Last Bayview Market of 2012!

Squash field in mid June.  See the little plants just poking up?

Well...here it is...today we are off to Bayview for the LAST farmer's market of the season!  (okay, well we do have 4 indoor Holiday Bayview Markets we do starting around Thanksgiving but you know what I mean....).
It is always amazing how quickly I seem to get here.  How the big box of seeds, the precious tiny little plants germinating in our hard-working light cabinets during the cold, wet and dark days of February turn into the pumpkins, the onions, the tomatoes and the brussel sprouts of October!  And then of course, after weeks and weeks of hard work, and long days, it is quite suddenly, over.  Time to rest and hibernate.  Just a bit.  So we can do it all again next year!

Squash Field mid August!  It's a JUNGLE!

Like a squirrel however, my ability to relax all depends on how much food I have "squirreled" away for the winter.  And well this year, all I can say is THANK GOODNESS we have the biggest barn in Island County!  It is stuffed right now!  We are drowning in potatoes, onions and winter squash.  Plus huge piles of dry beans yet to be threshed (just started threshing yesterday!).  And still in the field we have gosh, at least an acres worth of "cold hardy" crops.  Things like carrots, beets, turnips, kale, collards, brussel sprouts and other winter crops that we will harvest as needed.  We are lucky to have a moderate climate that, while perhaps it is not the best for growing watermelons and lima beans, it does offer many days of not too cold days in which so many crops thrive.

Squash field first of October. 

Of course, you wonder, WHERE can I get all this wonderful food off season?  Well...after you come by the Bayview Market today to stock up the pantry, we still have several off-season opportunities.
One of course, is Mikey's great home-delivery list.  Whidbey Green Goods makes a weekly delivery to the door-steps, addresses south of Coupeville, of local veggies, meat and other goodies.  Check out his website if you haven't already - www.whidbeygreengoods.com

The fruits of our labor.  Literally.

Then of course there is the "Endless Summer" list.  This is a order and pick-up list in Coupeville that has been running for gosh, maybe 8 years now?  Farmer Linda at Rosehip Farm and Garden heads this one up.  Linda combines available veggies from her farm, Willowood and several other local farms and sends out a list via email.  She takes orders and then we fill them, first-come first-serve with a pick-up on Saturdays.  We run the list at the whim of the farmers and the weather.  Or, i.e., as long as we have enough food and energy to do.  Typically speaking, however, it runs pretty solid until Thanksgiving and then we try and have at least a few pick-ups in December.  I'm also pursuing the possibility of doing a similar "Endless Summer" list with a south-end pick-up at Chef Jess's great new local food deli/take-out in Freeland - Roaming Radish!  (Check it out if you haven't already!  I got a killer meat loaf sandwich there the other day and some great take-home tomato soup!  All using local products!).  Anyways, watch for more info on a possible "South End Endless Summer" pick-up coming soon.
Probably the biggest dearth of the year for local produce, at least, is the first of the year.  January, for us here at Willowood, is major hibernation month.  We don't get out much then.  Things start to happen again in February but...it all depends on how kind the winter weather was to us how much food we have.  We might offer a few, via email, pick-up days and oftentimes Mikey starts-up the first of his Whidbey Green Goods deliveries sometime in February.  By April the first Coupeville markets starts and then things start coming along fast!
So...come of the market today and STOCK UP!  We've got storage bags of potatoes and onions.  And we've got loads of winter squash which are SO nice to have come December and January.  Giant cabbages and kohlrabi to make kraut with and even peppers to pickle!  And if you are getting our email lists, please feel free to share them with Whidbey friends and neighbors.  The more local food moving into local mouths the better!  (Btw, we still haven't gotten our dry beans threshed and packaged yet.  That sometimes just takes time as we get them dry enough to thresh.  So...that is something to DEFINITELY watch for on our email lists and via Whidbey Green Goods!). 
And now, it is time for me to drink some coffee and head out to load up!  See you at market today!
Farmer Georgie
Willowood Farm of Ebey's Prairie
Oh yeah, and here's what we got:
* Potatoes - 10 lb and 2 lb bags
* Onions - loose and in 5 lb storage bags
* Winter Squash
* Brussel Sprouts
* Cabbage
* Kohlrabi
* Turnips
* Rutabagas
* Parsnips
* Head Lettuce (yes, late crop!)
* Arugula and spinach bags
* Tatsoi and Mustard bunches
* Baby pac choi
* Radishes
* Scallions
* Beets
* Carrots
* Tomatoes and peppers (last picking!)
* Kale
* Chard
And more....

