPs are still cheaper, we value the decreased toxicity of these products. Because of this, we allow the species that are natural enemies of these pest to flourish in our orchards, including the biological control agents we spread a few years back... but that's another blog for a different day.
The results of our forward thinking approach is that we can confidently tell all of you that the fruits and veggies you buy from us are not sprayed with these harmful compounds. As we continue to educate ourselves in the winter and partner with Penn State in their research, we'll continue to be ahead of the curve in terms of providing the safest fruits and vegetables you'll find anywhere.
Further reading on growing practices:
Growing Practices, IPM, and Food Safety
The internet can be a pretty weird place sometimes. If you ever lacked proof of this, two seperate websites had videos of me (of all people) gabbing about this and that in two weeks time!
Crop Life America wants to get the word out on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) - a passion shared by all of us here at Three Springs Fruit Farm. This seven minute video is shot during bloom season at the farm and gives you a close look at how IPM is performed in our pretty orchards. Sorry, I think my bias came through there a bit at the end.
At the time this video was shot, we were under the impression we'd be at Bethesda on Saturdays. Now we're at Silver Spring Farmers Market instead - the subject of the video posted below. Good background tunes - I need to bribe the Silver Spring buskers down to our end of the market! We've got yummy strawberries...
update (6/3/10)
Local Washington DC News 8 coverage of the FRESHFarm Markets Health & Human Services Market Grand Opening!
Those of you who might have taken our customer survey are already well aware that we are on the ball trying to specialize in the things that all of you who are reading this blog would want us to grow! Having had some discussions with customers last year about a few new crops I was considering, I'd put the orders in to plant these this year.
So, there we were cruising down I-81 South for to gather our blessed Schnozberry bushes when "thunk, boom, ^%$*", our beloved box truck staggered to a crawl in a puff of blue smoke. Multiple attempts to revive our vehicle were unsuccessful, leading us limping defeated to the AAMCO Transmissions of Harrisonburg, VA. Without belaboring the point too much, these people were as prepared to diagnose a box truck problem as they were a Saturn V rocket.
The hours crept slowly by and we got no answers or progress on the problem. Finally, convinced that these folks had no concern for how long Brian and I might be stranded, Dave decided to make a dash to retrieve us and, should we get lucky, the Schnozberry bushes.
My father arrived in record time and picked up the two of us, leaving the incapable crew of AAMCO what little was left of the day to put their heads together and see if they could find the sparkplugs (I'm probably not exaggerating). Our Schnozberry bush purveyors were open until 7pm and if we hustled, we could still retrieve the goods and (possibly, depending on their size) bring them home in his pickup truck.
It was then that fortune finally smiled on our stalwart band. We winded our way through the Blue Ridge down to the secret location at which our Schnozberry bushes were kept - arriving with 10 minutes to spare. We loaded them quickly and were soon backtracking through the mountains Northward. Schnozberries in tow, we took cause for celebration when finally we reached civilization. Shamelessly, the three road-weary travelers split equally six 9 oz. Ribeye steaks and made it home before 11pm - all in the same day.
We got the Schnozberries in the ground the very next day, in addition to the crunchberries (we'll call 'em) that had arrived by mail from parts elsewhere. We have a few pics of the exciting proceedings. Twitter followers and Facebook fans had already been made aware of these exploits. Really, a few "tweeps" probably know what these guys are! Everyone else has until at least next year until the schnozberries and crunchberries are ripe!
Farmer Ben
"The Misnomer some call 'Offseason'"
We're frequently asked about what we do in the offseason. In response to this, I've provided some quick little photo-rich quips about what happened this offseason, for example. This is taken from our weekly email for those who had thoughts of signing up and didn't know what it might entail.
Aside from pruning all of our trees (that's all of them!) and moving snow, the offseason is our chance to fix equipment, do a little long term planning, and educate ourselves on the latest and greatest in fruit growing innovations. Additionally, this year part of my offseason this year was to find between 2-3 farmers markets for us. I found four... not like I planned, but we'll go with it!
