Peach-Jalapeno Jam is available in both 4-oz and 8-oz sizes. Pick up directly from the farm, or order online and have it shipped to anywhere in the U.S. Visit our Shop page for online buying options.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Peach-Jalapeno Jam
A new sweet-spicy combo jam is now available. Peach-Jalapeno Jam features the finest Georgia peaches we could find, combined with our very own premium jalapenos grown right here on the farm. The flavor is sweet with a kick of jalapeno spice that is noticeable, but not overwhelming. If you like the flavor of jalapenos, you will surely like this jam!
Peach-Jalapeno Jam is available in both 4-oz and 8-oz sizes. Pick up directly from the farm, or order online and have it shipped to anywhere in the U.S. Visit our Shop page for online buying options.
Peach-Jalapeno Jam is available in both 4-oz and 8-oz sizes. Pick up directly from the farm, or order online and have it shipped to anywhere in the U.S. Visit our Shop page for online buying options.
Wednesday, July 10, 2019
TerraCycle Shipment
We just submitted another shipment to TerraCycle for recycling! We participate in two programs here for items that can't be recycled at local centers. This time we sent in 1,106 energy bar wrappers into the Clif Bar program, and 181 pouches into the GoGo Squeez program. Check out TerraCycle.com and see all their programs. It's easy to recycle with them. Just save your waste and ship it in for free through UPS. Thanks to all who contributed in this shipment!
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Pre-Order Pickles!
The cucumbers are beginning to come in on the farm. That means pickle time! You can now pre-order Shannon's Homemade Pickles for just $5 for a quart jar. We will be offering a limited number of jars this year so pre-order for the best chance of getting some. Contact us to order. Specify which flavor (Regular or Peppercorn) and cut type (slices or spears) that you would like. Orders can be paid for with cash at time of pick-up, or online through PayPal. Shipping is available, but it is costly and only advisable if you would like 4+ jars. Delivery available to local addresses for a fee.
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Farm Update 6-1-19
The busy Spring planting season is now behind us! We have fun raising our little seedlings, working the ground and planting, but we are also ready for a break! Now, it's about helping the plants grow and keeping the weeds at bay while we wait for the treasure. We have now planted all of our plants. With growth in our pepper sales we are now up to about 700 peppers in our small area. Most of those are hot peppers. People ask us all the time how many acres we have to have that many peppers, but really it doesn't take that much room. All those peppers are on less than 1/4 of an acre because we use a compact planting style with double rows of offsetting plants that are 18 inches apart. All of the peppers did better this year with only the last round that we planted experiencing a little sunburn. March, April and the first two weeks of May were ideal for our seedlings and initial plantings, but things got hot and dry in a hurry in the middle and end of May, which made the last few rounds of planting a bit tougher to transition. We added a lot of new peppers this year. Read more about them here. We were able to plant about 25% of our crop this year from our own harvested seeds from 2017 and 2018. We hope to continue to increase this number and also be able to offer some of our seeds to you in the future. This year we germinated most of our supper hot varieties around 90%, much higher than the industry normal of 50-60% germination rate.
We were so happy to have a tiller to use this year. Thank you all for the purchases you have made over the last few years! It is because of those sales that we could buy our first full-size tiller, which cut our soil prep time by days! I would say we spent 25% of the time and effort as in the past few years. We also changed how we lay out our rows to cut down on washing issues during heavy rain, though thus far we have not had any major storms this year. Hopefully, it will stay that way. but if it doesn't I am confident we will not lose near as much as last year when the majority of our peppers were washed away.
Our main focus this year is on our hot peppers, but we still have plenty of vegetable variety. Squash, zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes are going strong and already blooming. We also will have sweet peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon, eggplant and potatoes. We did more beans this year, both green and black varieties. The black ones were just so good last year that we had to plant more, mostly for our own bellies. We do hope to be able to offer some of our black beans for seeds in the future. They are so good that we have to share! We also have many sunflowers and gourds to help attract pollinating bees and butterflies, along with providing us a few bonus treats like sunflower seed snacks and scrubbing luffas. We have dried our luffa gourds from last fall and will be prepping them in the coming months. Look for some natural scrubbers to available soon!