What? You thought we were done? Ha!

Lamenting the close of farmer's market season?  Thinking about FINALLY getting to sleep in on a Saturday morning and not about missing the choicest selection of market goodies.  Well hah - there are still TWO Bayview Farmer's Markets left!
Yep, it's may be dark as hades at 7 a.m. yet we are nonetheless out their loading up the van planning to bring the fall harvest bounty at market!  Actually today sounds like an action packed day a the market - it is the first ever "Cornucopia Chuck" in which a bunch of punch-happy tired market vendors find all sorts of weird things to see how far they can catapult them in some sort of insanely improvised potato gun.  Sounds dangerous! Sounds fun!  And it is also the ever popular Mutt Strut/Apple Day at Bayview Farm and Garden.  A great day to taste lots of different kinds of apples and bring along your doggy in some sort of silly costume. 
We are also introducing our end of season "Fall Harvest Bag" today.  A cool red Bayview Farmer's Market shopping bag filled with a selection of Willowood Farm goodies to prepare you for the upcoming fall food celebrations - a mashing type potato, a bag of garlic, a bag of cooking onions and an heirloom pie pumpkin.  A great deal too - valued at $36 - we are doing the whole shebang for $29 plus you get the bag for free!

Of course, there are plenty of other goodies to fill up your bag with including:
* Mesclun, arugula and spinach bags
* Frisee, escarole and radicchio
* Parsnips and rutabagas
* Cabbage, kohlrabi
* Onions galore
* shallots
* 10 lb and 2 lb bags of potatoes
* garlic!
* Beets
* Carrots
* Turnips
* Raab, tatsoi, mizuna mustard
* Peppers
* Tomatoes
* Oodles of gorgeous winter squash! 
See you at the market! Farmer Georgie

It's Harvest Fest!

So...it is always so surprising to find myself here.  It happens every year, you would think I would be used to it.  But it kinda sneaks up on me...That moment in time when I realize that all the season's planning, work and endeavors have resulted in a...huge...barn...full...of....food.  

Coupeville Harvest Festival of years past...

All I can say is THANK GOODNESS we have the biggest barn on the island!  Because we have grown A LOT of food this year!  And one of my favorite things is to bring it down to the Coupeville Harvest Festival.  Not only because we usually sell a lot of it - which is nice for padding up the ole check book before winter hits - but because it is a real visual of just how much insane amounts of food we've grown. 

Stock up for the winter!  10 lb storage bags of taters!

So just HOW MUCH have we grown?  Well....we still have plenty of things to sell (like about 3 tons of potatoes left, a ton or more of dry beans yet to be threshed, about 5 bin loads of onions, a wagon load of winter squash, beets, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas and other winter hardy veggies still in the fields.) But here's a few quick figures of how much we've sold so far this year: 496 lbs of broccoli; 353 lbs of cauliflower; 651 bunches of chard; 1858 bu of kale; 1907 bu of carrots; 1423 lbs of garlic; 4674 heads of lettuce; 12,233 lbs of potatoes; 1372 bunches of radishes; 1077 bunches of beets; 672 bags of mesclun and 472 lbs of heirloom tomatoes.  Wow!  Pretty cool, huh?  And of course, the selection for today's market is AMAZING!  In case you didn't know, the Coupeville Farmer's Market is THE BIGGEST market of the year on the island and also happens to be the last Coupeville Farmer's Market of the season.  We will have a great selection and good deals on storage bags of garlic, onions and potatoes plus lots of other great "stock up for the winter" veggies like winter squash, root crops and gigantic cabbages.  It is a NO MISS (come on, a little bit of rain can't stop you, right?).  Plus we will have our Willowood/Prairie Bottom farm "Ebey's Eat Locals Zombies" Harvest Relay team participating in the wacky harvest relay events to raise money for the Good Cheer Food Bank (stop by our booth and donate a few bucks to help sponsor our team.  Every little bit helps!). 