This offseason, Dave, John, and I attended over a month's worth of our time at educational meetings between the three of us. This includes large ones like Great Lakes Fruit Expo and Mid Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable Convention (where I was asked to speak) and slightly smaller ones like PASA's Farming For the Future Conference and Future Harvest 
CASA. We attended smaller county level meetings hosted by our local Extension educators. We sit on committees to raise and spend money for fruit research and promotions in our state and at USDA-ARS. One of my favorites is Fair Food's Local 
Buyer/Grower meeting at Reading Terminal Market which boasted not only many of my favorite Headhouse vendors and Piazza vendors, but Iron Chef Garces himself!
We also plan ahead, usally three years ahead, for crop rotation and planting back in with new tree fruit varieties. This will be the topic of an upcoming blog entry (with video) very soon. Essentially, we start planning now for varieties of fruit that will be in full production 10-12 years from now. Sometimes we get it right, sometimes no. We have some exciting new tree fruit varieties that should mature in the next 3-5 years - stuff planted with you folks in mind, and I wanted to get you all the skinny on how these fruit came to be.
And maybe after that, I'll reveal the identity of these awesome "mystery fruit" that we planted yesterday! Loyal twitter followers might remember me asking around about a few of these mystery fruit back in the wintertime.
So, from educational and committee meetings, advocacy time and market searches, marketing and planning, right down to the cultivating and planting that is still going on - this has been your brief glimpse into the activities of Three Springs Fruit Farm after we leave markets for the year!
We've looked far and wide, filled out dozens of applications for numerous farmers markets, and tried to figure out which opportunities to explore. It was the kind of tenuous ordeal that caused me weeks of anxiety, so believe this, I'm excited and relieved to announce this news today. Markets that we'll continue from 2009 include Kenilworth, Greenbelt, and Headhouse. New markets for 2010 include a Wednesday at the Department of Health and Human Services in DC, a Wednesday in Tacoma Park, MD, a Saturday at The Piazza at Schmidts in Northern Liberties, Philadelphia, and the wildly popular Saturday market in Silver Spring, MD.
This does mean we will not attend the Harbor East and Wakefield Park for this year. I wrote a blog entry expressing my regrets here. It was a hard decision to make - especially with no viable alternatives in the same neighborhoods. We don't enjoy bouncing around from one market to another, but the time was right to find something else. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.
While I have everyone's ear, I want to clue you in on a few other things coming down the pike. If you're reading this, you've signed up for our mailing list. This an example of the kind of email the "General Mailing List" will recieve. To recieve more regular correspondence during the season with what's available at our markets, sign up for appropriate retail listserv (Balt/DC or Philly). These weekly produce updates have been posted on the web in the past but won't be available there this year. I hope to be blogging more this year and you'll soon be able to subscribe to the blog feed, if that makes more sense than recieving weekly produce emails. Also, I hope to create an optional survey for all our subscribers so we can learn how we might serve you better!
So here's the list of our 2010 farmers markets and how to get to them. We're getting all fired up for an exciting 2010 season. Stay tuned to our blog for lots of new, exciting entries (I've been working on them in the offseason). Plus, blogs regarding all new produce we're growing for you in 2010. Thanks, as always, for supporting Three Springs Fruit Farm!
-Farmer Ben
Kenilworth Farmers Market – Towson, MD - Tuesdays 3:30 – 6:30pm, right beside Atwater’s on Kenilworth drive (directions)
Health and Human Services – 200 Independence Ave SW Washington DC - Wednesdays 2:30pm - 6:30pm - not far from the Capitol (directions)
Crossroads Farmers Market - 7676 New Hampshire Avenue Takoma Park, MD - Wednesdays 2-6pm (directions)
Silver Spring – Ellsworth Drive between Georgia Ave and Fenton Street Silver Spring, MD – Saturdays 9:00am– 1:00pm - Winter Hours 10-1 (directions)
The Piazza at Schmidts - Philadelphia, PA – Saturdays 11:00am - 3:00pm, N. 2nd Street, across from Liberties Walk. (directions)
Greenbelt Farmers Market – Greenbelt, MD – Sundays 10:00 – 2:00pm, Roosevelt Center in old city (directions)
Headhouse Farmers Market – Philadelphia, PA – Sundays 10:00 – 2:00pm, 2nd and Lombard Streets, Old City Philly (directions)