Mom's Farm, Inc.

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Things have been busy for us, as can be expected at this time of the year. We have finished putting in the carrots,  radishes, spinach, peas, and lettuce in our garden in Joliet. These are some of the items that we will be selling at our first market day in June. We’ve been working hard at planting indoors as well, such as eggplants and tomatoes. Our garlic plants are 6 inches tall and the strawberry plants are bright green. We have available for purchase 3″ square plants of rosemary and strawberries, contact us if interested in them.

If you’ve never used a good rototiller to prepare a garden, you don’t know what your missing. In previous years, we did the tilling manually with a shovel. It took us many weeknights to tear up the grass in our yard with that shovel. We had left some of the paths as grass because it took so long to do the parts we had done. We were battling the creep of the grass all summer long, so this year we bought a rototiller and we were able to tear everything up in 1/2 a day.

The coming week we’ll be spraying the apple orchard in Yorkville to kill any bugs that have been overwintering, as well as rototilling at the field in Lockport so we can start putting plants in on Saturday.

I have had people ask me why I enjoy growing my own vegetables and depending upon the person, I give them one of these soundbites:

- Do you know why iceberg lettuce is sold so much in the grocery store? It’s not because it’s a great tasting lettuce, it’s because it rolls nicely without the damage being visible too much, so the harvesting equipment can cut and wrap it without much human interaction.

- Do you know why an average tomato in the store tastes so much different than a vine-ripened or a locally grown tomato? It’s because they pick the tomatoes when they are green and then spray them with Ethylene gas in order to force them to turn red.

- Did you know that the vegetables you eat now from the grocery store are less nutritious than what your grandparents ate? There are many articles discussing the problem and it all comes down to businesses pushing to produce more and put less into it. If your focus is to produce more pounds and the end-consumer isn’t going to know the difference, you will be tempted to make choices that reduces quality for the sake of growth.

- Did you know that cucumbers have spines on them naturally and no wax? The wax on cucumbers in the store are there to help them  ship better. It also prevents you from eating the nutritious skin.

Because of these reasons and others we have sought to grow our own vegetables, provide to others locally grown vegetables, and signed up for the Illinois…Where Fresh Is program with the Illinois Department of Agriculture to help promote Illinois grown food. This summer when you are deciding where to buy your fruit and vegetables, think  about these little sound bites and decide.

Do you buy organic and then place it into a petrochemical bag that could potentially last for 240 years? If your concerned about your health and future generations well-being, the two don’t jive. For our family, we don’t purchase organic (that’s another story for another day), but we do try to limit our plastic bag usage as much as possible as our children and children’s children future are important to us. Because of that view, we did a lot of research into our packing options for the business, ranging from cloth bags, paper bags, cellophane bags, and others. In the end, we have decided to utilize Oxo-Biodegradable bags for our produce as they can be recycled with other plastic bags, but at the same time have the ability to degrade in a short amount of time. We, of course, would prefer that customers bring their own cloth bags to reduce the number of bags produced overall, but we understand that is not 100% possible.

The next time you are at a farmer’s market, ask your farmer what they are wrapping your food in. You might just be surprised.

It took us some  time to get some pictures up here, but here is a picture of our shelving units with the lights attached. With our setup,  we are able to hold 84 trays of plants in our basement between the shelf you see in the main  portion  of the picture and the other shelves to the left. We’re using 4′ shop  lights 2 deep and homemade S-hooks to attach them to  the shelf above. We also have 4 heating mats that we are using to start the plants off right and a space heater running on low to keep the room a consistent temperature.

We started some rosemary back around Thanksgiving as well, we have 2 trays of it currently. Here is one of them:

We also have some celery that is  doing well,  it is a bit hard to see with this picture:

So far, we have celery, celery root, onions, leeks, lettuce, endive, spinach, and rosemary growing under lights. We received the shipment of leek seeds we were waiting for and have been planting them in deep trays. We will be doing some more lettuce, endive, cabbages, kohlrabi, basil, cilantro, dill, kale, and broccoli this weekend.

We have been bouncing back and forth deciding if we should have CSA shares or not, but have decided to do so. With our wide beds planned and crop rotations through the spring/summer/fall, we  are  expecting to have such a huge harvest that we may not have enough customers at the farmer’s markets. On our previous plot of 1500 sq feet we grew so much that we just recently finished green beans from 2 years ago. Click to the right on Signup for CSA for additional details of the program.

Most of our seeds arrived in the mail today from Fedco Seeds, though the spinach and leek seeds are on back-order. We have a few leek seeds from last year and we may need to buy some more locally if they don’t come soon. If the spinach isn’t here by mid-March, we’ll be buying those locally as well.

So far, we have 2 trays of 288 celery plants, 2 open flats of onions, and 2 trays of 18 rosemary plants under shop lights on plastic shelves with some seedling warming pads underneath the newest plants. This weekend coming up we are going to be planting an additional 2 trays of celery plants, 2-3 trays of celeriac, 1 tray of parsley (we haven’t been successful yet with them), 5 more trays of onions, and a tray or two of leeks.

We’ll see about taking some photos of our lights/shelves/warming pads once the trays are done this weekend.

It took lots of e-mails and phone calls, trying a variety of methods to get some land (eg: calling realtors, placing ads on Craigslist, asking around) and we have been successful at finding a place to grow vegetables this year.  Our vegetable garden is going to be in Lockport, IL on an acre of a 20 acre farm. The farm has in the past grown soybeans, corn, and pumpkins. There is a small pond with a pump that we will be using with drip irrigation to water our plants. The owner, Tom, is going to learn from us on how to grow vegetables he hasn’t grown before. We will be selling from there on Saturday mornings before the Homer Glen farmer’s market.

In  addition to the acre vegetable garden, we also have an acre apple/pear orchard in Yorkville, IL that is along the way to Charles’ day job. It hasn’t been maintained for several years and we will be pruning the 200 trees on weekday mornings in February. Our goal is to keep it organic with minimal organic spraying.

We also received a third option for our vegetable garden, but we turned it down since the 2 acres will be enough work  for the 2 of us. Besides the Homer Glen farmer’s market on Saturday afternoon starting in June,  we are planning on selling at the Lockport farmer’s market on Monday evenings starting in June.

Keep us in your prayers, as the 2 acres is going to stretch us physically while taking care of our 2 kids.

We are in the process of looking for back yards for next year. If you are interested and are in the Southwest Chicago suburbs, please read the letter below and contact us:

To whom it may concern:

My husband and I are starting up an urban farm this fall and are looking for backyards or land not in use to use next year to grow vegetables to be sold at the local farmer’s markets. We are looking for areas at least 500 square feet all the way up to 1 acre.  Here is our proposal, we will perform a soil test this fall to make sure your yard is safe to grow food on.  Then we will create a lush vegetable garden in your back yard or land next spring utilizing bio-intensive methods of growing, meaning no pesticides, straw mulch to keep the weeds away in the paths between the wide rows of vegetables. In order to prevent weeds, we will be planting everything close to each other to create a “living mulch”.  At the end of the growing season next year we will either reseed to put grass back in, leave the beds for you to create your own garden, or leave it for us to grow again in 2011. You compensation would include, but not limited to, no more mowing for that portion of the yard, a share of the harvest, we will pay you cash based upon the square footage being used, potentially a preprepared area for your own garden, and finally we would teach you about how a bio-intensive garden works and the maintenance of a vegetable garden.

Thank you for your consideration

Moriah Aldarondo, President (CEO) of Moms Farms, Inc.
MomsFarms.com