Winter squash! So pretty! So yummy!

We also will have brave Bobbie and hubby Blake manning a limited selection booth down at Bayview if you can't make the drive to Coupeville.  So...as always...we hope to see you at market TODAY!  (Here's the insane list of food, btw...).
Coming TODAY to the Coupeville and Bayview Farmer's markets:
* Mesclun, arugula and spinach
* Frisee and escarole
* Celeriac, parsnip and rutabagas
* Turnips!
* Kale, Chard, Collards
* Potatoes SO SO SO many potatoes.  I think we will have 10 kinds at Coupeville? 10 lb storage bags of potatoes as well!
* Garlic!  Seed garlic at COUPEVILLE ONLY today!
* Onions!  Lots and lots of onions including 5 and 10 lb storage bags.
* Winter Squash and pumpkins!  A whole WAGONFULL of them at Coupeville
* Tomatoes - Cherries, Heirlooms, San Marzanos
* Insanely beautiful Peppers
* Artichokes (Coupeville only)
* Red Giant Mustard, Mizuna, Baby Pac Choi, Raab!
* Broccoli!
* Cabbage - Red and Green
* The biggest kohlrabi YOU'VE EVER SEEN!
* Radishes - French Breakfast and Black Spanish (so cool!)
* Leeks
* Carrots and Beets
* Rockwell Beans! (of course!)
And I'm sure there is SOMETHING I forgot.  Come check it out!
Farmer Georgie
Willowood Farm of Ebey's Prairie 

It's Fall! Get your Winter Squash!

So pretty!  Photo by Caitlin Battersby

ANNOUNCEMENT - Next week if the Coupeville Farmer's Market Harvest Festival.  The biggest market of the year  - we will have THREE YES THREE trailers and tractors of food there - and a serious good time!  Come and be amazed by the incredible bounty of food coming straight from the fertile fields of Ebey's Prairie!

