We're still here!

Though our last post was way back in June, rest assured that we're still playing in the fields! It was a busy summer, full of heaps of produce, plenty of learning experiences and more than a few fun surprises. The farmstand was open on Fridays and Saturdays throughout the summer and was often staffed by family and friends. Our top seller by far was heirloom tomatoes. Folks were buying them straight from the vine! We also sold quite a bit of produce through locallygrown.net and Brent has enjoyed meeting other farmers and local food supporters through that market's network.

Any small farmer can tell you that there is always plenty to learn and we've been humbled this summer by all of the knowledge and hard work that goes into the production of what we put on our plates. We were frustrated by a mysterious deadly force on our tomato crop, only to discover too late that we could have prevented it. We have to thank the Cooperative Extension office for finally cracking the case. We also learned that a sweltering Georgia summer can knock even a strong man down if he isn't drinking enough fluids. We thank Athens Regional Medical Center for rehydrating Farmer Brent and instructing him on how to prevent heat exhaustion. Despite our sparkling personalities, we learned that our farmstand tends to sell just as much produce whether we are there or not. The "honor system" that we set up on off-days when the stand wasn't staff seemed to work out really well for our customers. We plan to continue that next year for the neighbors who have become our regulars throughout this season.

We were also graced with pleasant surprises throughout the summer. Farmer Brent came across great deals on greenhouse equipment, farming implements and soil amendments. His resourcefulness and good fortune has helped to keep us trucking along and looking forward to a bigger, and even better season next year. The biggest surprise of all ,though, is a personal one. We will be welcoming a new farmhand to the household next February. Baby Lopp's impending arrival only reinforces the reason why we want to be out in those fields. High quality, fresh, local food supports not only our environment, but also our local economy. We want the world to be a better place for our little guy so we're just going to keep on doing what we're doing and hopefully getting better at it every year.

To market, to market

Native Sun Farm is now a full month into the harvesting season. There have been no shortage of delicious vegetables flowing from our fields, and fortunately there have been various markets to step in and take those vegetables off of our hands. We sell face-to-face with farmstand customers on Fridays and Saturdays at the farm on Jimmy Daniel, over the internet on Thursdays through the website www.locallygrown.net and throughout the week to chefs and mixologists around Athens. With all of these markets, we find ourselves excited to have the opportunity to talk about the farm and what we are trying to do, but also a little out of our element. Brent's the farmer and I'm just a part-time farmhand; neither of us are marketing strategists or ad execs. We feel more comfortable discussing seed germination rates than our media strategy. When we do have the opportunity to stand face-to-face with a customer, we can let the flavor speak for itself. Grab a ripe heirloom variety tomato of the vine and pop it in your mouth and there's not a need for a fancy picture or witty copy to accompany it. You know it's good. The fact is tingling on your taste buds. With modern farming though, it's so important to have an internet presence, and since you can't "virtually" taste a tomato (yet), we find ourselves tasked with describing flavors and attempting to snap mouth-watering pictures of zucchini. On Sunday afternoons when we plop down to write up a narrative of our current weeks' goodies for the internet farmer's market, we always circle back around to the same sorts of descriptions.

"Tastes better than store-bought."

"Makes store-bought seem like compost fodder."

"Fresh, ripe, crisp - nothing like what you'd find in a grocery store."

We find ourselves at the computer, wondering what it is that makes local produce tastes so much different than what you find piled high at Publix. At first blush, it seems like it may just be the variety. Grocery stores tend to carry a whole lot of not very much. You're lucky to find a few varieties of tomatoes or potatoes, but when it comes to carrots or chard or spinach, variety gets thrown out the window. The criteria for variety selection at a chain grocery store is

dictated by its ability to ship well, not its flavor profile. It's not just variety that determines flavor. Some of the varieties found in local fields are very similar to popular grocery store varieties, but they still taste better. There have to be other factors. Ripeness, for instance. Local farmers are able to selectively harvest. We don't have to sell all of our squash today. Our farm is small enough that we can walk our rows everyday, hand-selecting only the produce that's ripe. If it's not ready today, no problem! We'll just pick it tomorrow. Soil is probably a factor in flavor too. Our soil is healthy and living. No organic farmer looks at their soil like it's just a growing medium. And don't you dare call it "dirt". Soil gets just as much TLC, if not more, as

the plants. All the minerals and nutrients in the soil have to add something to the flavor of the end product. Forgive me, I'm going to get sappy here, but I think there's also a story behind the food. There's literal emotion behind a small farm. Even in our short time in the farming business we've met so many farmers that are simply proud of what they're doing. From herbs to Berkshire pork, they feel like they're contributing something important. They all seem to have their own tricks for ramping up flavor on whatever it is they're raising. Whether it's intentionally underwatering tomatoes to force sweetness or fermenting elaborate compost teas

to pour out on plants at just the right moment, farmers have a million theories on how to get the best flavor that will put their produce at the top of the flavor heap. So maybe it's the variety, maybe it's the ripeness, or maybe it's the soil. Personally, I think it's the passion.

A delicious EASY pickle recipe!

We have a bumper crop of pickling cucumbers right now, which begs the question, what do you do with a pickling cucumber? You make pickles, of course! Not everyone has the time or equipment for canning pickles, so check out the recipe below for an easy, refrigerator pickle that will make those radioactive green grocery store pickles obsolete.

Refrigerator Dills

8 cups pickling cucumbers

4 dill heads

2 cloves garlic

4 cups water

1 cup white vinegar

1/4 cup pickling salt

Wash and dry cucumbers and prick a few holes in each. Place one dill head and one clove of garlic in each sterilized quart mason jar. Pack with cucumbers and top with remaining dills.