We will also have a few herbs this year including mint, basil, cilantro and shiso. We continue to build up our asparagus, blueberry and raspberry crops, and are adding fruit trees all the time with several apple, peach and fig varieties now growing strong. Our garlic has done well this year and should be ready for harvest in the next few weeks. We are excited to have five varieties to offer up this year once they are dried and ready for storage.
In addition to getting the plants going, we have been working hard on jellies and jams as well. It seems like there is a new flower or fruit coming into season every other week. We continued on with our staples like Violet, Dandelion and Strawberry, while adding some new varieties like Forsythia-Dandelion and Honeysuckle. They are selling fast so better grab one while you can! This season's jars have a new lid label on them that we designed ourselves. We have now shipped to over 30 states! That blows my mind every time I think about it. We actually sell more across the country than we do right here at home. We have gotten quite the following out west in states like California, Oregon and Washington and are so happy to be able to ship to you guys!
Once picking is in full swing, expect to see some Veggie Sale days near the farm. We do not plan to have the Roadside Stand this year. While we had plenty of traffic passing by our location, not many people stopped. It was a lot of time and effort with little to show for it, so we will be putting our efforts into online selling and Veggie Sales. We also hope to get our peppers and jellies into some local markets. While that has been a difficult task so far, we will continue to work on making progress here locally. We know our quality and prices are better than anyone around, we just have to get people to give us a try.
For anyone interested in our Soldier Fly Grubs, they are finally available again. The cool nights kept them dormant longer this year, but they are now active and making us compost. They can do the same for you. You can also use them as feeder grubs for pets, or fish bait!
We are also still offering local lawn care services to our neighbors. We promise we can beat the prices and quality of the other guys in town! Just contact us and we can talk about handling both your lawn and landscaping needs.
We hope all of our readers, supporters and customers are doing well! Thank you all for the support and we hope you have been happy with the purchases you have made. We truly appreciate all the wonderful feedback in our Etsy and eBay stores. Thanks and happy summer!
We were so happy to have a tiller to use this year. Thank you all for the purchases you have made over the last few years! It is because of those sales that we could buy our first full-size tiller, which cut our soil prep time by days! I would say we spent 25% of the time and effort as in the past few years. We also changed how we lay out our rows to cut down on washing issues during heavy rain, though thus far we have not had any major storms this year. Hopefully, it will stay that way. but if it doesn't I am confident we will not lose near as much as last year when the majority of our peppers were washed away.
A new addition to the farm this year were tulips. Spring looked better than ever!
Our main focus this year is on our hot peppers, but we still have plenty of vegetable variety. Squash, zucchini, cucumbers and tomatoes are going strong and already blooming. We also will have sweet peppers, cantaloupe, watermelon, eggplant and potatoes. We did more beans this year, both green and black varieties. The black ones were just so good last year that we had to plant more, mostly for our own bellies. We do hope to be able to offer some of our black beans for seeds in the future. They are so good that we have to share! We also have many sunflowers and gourds to help attract pollinating bees and butterflies, along with providing us a few bonus treats like sunflower seed snacks and scrubbing luffas. We have dried our luffa gourds from last fall and will be prepping them in the coming months. Look for some natural scrubbers to available soon!
We will also have a few herbs this year including mint, basil, cilantro and shiso. We continue to build up our asparagus, blueberry and raspberry crops, and are adding fruit trees all the time with several apple, peach and fig varieties now growing strong. Our garlic has done well this year and should be ready for harvest in the next few weeks. We are excited to have five varieties to offer up this year once they are dried and ready for storage.
In addition to getting the plants going, we have been working hard on jellies and jams as well. It seems like there is a new flower or fruit coming into season every other week. We continued on with our staples like Violet, Dandelion and Strawberry, while adding some new varieties like Forsythia-Dandelion and Honeysuckle. They are selling fast so better grab one while you can! This season's jars have a new lid label on them that we designed ourselves. We have now shipped to over 30 states! That blows my mind every time I think about it. We actually sell more across the country than we do right here at home. We have gotten quite the following out west in states like California, Oregon and Washington and are so happy to be able to ship to you guys!
Forsythia blossoms
White violet flowers
New Forsythia-Dandelion Jellies, available in Regular and Honey varieties. The Honey is sweetened with local honey from right here in our own county!
Our classic Strawberry Jam is back for another year.
New Honeysuckle Jelly. If you like the way honeysuckle smells you will love the taste of this super sweet jelly!