So there is a nip in the air, the colors are rich and vibrant and the winter squash is here.  Yep it's FALL!  I always say my favorite time of year is fall and well, I certainly can't complain about this year.
I love the fall because not only do I love the weather - typically dry and sunny but not too hot for this Pac NW born and raised girl (Anything over about 65 degrees is too hot for me!).  The prairie is absolutely stunning this time of year - the golds, yellows and reds of fall crops and fields and crisp blue ocean and majestic mountains.  And on the farm it is a time of year to really relish is all the bounty of the crops that we spent the season slaving over.
Five tons of potatoes harvested?  Done.  50,000 onions pulled up?  Done.  4 acres of dry beans?  Almost done. And then of course there are all the winter crops - the cabbages, the turnips, the parsnip and the rutabagas, the beets, the carrots and the still to come brussel sprouts.  Not to mention the winter squash.  The gorgeous, glorious, scrumptious winter squash.
Winter squash has a LONG tradition on Ebey's Prairie.  Ask any old-timer from central Whidbey and they will probably tell you they spent their childhood hoeing acres upon acres of winter squash.  My dad still likes to get out with a hoe every once in a while in our squash patch to show us young 'uns "how it's done."  My grandfather and great-grandfather before him grew squash and hauled them down in a wagon to the Coupeville wharf to be transported to the big city for sale.  The "barn" house I currently live in at one time was used to store both grain and winter squash.  My great-grandmother Georgie used to wait til my great-grandfather Harry (her husband) went out of town for a few days and then she would call our local grocer, the Pickards at Prairie Center Mercantile, and tell them to "quick, come down and take some squash out of the squash barn before the old man gets back.  Enough to pay off the tab!"  (My great-grandfather was notorious for being a scrooge about money! And the Pickard's were known for generously carrying tabs for many of the farm families that would eventually be paid off in squash or Rockwell beans!).  
Hubbards were generally the squash of choice here on the prairie in those days.  Especially Sugar Hubbards which are still today grown by our neighbor Pioneer Produce (who, by the way, opens this weekend with their awesome trolley rides and pumpkin patch!).  Back in those days you wanted a BIG squash with a thick heavy rind that would store for well, a good 6 months or more.  Enough to feed a big hungry farm family for weeks.  When I was a kid we would always get one, cut it open by throwing it on our concrete patio, take the chunks we needed for dinner and then leave the rest sitting out on the patio in the cool autumn weather to use as we got to it.
But people and eating habits change.  Pioneer Produce sells most of their Sugar Hubbard squashes pre-cut and pre-packaged.  Why?  Because most families today don't know what to do with a 30 lbs squash.  Ease and convenience are the name of the game.
Nonetheless, I can't help myself in growing a wide selection of the many gorgeous winter squashes and pumpkins.  We have about 8 different varieties this year - in a mix of sizes, shapes, colors and flavors.  (I leave the Sugar Hubbard squash growing to our neighbors - they do it too well!).  Warty heirlooms, smooth blue pumpkins, red-orange tear-drop kabocha types, netted pie pumpkins.  So much fun!  So delicious!  So...stop by at the Coupeville or Bayview farmer's market today and pick out a selection of winter squash.  They are great for gracing your fall season table (they will keep for months inside a house) and then, when you are ready, eat them!
And of course, we have LOADS more food at the market (it is harvest time after all) including:
* Potatoes - all types and in 10 lb storage bags!
* Onions!  Cooking, sweet, red, yellow, cippolinis....
* Shallots
* Parsnips
* Rutabagas
* Salad greens - mesclun, arugula, spinach
* Frisee - Oh my gosh it is GOOD too!
* Beets
* Carrots
* Tomatoes - red slicers, cherries, heirloom mix and San Marzano's to boot!
* Shelling beans
* Celeriac
* Garlic (Seed garlic at Bayview this week.  Will be at Coupeville next week!)
And more....
Hope to see you at market!
Farmer Georgie
Willowood Farm of Ebey's Prairie

Change....all in a day's work!

First....a couple of important announcements:
* Seed Garlic!  Is available at Bayview Farm and Garden and all the Skagit Farmer's Stores (Oak Harbor, Freeland, multiple Skagit Valley locations).  We also have limited availability of seed garlic at the Coupeville Farmer's Market today and will have seed garlic NEXT WEEK at the Bayview Farmer's Market!
* There are still some tickets left for this great event at the Chef Tamara Murphy's new Capital Hill restaurant Terra Plata.  http://localchefsforlocalfarmsterraplata.eventbrite.com/Yours truly will be on a panel with a few other great farmers talking about farmer to chef relations and other cool local food topics.  Eat great food in an amazing venue and support the PCC Farmland Trust supporting local farming in the Pacific Northwest!
* Next Saturday, Sept. 29th, Bayview Farmer's Market will be hosting Chef Eli Dahlin for a chef demonstration.  THIS IS NOT TO BE MISSED!  Eli is the genius behind the flipping amazing food at one of Seattle's most celebrated restaurants - The Walrus and Carpenter in Ballard.  Eli is a big supporter of local farmers (Willowood delivers there every week and he LOVES Little Brown Farm cheese as well!) and we are honored to have him at the market giving away a few of his secrets of how to use the fall harvest bounty.  Chef demo's typically run from 11 to about 1 during market hours.  Please come watch what amazing things Eli can do and support a local chef and restaurant who really walks the talk when it comes to using local foods!

