Sweet-tart kumquats and sunny days
For almost every different type of citrus you have to peel off the skin to enjoy the sweetness of the flesh.
Kumquats are very different being eaten whole with the sweetness coming from the skin and the inside bringing the tartness and creating a delicious mix of flavor.
This week we are harvesting the first kumquats of the season and bringing them to the Davis Farmers Market on Saturday.
They are an orange fruit that is oval shaped similarly sized to an olive. They can be eaten whole as a snack or sliced up in salad.
Some people make a kumquat marmalade, candy the skins or use to juices in cocktails and marinades.
The other citrus we are harvesting right now are Late Lane Oranges, Lemons and Oro Blanco and Rio Red Grapefruit.
The weather this week has been very sunny with all the fruit trees blooming and the grasses growing after the rains.
Combined with the days getting longer and warmer weather it feels like the season is changing and we are getting into spring which means a lot more work to do on the farm.
All the veggies we planted a few weeks ago are growing quickly and enjoying the warm weather.
With the forecast not changing much for the next week, by the end of next week all new veggies will be much bigger with all the photosynthesis they are getting.
The mowing of cover crop we did a lot of last week continued this week with many more acres to go on the new property. We purchased a flail mower over the winter for this property and are now getting to use it.
After having to do some work getting it all set up for us, since we bought it at an auction, it has been running well getting everything mowed down so we can start preparing the field for planting.
We expected it to be at the earliest April 1 we could plant at that property since all the water comes through the Solano Irrigation District from Lake Berryessa. They decided that the water could start being used March 15 but we need to finish up some projects there before we get planting.
Every property that is part of the Solano Irrigation District gets an allocation of the water that the district receives that is based on the amount of acres being grown and not what crop is being grown.
Some farms use their full allocation of water for certain crops plus any increase the district does in the summer while others don’t come close to using their allocation.
It is a much different way to approach what we can grow with having a limited season due to water and rotating a mix of crops instead of just growing an entire field of one crop like the majority of farmers do.
We’ve been taking the expansion slowly getting equipment that we need to make it successful as we figure out how we want to farm this new, larger piece of land.
