David's Folly Farm Hours and Information

Welcome to the farm!

David's Folly Farm is located at 1390 Coastal Rd. in Brooksville, Maine.

Our farm stand in the barn will be opening for the 2011 season on Friday, July 1st! We will be open Wednesday and Friday afternoons this year from 1 pm - 5 pm.

Off the farm we do the following markets:

Brooksville Farmer's Market at Buck's Harbor on Tuesdays from 9:30 am - 12 pm.

Friday Morning Market in Blue Hill at the First Congregational Church on Fridays from 9:30 am - 11:30 am.

We're also participating in Farm Drop this year at the Blue Hill Wine Shop on Thursdays. Check out farmdrop.org for more information.

We are happy to fill custom wholesale orders for parties and weddings as well, including vegetables and flower arrangements.

We can be reached at 207.326.4445 or davidsfollyfarmstead@gmail.com


July 28, 2010

What we're harvesting 7/28/10

So I thought it would be cool to keep a weekly log of what we're harvesting throughout the season. Of course it would have been even cooler if this thought had occurred to me back in April, or even cooler if we were to actually keep updated on our blog and make posts every week, but nonetheless better to start somewhere than nowhere at all. So think of this as a visual guide to your seasonal eating. If we're harvesting it then it's in season in Maine, meaning you're already eating it from your local farmer or you should be. This week: tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, beets, potatoes and carrots.


At last! Tomatoes! Our Sun Gold and Apero cherry tomatoes started ripening up in full swing this week, and along with them came some of the long awaited heirloom varieties we planted. We also got a few of our chinese eggplant which we grew just for home use. We're selling the cherry tomatoes in pints at the farmer's markets already and will start selling the larger tomatoes next week when we have more of them.


Also in full swing are the zucchini and summer squash. Nothing seems to grow faster than these guys. Fruits that are the size of your thumb can burst to what you see here in just 2 days - pretty remarkable. We've got green and yellow zucchini in production as well as a yellow and green hybrid summer squash called Zephyr, and patty pan squash. 


We had a big wholesale order this week for some beets. They were looking great in the garden and we had a good amount to harvest. Here is a crate with all four varieties we're growing this year. There are two dark red beets - Merlin and Detroit Dark Red, Chioggia beets (pink with a striped pink and white inside), and Burpee's golden beets. At the market we like to sell them with the beet greens still attached, but there's something really pretty about a big crate full of just beets. 


These are our Red Norland potatoes. they're a small red potato that we're growing as a new potato - so we harvest and sell them fresh. They have a really tender and thin skin and a striking magenta color right when they come out of the ground. Unfortunately it tends to fade a bit very quickly after harvest. 


Last but certainly not least are our rainbow bunches of carrots. Here's bunches that are bagged and ready for market. We have four varieties of carrots that are included in the bunches - orange Nelson, yellow Rainbow, purple Dragon and Purple Haze. People always ask us if the colored carrots taste the same. The truth is that all of the varieties taste like a carrot, but when they are back to back there are definitely subtle differences in their flavors - which makes for a nice combination when eating or cooking with them. 

Dogs and Mussels

We had the pleasure of taking care of 2 fantastic dogs over the weekend. Scrap (the brindle colored mutt) and Stanley (the golden retriever) joined us on a number of adventures, including foraging for chanterelles (post to come) and a trip to Bakeman's beach to gather mussels for dinner.

 
Scrap reluctantly started the journey in the bed of the truck.



Scrap and Meghan settle in for the ride.


Bakeman's Beach. Harborside, ME



While we gathered dinner the dogs kept themselves busy swimming and playing in the water.

 A seaweed laden sand bar turned out to the best bet for mussels on this night. We go at low tide so that all of the mussels are exposed on the beach and rocks or in very shallow water. We've been out clamming too but I prefer the mussels because they're easier to get clean. When we got them home we scrubbed off the barnacles and made a traditional pasta with mussels, parsley, a little white wine and parmigiano reggiano. Hard to beat that.
 

 Stanley



The ride home. I hung in the back with the 2 dogs. Air Drying.

July 10, 2010

The Pigs Have Arrived

We picked up our litter of piglets on July 4th. We are now proudly raising 5 Large Black/Berkshire heritage cross pigs for slaughter. The pickup was a little traumatic for the piggies but once we got them loaded onto the pickup truck i think they really enjoyed the breezy ride.