And now, on to our regularly scheduled musings....
The last few days have dawned cooler and misty.  Signs of the fall and winter to come.  One thing about farming that just becomes part of your being is change.  Crops come and go through the season.  Weather warms, gets warmer, gets cold, gets colder.  We are deluged in rain and then a few months later we are parched dry.  Whatever seems to be the issue problem this month, will most likely be long gone next.  Yet you persevere.  Or at least you try to find how to juggle this, make this change, do things a bit differently, so it can all work out in the end.
One of my fellow and favorite farmers, Chief Milkmaid Vicky Brown of Little Brown Farm is in the throes of this right now.  In many ways her farm has been successful probably beyond her imagining.  But in other ways, it has been a long hard and really expensive road to hoe.  (Or in her case, milk....heh-heh)....Here is her latest blog on meeting some of those challenges head on.   http://littlebrownfarm.wordpress.com/2012/09/17/dashed_dreams/
I think Vicky is making exactly the right choices.  Not by the choices, per se, but recognizing she has to make them and meeting them head-on.  Having spent the last few years trying to balance my farming life, my family life and my financial realities...I know how she feels.  But I also know if she can't find some balance in her life she won't be able to keep farming and boy, that would be a loss for all of us!  And the thing is, change happens.  Change is good.  Change is what you do so you can keep going on.  Change are the seeds you plant tomorrow for the harvest at season's end.  So....it's all good! 

"OcTUBERfest"

Meanwhile, here at Willowood we have had the year (so far at least), that I have been fantasizing about for several years.  The crew this year has just been, well, a joy.  Any crew that will dress up like this and sing oompa-loompa songs on the 4th long and dirty day of harvesting a few tons of potatoes while they celebrate "OcTUBERfest" is one that well, how can you even describe how great that is!
Crops have grown better than ever.  We've had bounteous harvests are all our favorite things plus crops we've struggled with in years past have really done better than ever thanks to new farming techniques, close attention to detail and just good farming practices that I have to mostly attribute to my amazing farm manager Blake Mennella.  His wonderful wife Bobbie has run the show at the Bayview Farmer's Market this year, perhaps you have met her!
My roles has transitioned this year out of the fields and more, well, onto the computer and phone.  Which, is frustrating sometimes, but, is the reality of the farm. I've also spent less time at the markets which you might have noticed. But, that was a conscious decision to allow me more time at home with my family.  Having children and a husband who are on a Monday-Friday schedule and then not only being gone all day Saturday but being so exhausted on Sunday to do much is a strain on the family.  Yet it has been a relief to know that the growing and the selling is in such great hands that I've been able to spend more doing the things that I can best do to help the business...
Sales have gone through the roof (almost 50 percent increase!) as I have expanded our wholesale deliveries with weekly deliveries into Skagit and King counties thanks to the new refrigerated delivery van that I couldn't have done without the help of a local investor who looked at my crazy numbers and took a risk anyways!  Thanks to John Lovie and his lovely wife Brenda!

Insane Onion Harvest.  This times 10!

Our new greenhouse financed by local author Vicki Robbin has grown bounteous amounts of tomatoes that are well, a joy to behold!  Yeah for local investors!
But it's been a lot of years to get to this point.  One of my farmhands asked me this year, if I could have my dream job what would it be?  And actually, this would be it.  Just with a little more cash in my pocket and savings in the bank when it is all said and done!  Yet, while I look at the numbers from this year and think about the next few months of sales when we finish our potato, onion and dry bean harvest and typically bring in about 40 percent of our yearly sales (all in the last 3 months of the year!  crazy, huh?), I have a lot of optimism for the next few years to come that my dream job has the potential to be financial viable for the long term.  How wonderful it would be if I could, in 20 years or so, pass on a thriving farm business to my two daughters (and let's hope they might want it!). So, I continue to think and dream, and, I'm sure, will make the choices and the changes to get there!
And now, enough of the sentimental musings....Here is what is coming to market TODAY!
* Tomatoes!  We've got some great tomatoes at market today.  Heirloom mix (funky looking but great tasting!), San Marzano sauce tomatoes and cherry tomatoes as well!
* Peppers!  We are pretty darn excited to have this beautiful pepper harvest this year.  They are all mostly sweet roasting types and some poblano/ancho types as well!  (i.e. chile relleno peppers!).
* Onions!  Sweet Wallas, Copra cooking and torpedoes as well!  (and btw, more onion varieties still to come including cippolini's probably next week!)
* Potatoes galore.  It's big-time potato harvest right now and we've got the 10 lb storage bags to prove it.  Stock up!
* Garlic!  Can you have enough garlic?  I can't!
* Basil.  Loads of it perfect for end of season pesto making.
* Beets.  Can em!
* Carrots
* Kale and Chard
* Summer squash (only a few more weeks on these, enjoy them while you can!)
* Shelling beans.  If you know them, you love them!
* Leeks
* Rutabagas
* Celery
* Parsnips
*  Spinach, Mesclun and Arugula bags
* Cabbage - GIANT red and green ones.  Great for sauerkraut!
* Broccoli...
And more!  (Corn coming from Ebb Tide and I believe some apples and other fruit from Whidbey Green Goods as well).
Hope to see you at market!
Farmer Georgie
Willowood Farm of Ebey's Prairie