Combine water, vinegar and salt in medium saucepan. Heat to boiling, then cool to room temperature. Pour over cucumbers. Be sure they are covered, and seal!

Store in the refrigerator for at least a week before eating. Yields two quarts.

Farmstand Grand Opening!

Yesterday was the Grand Opening of our farmstand on Jimmy Daniel Road and it was a smashing success! We sold out of nearly everything and got to meet a lot of people who are interested in local, sustainably grown food. Thank you to everyone who came out to support Native Sun. It was such a treat to give farm tours and answer questions about how we grow. It was also pretty adorable to get to see so many children experience baby goats for the first time! We plan to staff the farmstand every Saturday so we'll have the opportunity to give farm tours and meet as many customers as possible. The farmstand will operate for self-service Tuesdays-Fridays. If you come by this week, expect to see new potatoes, squash and zucchini, cucumbers, fresh herbs and greens. Heirloom tomatoes and edamame will be coming in any day now! If you can't make it to the farmstand, check out our market on locallygrown.net. They have a convenient in-town pick-up at Ben's Bikes on Thursday evenings. Happy Eating everyone!

Radish...peas?

As I mentioned in the last post, we've been planning the farm since November of 2009. We've planned for all kinds of things; irrigation, soil amendments, varieties and quantities. We spent hours pouring over seed catalogs and diagramming what would be planted where. We planned every crop from the moment the seed was pushed down into the soil to its expected date of harvest. Something we didn't plan for? Radish peas. (If you've never heard of radish peas before, don't feel bad; we made that name up. They are more commonly referred to as radish seed pods.) Farmer Brent and his trusty farmhand (read: his mom) unintentionally discovered them in the field last week as they were harvesting sugar snap peas next to a row of radishes that had become overgrown and gone to seed. Farmhand Pru reached over, snatched a few pods off the stems and popped them in her mouth, declaring them delicious. Now, the peculiar epicurian delights that Farmer Brent's mom enjoys has a long and sordid history, so needless to say, Farmer Brent was somewhat skeptical of her assessment. Nevertheless, he plucked a few for himself and was surprised to find that not only were they edible, they were incredible. Before running out to the markets, Farmer Brent investigated their culinary aptitude and sure enough, they are legit. There's even a blurb about them on Wikipedia. The next day he harvested a bag full, took it around to some friends and potential buyers for taste testing, and sold his first pound that evening. A local chef purchased some to garnish a ham soup and a few friends picked some up to top salads.

I would encourage you to try a few if you find them in a farmer's market, or if your radishes bolt and go quickly to seed like ours did. Radish peas look like a smaller, lighter sugar snap pea and they pack a peppery punch like a radish, without the intensity. They are delicious alone as a crunchy snack, but really shine when used as a surprisingly zesty garnish. We will have them on hand at the farmstand and on locallygrown.net for the next few weeks for our local foodies.

It's a beautiful thing when you discover something amazing and you never even had to plan for it.

The Native Sun Story

First of all, welcome to our blog! If you've found your way here, then you probably care about the kind of food that you're eating. We do too! Native Sun Farm is a small, family-run, all-natural fruit and vegetable farm just outside Athens, Georgia.

Native Sun Farm is operated by us, Brent and Amy Lopp. We both graduated from the University of Georgia with degrees in Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, respectively. After graduating from UGA and getting married, we picked up and moved to Fort Collins, Colorado where Brent pursued a passion for the brewing industry and I worked as a glamorous landscape architect. After two wonderful years in Fort Collins, we decided that 1,000+ miles was just too far away from our families so we moved on back to Georgia. Back in Georgia with no jobs and no real place yet to call home, we decided a little sabbatical was necessary to figure out our next move. In February of 2008, we set out from Springer Mountain in north Georgia to hike the entire length of the Appalachian Trail. About six months and a thousand stories later, we finished our thru-hike at Mt. Katahdin in Maine. After all that time in the woods pondering our future, we returned to Georgia and decided to move back to where our relationship started (sorta) and where Brent had grown up. We returned to beautiful, funky, progressive Athens, Georgia. Back in Athens, Brent dabbled in the brewing industry again working at a local brewery and I honed my newly acquired outdoor gear skills working at a small outdoor shop. While we were both thoroughly enjoying themselves, something was stirring under the surface. We started reading books like The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. We planted a huge garden and learned about preserving foods through canning and freezing. We went to farmer's markets and tried to eat sustainably. The food revolution had arrived at our doorstep. After a delicious summer of eating backyard tomatoes and devouring homemade pickles, we were sold. Brent left his position at Terrapin in November of 2009 and started planning Native Sun Farm.

Here we are in May of 2010 and Native Sun has almost two acres under cultivation. The fields are full of sugar snap peas, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, okra, corn and plenty plenty more. The weeding is done by hand. You can reach down, pluck something out of the earth and pop it in your mouth without fear. Unless you're afraid of dirt - in that case, you can rinse it with a little water first. The produce is sold through the online farmer's market at locallygrown.net, through the farmstand on Jimmy Daniel Road and also to local restaurants and "food box" providers. Farm tours are always on the menu as well. Native Sun loves to show off what is growing and how it was grown.

This is our first year as an operating farm and we are just so excited to finally be doing something that we whole-heartedly believe in. Stop by and see us - let us know how we're doing and what kinds of food you might like to see cropping up in the fields.