Once picking is in full swing, expect to see some Veggie Sale days near the farm. We do not plan to have the Roadside Stand this year. While we had plenty of traffic passing by our location, not many people stopped. It was a lot of time and effort with little to show for it, so we will be putting our efforts into online selling and Veggie Sales. We also hope to get our peppers and jellies into some local markets. While that has been a difficult task so far, we will continue to work on making progress here locally. We know our quality and prices are better than anyone around, we just have to get people to give us a try.
For anyone interested in our Soldier Fly Grubs, they are finally available again. The cool nights kept them dormant longer this year, but they are now active and making us compost. They can do the same for you. You can also use them as feeder grubs for pets, or fish bait!
We are also still offering local lawn care services to our neighbors. We promise we can beat the prices and quality of the other guys in town! Just contact us and we can talk about handling both your lawn and landscaping needs.
We hope all of our readers, supporters and customers are doing well! Thank you all for the support and we hope you have been happy with the purchases you have made. We truly appreciate all the wonderful feedback in our Etsy and eBay stores. Thanks and happy summer!
Friday, May 24, 2019
Honeysuckle Jelly
We have one more new jelly to end the Spring season. It's by far the sweetest tasting jelly we have ever made. Introducing Honeysuckle Jelly!
We use the freshest white blossoms from the vine as they are much sweeter than more aged yellow blossom. The finished product tastes very similar to honey! This plant was definitely named correctly!
The jelly is available in 4 ounce jars. Visit our Shop page to purchase it. You can buy through eBay or Etsy. Shipping is available to anywhere in the U.S. Visit our Jams/Jellies page for more info on any of our canned products.
We use the freshest white blossoms from the vine as they are much sweeter than more aged yellow blossom. The finished product tastes very similar to honey! This plant was definitely named correctly!
The jelly is available in 4 ounce jars. Visit our Shop page to purchase it. You can buy through eBay or Etsy. Shipping is available to anywhere in the U.S. Visit our Jams/Jellies page for more info on any of our canned products.
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Strawberry Jam
One of our most popular jams is back! Fresh strawberries from Slate farms were again used in our classic Strawberry Jam. Made with simple, clean ingredients, you can count on that strawberry taste you love and not worry about what's in it. The strawberries from Slate were the biggest and sweetest we have ever picked!
Available in 4 ounce and 8 ounce sizes. Find out more at our Jams/Jellies page. You can purchase the jam through our Shop page, where we sell through both eBay and Etsy. Shipping available! If you live local, contact us for a discounted rate with shipping costs removed. You can pick up a jar today and be eating it this afternoon!
Available in 4 ounce and 8 ounce sizes. Find out more at our Jams/Jellies page. You can purchase the jam through our Shop page, where we sell through both eBay and Etsy. Shipping available! If you live local, contact us for a discounted rate with shipping costs removed. You can pick up a jar today and be eating it this afternoon!
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Pepper Additions for 2019
Most of our planting is complete! We focused more on peppers this year than ever before as our hot peppers continue to be our most popular items. We have added some new hotties this year. A description is below for each of our new varieties. We will still have all of our usuals that you have grown to love like Jalapenos, Cayennes, Habaneros, Ghost, Trinidad Scorpion and Carolina Reaper to name a few. We were able to grow about 20% of our nearly 700 sweet and hot pepper plants this year from our own seeds harvested near the end of the last season. We hope to increase that percentage in the future and be able to offer some of our seeds for purchase one day as well. So far, our seeds have sprouted better than seeds we ordered from seed retailers. Some of our varieties exceeded 90% germination rate!
Our first new variety for the year is the addition of the Moruga strain of Trinidad Scorpion. We have grown mostly the Butch-T variety and some mix strains. We are excited to be branching out to pure Morugas, which pack much more heat than Butch-T at 2 million Scoville units.
We will also add two brand new super hot varieties in 7 Pot Douglah and Naga Viper. The 7 Pot Douglah is ranked hotter than a Ghost and tips the Scoville scale at 1.85 million units, ranking it third in the world behind Carolina Reaper and Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. The name tells you all you need to know: one pepper is enough to spice up seven pots of chili! Naga Viper also ranks above a Ghost at around 1.3 million Scoville units.
We are attempting some Ghost varieties again this year after losing our entire crop of the variations last year after a flood. We hope to have White Ghost and Peach Ghost plants produce for us this year.