Crazy Harvest Days!

Well it's definitely that time of year.  That time of year when ever which way I turn I see - "OMG! That needs to be harvested!"  I start feeling like a crazy spinning dervish.  Dust flying from my feet and vegetables going up up up in an endless tornado of harvest! 
We've got all the garlic in, cured and dried (and, btw, seed garlic will be available very very soon!), we've got greens, broccoli and her cousins, beans, onions, beets and carrots galore.  And we've started harvest beautiful tomatoes (OMG!), an absolutely gorgeous and abundant crop of potatoes and the dry beans, oh my, the dry beans, are looking like they are going to be the bumper crop of all bumper crops this year (we've still got another month til harvest for those so keeping my finger's crossed).  All told, it's been a heck of a year.  Here's a few pictures to show you in images how great it's been!  And today at market we've got:
* Kale
* Chard
* Mesclun
* Head Lettuce
* Heirloom tomatoes
* Basil
* Onions
* Garlic
* Broccoli
* Beans - 3 kinds
* Peas
* Beets
* Carrots
* Kohlrabi
* Celery
* Parsley
and more more more!
See you there! Farmer Georgie

Garlic!

Crazy pack day!

A REALLY full refrigerated van!

Dirty face!

Digging potato and hunting voles!

Tomatoes! OMG! Tomatoes!

 

Good times at market...

"Hey...Is this daikon radish vegan?" so asks a customer at a recent farmer's market.
Now it is lucky this question wasn't posed to me (it was posed to a wonderful, albeit very serious intern on the farm this year who answered "yes" but then wondered later if perhaps it actually wasn't vegan since we fertilize with chicken poo...).   If I had gotten this question, I would have probably had to sit down on a bag of potatoes I would have laughed so hard.

Be forewarned.  If you see this look on my face I might be pulling your leg...

