Our harvest is HUGE

Good morning everybody! How you doing today? My name's Andrew. I'm Papa. I'm Callie. I'm Matt. And we're some of the Veggie Boys. And Gail. And we'd like to thank you for stopping by. If you're new here, please consider subscribing because we can grow a lot of stuff on the farm, but one thing everyone. It's so nice to have you with us today. We're getting started off pretty early this morning out in the garden harvesting some red beets. Harvesting red beets for us, it's kind of a two-step process. What we'll do is we'll go through and get the red beets pulled out of the ground. We'll just make piles here and there and then we'll bring our baskets up and then step two is taking the tops off of the red beets and just getting the red beets put into the basket. We've been doing our best to try and stay on top of the red beets. We've been harvesting as much as we can but as you guys could imagine, we're getting pretty busy. But even though we've been busy, we've got orders that we're trying to fill and when it comes to harvesting red beets, there's only one rule. Don't pick Grammy's red beets and I'm staying far away from Grammy's red beets this morning. When it's not too hard to find red beets, this is what we're looking at and they are beautiful. I've been pulling red beets for about 15-20 minutes now. So since I have two really decent sized piles, I'm going to go through and pull the tops off of our red beets and put them into three different baskets. I have a small, medium, and large. So with the smalls, I'm doing anything about golf ball size that's going in there. In the mediums, I'm doing like a little bit bigger than golf ball to like baseball size and then anything bigger than that is going in the large basket. I'd say the most popular size of red beet that we're looking to grab is the medium-sized beets. These seem to sell the quickest. You can see the size difference just from looking at the smalls as compared to the mediums. I actually didn't get any larges, so that's a good sign that means that we're picking early enough that they're not getting too big. I'd say the large ones are the least popular and then the small ones, they're pretty popular but not near as much as the mediums. Usually what you'll see when you have larger beets, that means more work for canning and when you have the smaller beets, that means a lot of work as well. So the medium beets are a good middle ground and that seems to be what sells the best, so that's what we try and grab. Finding some large beets over here. Well that's where I think I'm going to call out for harvesting red beets. We were able to get three baskets of mediums, one baskets of smalls, and like a three-quarter basket full of large red beets. I'm now going to get all this stuff taken back to the farm market, get it washed up so that it can dry. One big thing I'm going to answer because I know I'm going to get this question because I get it every single time I'm harvesting red beets and that question is why don't I take the tops back for either one to sell or two for the animals? Really simple answers. One, for whatever reason the red beet tops don't sell in our local area and two, I just don't feel that the effort is warranted bringing all this stuff back to the chickens. Our chickens get plenty of treats and these leaves actually do a lot of good sitting out here in the field. A lot of the nutrients that red beets need to grow are actually found in their leaves. Now we plant red beets here every year and by composting the leaves back into the soil it just has added nutrients, it's added organic material that future crops are going to be able to benefit off of. Now we have had special requests in the past for people asking specifically for red beet tops and if they've wanted it we've given it to them but believe me it's few and far in between so we don't end up keeping them. We just use it in the best way possible which is back into the fields, more fertilizer. Red beets are all loaded up, ready to go. Red beets are now all cleaned up. Like I said earlier I'm going to leave them out to dry these will be ready to sell in no time. Farm market is now open and we're all set up and ready to go for the day. Right now dad is actually at the wholesaler and Matthew he's down around back he's working on sorting some tomatoes. We have quite a few orders for today and because we're constantly going through tomatoes that means I need to get more picked. So what I'm going to do is head back to the fields and start picking tomatoes until dad gets back from the wholesaler. We've done a lot of picking recently when it comes to tomatoes. We've been trying to have as thorough of a harvest as possible so we've been picking through the rows very evenly and it looks like this end of the field is what needs to be harvested next so this is where I'm going to and one of the coolest things is that I got to grow up with a lot of cousins and with my brothers and work with them and every single time we'd pick tomatoes it'd be like a competition to see who could get the most tomatoes picked and I remember the day the first day where I was able to get more tomatoes picked than my dad that was such an exciting day you know maybe he let me win you know maybe we'll just say maybe but anyway the whole thing is my cousins and I my brothers we would be picking as fast as we could just trying to get the baskets filled trying to see who could have the most pick and every single time we'd finish up there'd always be someone who would be a little lagging behind we say you only picked this many baskets you know what my what do I say hey that's five baskets I didn't have to pick or six baskets I didn't have to pick what I'm just trying to help you appreciate is not everybody works at the same speed so if you're a first time gardener or maybe you've been doing this for a while don't compare yourself when it comes to harvesting or even growing different type of crops because the number one thing to keep in mind is that not only is everybody different but also soil conditions are different elevations are different seed types are different so the moral of the story is when it comes to harvesting don't compare yourself to others whatever you can do is what you can do and I just like to mention that because we do get a lot of you know experienced gardeners watching us but a lot of first-time gardeners as well so just whatever you can do is the best you can do and that's okay that is okay growing up on the farm with all my cousins and brothers you know my dad was always sure to make sure that nobody got their feelings hurt while we were picking which is kind of a funny thing because he did the most smack talking especially when he was picking he would let us know when we were picking slow one of my favorite lines from my dad has always been if your hands moved as fast as your mouths we'd be done picking already that was one of my favorite lines I'm gonna have to use that on my kids one day I just know it and I'm gonna be so excited when I get to I just have to say it I am so impressed with the tomatoes that we've got this year we're having a great year for peppers and a great year for tomatoes which obviously is a good thing for many different reasons one of the biggest reasons why I enjoy this is because tomatoes are actually my favorite thing to pick usually I just say it's whatever is nicest for that year but deep down inside I don't know what it is tomatoes have always been my favorite thing to harvest and when they look this nice I mean I can't help myself this is just one of my favorite jobs even though I wouldn't say this is an easy job there is quite a bit of physical work involved