Here they are (there's 3 girls and 2 boys) enjoying some muddy water. You can see the Berkshire in them in their pink boots but the black coloration and their floppy ears are from the Large Black side. 

The pig house was built entirely out of wood and roofing materials we salvaged from the farm. We had them in a small pen attached to the house for the first couple of days so they could relax into their new home without testing the electric fence too much. 

Here's their current pen. It's got some good shade along the side fence under some apple trees, which are doubling up as scratching posts. The long grass is being stomped down quickly and they're doing a good amount of rooting in the ground and digging up a lot of the bramble. We've been feeding them a good ration of slops from Buck's Harbor Market down the road, and mixing in a balanced pig feed for a steady protein supplement. They seem pretty happy in their new home and are growing fast.

Planting "The Jungle" (Part 2 - finally)

So it's been a while since we've posted but all is well on the farm and we're definitely keeping busy. Here's some new photos of the greenhouse - which has grown tremendously in 6 weeks since we last posted photos. The tomatoes are beginning to ripen and we've been harvesting cukes for a couple of weeks now.

The tomatoes are now about 4 1/2 feet tall with quarter sized stalks.


 
Big Beef tomatoes are in but not ripe yet and the Sun Gold and Apero cherry tomatoes are beginning to ripen this week. 


The Parisian Pickling Cucumbers (on the right) have turned out to be incredibly vigorous plants, growing at a faster rate than the standard English cukes. But all of the cucumbers are coming in strong at this point and we've interplanted some basil into the beds.

June 6, 2010

Planting "The Jungle" (Part 1)

This is the first installment showing the planting our high tunnel house. These shots were taken a couple of weeks ago and show our layout and trellising system for the house. "The Jungle" is 22 X 48 feet and can accommodate 6 - 44 foot beds, with one foot paths between 30 inch beds and a couple of feet of path at each end. The western most bed has been planted to a few varieties of cucumber spaced at two feet. I ran a cable across the ceiling supports to attach trellising to, and each plant has its own line which it will be clipped to as it grows.
Cucumbers


Once all of the beds were made up we ran a tape measure down the middle of the to be tomato beds and marked and dug holes with a post hole digger at 18 inch spacing.

All of the tomato pots were laid out and planted in the dug out holes.

These four beds are planted with sun gold, apero, big beef, and 4 varieties of heirloom tomatoes. This was taken on May 25th, and the tomatoes have already shown a tremendous amount of growth since then. More recent photos to come in part two!

June 5, 2010

First Farmer's Market

We had our first farmer's market of the season on Tuesday in Brooksville. It was great to see everybody (a lot for the first time since last season) and we harvested out first cutting of arugula and mesclun. We also sold some of our extra tomato transplants, herbs and some wild flowers. The set up is a work in progress (we've acquired a sturdier tent already and are working on better signage and display aesthetics) but we were very happy with its first incarnation.


Mesclun

Arugula

May 25, 2010

PIGS!!!

Large Black Sow

We're getting pigs!!!! Greg and I are going to be getting 5 Large Black/ Berkshire heritage cross piglets on July 1st, and we can't wait!! It took us forever to find piglets but we lucked out and found the perfect cross heritage breed. Our neighbor Deborah Evans breeds and raises large black crosses but unfortunately we are getting our piglets from someone else, hers are all going to the butcher. We stopped by her farm last week and got to see her beautiful animals. She has the best dogs!! They're Australian shepherds and they were so friendly and cuddly. I couldn't get enough of them. She has quite the operation over there. She's raising so many animals, a herd of different breeds of goats, sheep who've just had the cutest baby lambs ever, guinea hens, 2 donkeys, 1 llama, 3 dogs, 3 large black sows, 11 5 month old Lg black/ Tamworth piglets, and a brand new litter of 8 Lg black/ berkshire piglets. They had just been born that morning when we stopped by. It was quite a sight to see and her farm is beautiful. Her property is located right across Smith Cove from Castine. It was beautiful. Here are some shots of her animals and farm.
Strawberry

The farm and other fun things



 
The barn
Our honey bees
 Plant house
 
Basil

 Melons
 Pasture

 The Jungle
 Flower Plot
 Peppers
 Tomatoes
 First ocean swim of the year at the town landing.
It was heaven!