But this does bring up an interesting conversation about all the funny questions we've gotten over the years.   Not that we don't welcome a open discourse so we can better educate our customers about our vegetables and what it means to grow them.  But sometimes we are, momentarily, flabbergasted.  And, to be honest, go home and giggle a bit.
Here's a few other good ones we've gotten over the years...
* The guy in the the road bicycle regalia.  Rides his bike up to our booth, pauses, looks around, and asks me "where are the bananas?"  (I told him that he might want to try a farmer's market in Florida! Or the grocery store down the block...).
* The woman who was very interested in purchasing some of our fresh herb bunches but needed directions on how to dry them so she would be able to use them.  She was flabbergasted when I explained to her while she COULD dry them, it was probably easier to just use them fresh.
* The woman who saw me, rushed up with a recipe in hand asking for fava beans.  I try to explain to her that it is October, about 3 months past fava bean season (which are usually on in June/July/August.  She tells me no problem, she can come by the farm on Wednesday and pick them up!  (Because apparently I can plant them, grow them and harvest them in 4 days!).
* A number of folks asked us last year our vegetables were grown under cover and radiation free.  (due to the tsunami in Japan).   Certainly we were also concerned about worries about radiation fall-out from Japan, but is there a way to cover 12 acres of fields of veggies to prevent radiation fall-out?  Hmm....not really.  An alternative would have been to just plow everything in but well, the budget wouldn't have been happy with that plus of course, then no veggies (radiated or not).  Although we actually started advertising our tomatoes and basil as "radiation free" as they are grown in plastic hoophouses.  Of course, I suppose the plastic off-gases in the heat but heck.... it isn't radiation!
* We are very often asked if this vegetable or that vegetable is good for juicing.  For the record, if you have a good enough juicer pretty much any vegetable can be juiced.  Now why you would want to juice an onion or a garlic, I don't know, but that is up to personal taste!
* Oh, and yes, all our vegetables are gluten free.  Except for the grains.
We are very very very often asked about a vegetable, "what do you do with this."  Sometimes, when I'm a bit tired, I respond with "You eat it!"  But then I laugh and explain how.   I keep in mind that the majority of people (sadly) don't grow up realizing that yes, potatoes come out of the dirt and tomatoes from a vine.  My kids can identify a kohlrabi from a cauliflower but a lot, lot, lot of folks just simply have never even had the opportunity! 
But nonetheless, it is fun to relate the "war stories" after a long market season.  And I know this isn't merely related to vegetables.  When I was a kid in dairy 4-H we went to the state fair in Puyallup every year with our dairy cows.  Many of them were mature milk cows and the Puyallup fair had a really cool glass-sided milking parlor where visitors could watch as you milked your cows 2x daily.  And I was personally asked, and quite seriously too, which cow produced the chocolate milk.  I finally started just telling them it was the brown cow (the Jersey).
When I was working as a journalist in rural Eastern Washington I once had an editor who was outraged when I reported in the police report that a hay stack had "spontaneously combusted."  Lucky for the paper, I grew up a farm kid because I would have been laughed out of town if I had pressed forward with the conspiracy theory my city-raised editor was convinced of...that we had a local arsonist running around lighting hay stacks on fire.  (For the record, when hay gets wet and moldy and starts to rot in creates a lot of heat - it is essentially composting.  And particularly in a big stack and in warm weather the intense heat from rotting bales can yes, light outer dry bales on fire. It is not uncommon to see smoking hay stacks or hear about barns that burned down because of hay put up wet.)
 I probably get this sense of humor from my father.  who I once heard tell somebody that the way to tell the difference between male and female cabbage plants (planted together to produce hybrid seed cabbage) was to flip the plant over and..."if you can find it's little thingee... well then it's a boy!"  (Again, for the record,  hybrid cabbage production is rather complicated but essentially, male and female cabbage plants are selectively cross-bred for specific traits and when those two plants are bred together they then each provide the correct desired traits in their "child" who's seed is produce and then sold to farmers across the world. Interestingly enough the male and female "parts" of many plants is quite obviously rather, well, obvious in the flower.  Check out male and female squash blossoms and you'll catch my drift.).  
Of course, my favorite all time "amuse yourself at the expense of the city kid" story was one I related in this posting.  And yes, it's a true story.   http://www.funnyfarmertales.blogspot.com/2010/02/big-red-bird-aka-bill-and-city-people.html
So yes, while we welcome your questions and no, there really is no such thing as a stupid question.  I hope you can forgive us if we a giggle a bit now and then!
Meanwhile, here is the list of veggies we are bringing to the Coupeville and Bayview markets today!
From Willowood Farm:
* Mesclun and Arugula bags
* Head lettuce
* Fava beans (almost over - get them before they are gone!)
* Potatoes - Starting into kinds by variety!
* Garlic - 8 kinds today!
* Beets
* Carrots
* Juicing bags! (yes, we decided to take advantage of the never ending "can you juice" this question and just make an easy to grab bag!)
* Japanese turnip bags (you can pickle or juice them!)
* Scallions
* Walla onions w/ greens
* Red Torpedo onions w/ greens
* Summer squash
* Celery
* Parsley
* Raab
* Kale
* Chard
And much more!  The bounty is on...so come check it out!
Farmer Georgie
Willowood Farm