with it it is enjoyable for me I don't know for what reason why it's so enjoyable I don't enjoy harvesting pickling cucumbers as much I don't definitely don't enjoy harvesting peas as much but picking tomatoes there's just something about it there's just something about it you know I love my sauce that might be one of the biggest reasons the goal for this year when it comes to tomatoes is basically the same goal that we have every year is pick off as many as possible if we can stay on top of the tomatoes it's going to be a lot easier for us to fight disease it's also going to be a lot easier for us as we start getting more and more storms out of the south that our tomatoes won't split if we can keep these ripe ones pulled off well we run into less problems with that that's one of the biggest reasons why we like picking them when they're a little on the pinker side because it means there's less of an opportunity for the tomato to spoil the longer you let the tomato sit on the vine the longer chance it has to spoil tomatoes ripen from the inside out so you can pick them off and they will continue to ripen that's one of the best things about tomatoes that's one of the best things we love about tomatoes it's one of those crops where if you get on top of it early then you can benefit from it from a very very long time there is so many tomatoes here though it's almost like they're jumping into the basket a little bit of an update for you I've been actually moving through these tomatoes pretty quick and that first row of tomatoes that I was harvesting are harvested all the way up until about the side by side it's pretty easy to see where I have already gone through and harvested we're not finding any red in here if we just move a little bit further up the row however you will see there is lots of red tomatoes in here ready to be picked the only thing is is I'm trying to keep the rows as even as possible so now I've jumped to the opposite side of the road and I'm still harvesting plum these rows over here are just as full as the rows that I was picking in earlier and because of that I've been filling up baskets very very quickly we raised two variety of plum on the farm oh and look at that I just found twins isn't that funny the two varieties of plum that we raised the one is called Mariana and the other one is called Shelby now it looks like I'm harvesting Mariana the Mariana are a larger tomato the Shelby they're a little on the smaller side but the plants are just as full the reason why we're doing two different varieties is the Mariana comes on a little bit quicker than the Shelby so we're able to start picking this first and by the time we have these plants about all picked off we can move over to the Shelby it's just to extend our harvest a little bit longer something we've been doing with many different crops now I won't talk about varieties too too much when it comes to what we raise on the farm I had mentioned earlier I was talking about elevation a little bit rainfall there's so many factors that go into growing a crop and sometimes there are certain areas where the varieties that we like to raise they won't work out as well so I always try to be very very careful when I'm talking about varieties I try and mention that every time just because a certain variety works for us doesn't mean it will work for you but where we live locally these Mariana plum tomatoes whoo baby they are nice for people that are doing a lot of canning I would have to say they probably enjoy using these Mariana as well they have a great great flavor and they fill up the jars very very quickly I just got a call from dad he's back from the wholesaler and needs my help with something back at the farm so I'm gonna take a break from harvesting tomatoes right now I didn't move that far into the field and I was already able to get 13 baskets I'd have to say that's they're not even hanging out with you I came back to help dad and Matthew we moved four calves out to the pasture ground and then we moved two of these smaller calves into this communal pen they're no longer on milk it's just easier to take care of them when they're all together when they're really little we like to keep them by themselves that way we can monitor them a little closer but now that they're a little bit larger and they're eating well we can move them over to this pen and then we don't have to worry about them as much oh my goodness where did all these baskets of tomatoes come from I was up real early in the morning and I picked them oh great you know what's worse than picking tomatoes once picking them twice this week's gonna be absolutely beautiful for working I know isn't every week beautiful for working no no sometimes it's too hot sometimes it's too cold too wet this is the golden block this week it's gonna be just right and a lot of sunshine so it should ripen ripen tomatoes and get those peppers changing colors what a beautiful sight seeing all these tomatoes just right next to the road look at them all they're beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful tomatoes what'd you find out here matt a chaos number two golf ball look at that it's nice and blue very nice we've been harvesting plum all morning but I just wanted to show you look at this round tomato that they found now this is from a variety called biltmore and the plants are loaded with tomatoes that look like this here's it next to like a decent size plum tomato like there's a big difference there that's a big old tomato there we have it an entire wagon filled with plum tomatoes we just got back from picking tomatoes it is lunchtime but the farm market has been very very busy because the farm market's been very busy when we got back we ended up just helping a whole bunch of customers and we had orders that need to be put together but for lunch today we've got an amazing spread grammy has blts prepared for us the heirloom tomatoes are ours and then we've also got some spicy green tomatoes what a deal and sadly we can't eat this right now but grammy was also jarring peaches oh man hey everyone so it's actually now a different day in that last clip uh when I was looking at those delicious peaches what we ended up doing was going down around back and we got all those tomatoes sorted we went through all the tomatoes that we had picked and we had a decent amount for people that were looking to come pick up tomatoes and for orders and because of that this is what it looks like in front of the farm market this morning look at all those tomatoes ready for sale woohoo now when I was filming yesterday that's usually a day I don't regularly film I brought the camera I don't even know I think it was by accident I really think I did that by accident I was just in the mood to film so I filmed but anyway uh I didn't have much more footage after that because I actually went home and I had switched out with my wife so the day that I was filming uh usually at like halfway through the day I go home and I watch the kids so Lauren can actually come here and work in the farm market I was hoping that they were going to be able to take the camera and film what they were doing for the rest of the day but it got so busy you know how it is sometimes taking the camera around all over the place it's it can be a little bit of a job it just goes to show even though we're working every day I don't film every day we get three days out of the week I'm pretty happy with that but yeah this is kind of like a little bonus video because it wasn't a day I normally film but because of that that means this is where we're going to be ending the video I would like to thank everyone for watching and I hope to see you next time buh-bye