Our Habanero selection will be expanding a bit with a new Caribbean Red variety added to our staples of Hot Paper Lantern and Helios. Numex Suave Orange have also been returned to our fields this year after a year off. Caribbean Red is on the hotter end of the Habanero heat scale, being hotter than our other three varieties.
Devil's Tongue peppers are in the Habanero family. They are on the lower end of the heat spectrum for Habaneros, but pack a stronger, sweeter citrus taste. Last year we tried both yellow and red varieties with only one single yellow plant surviving the June flooding. Yellow is back for this year and we also have Red Devil's Tongue in the ground and doing well!
Another pepper on a second attempt is Scotch Bonnet. Another pepper in the Habanero family, we had a lot of difficulty germinating these last year and ended up not getting a single plant into the ground. This year we had plenty of sprouts and they are slowly growing into strong plants. They will be in the ground soon!
We enjoy stir-fry and grilling around here, so it was a no-brainer to add a fairly new variety to the U.S. that is a thick fryer pepper with mild heat. Dragon's Toe comes over from Asia and will go great in a pan of veggies. We are pumped to try this one! Word in the pepper community is that it makes a great jam...
Last, but not least, we were given some seeds to trial out. The Aji Crystal pepper from Chile is becoming more popular in the culinary world thanks to its strong smoky-citrus flavor and moderate heat that ranks a little below a Cayenne. It is unique in that it is one of very few peppers that are actually sweeter before they ripen. We will only have a few plants this year as we test them out, similar to what we did with the Thairano hybrid last year.
These peppers will be here before you know it! Check back here for updates as they grow. Thank you all who support us in our pepper endeavors. We will let you know when they are ready for purchase, fresh and dried, later this summer!
Our first new variety for the year is the addition of the Moruga strain of Trinidad Scorpion. We have grown mostly the Butch-T variety and some mix strains. We are excited to be branching out to pure Morugas, which pack much more heat than Butch-T at 2 million Scoville units.
Moruga Scorpion
We will also add two brand new super hot varieties in 7 Pot Douglah and Naga Viper. The 7 Pot Douglah is ranked hotter than a Ghost and tips the Scoville scale at 1.85 million units, ranking it third in the world behind Carolina Reaper and Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. The name tells you all you need to know: one pepper is enough to spice up seven pots of chili! Naga Viper also ranks above a Ghost at around 1.3 million Scoville units.
7 Pot Douglah
Naga Viper
White Ghost
Peach Ghost
Our Habanero selection will be expanding a bit with a new Caribbean Red variety added to our staples of Hot Paper Lantern and Helios. Numex Suave Orange have also been returned to our fields this year after a year off. Caribbean Red is on the hotter end of the Habanero heat scale, being hotter than our other three varieties.
Caribbean Red Habanero
Devil's Tongue peppers are in the Habanero family. They are on the lower end of the heat spectrum for Habaneros, but pack a stronger, sweeter citrus taste. Last year we tried both yellow and red varieties with only one single yellow plant surviving the June flooding. Yellow is back for this year and we also have Red Devil's Tongue in the ground and doing well!
Red Devil's Tongue
Another pepper on a second attempt is Scotch Bonnet. Another pepper in the Habanero family, we had a lot of difficulty germinating these last year and ended up not getting a single plant into the ground. This year we had plenty of sprouts and they are slowly growing into strong plants. They will be in the ground soon!
Scotch Bonnet
We enjoy stir-fry and grilling around here, so it was a no-brainer to add a fairly new variety to the U.S. that is a thick fryer pepper with mild heat. Dragon's Toe comes over from Asia and will go great in a pan of veggies. We are pumped to try this one! Word in the pepper community is that it makes a great jam...
Dragon's Toe pepper
Last, but not least, we were given some seeds to trial out. The Aji Crystal pepper from Chile is becoming more popular in the culinary world thanks to its strong smoky-citrus flavor and moderate heat that ranks a little below a Cayenne. It is unique in that it is one of very few peppers that are actually sweeter before they ripen. We will only have a few plants this year as we test them out, similar to what we did with the Thairano hybrid last year.
Aji Crystal peppers
These peppers will be here before you know it! Check back here for updates as they grow. Thank you all who support us in our pepper endeavors. We will let you know when they are ready for purchase, fresh and dried, later this summer!
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