Above is a picture of the some of the onions we have growing in the basement in seed flats. These will be transplanted out in the fields in April.

The varieties we have started are all sweet Spanish types. However, we have added some red sweet Spanish types this year. We are growing: Ailsa Craig Exhibition, Riverside Sweet Spanish, Montero, Red Defender, Ruby Ring and Red Burgermeister.

Our famous Newaygo Newaygo (walla walla) onions are overwintering in the fields right now.

So, if all goes well, we hope to have a bountiful harvest of onions starting in July at Magicland Farms.

Last year, we grew onions at Magicland Farms – our world famous Newaygo Newaygo sweets and sweet Spanish onions. The Newaygo Newaygo onions were a huge hit at the stand – wonderful taste and nice size but they are not an onion that will store well. The sweet Spanish onions were also tasty and we brought home some to use over the winter and they have stored pretty well. Today, I was making a BBQ Meatloaf for lunch and we came up with some sad news. The onions are about done and pretty soon we will have to find somewhere to get some onions from.

The good news about this is that the onions lasted until almost March – we are quite pleased with that. The bad news is that we don’t exactly know what to buy to keep us going until our onions come in. We are hesitant to buy onions from a foreign country and, with the salmonella/e.coli scares of the past seasons, don’t exactly trust the produce we find in our local grocery store.

This is one of the big reasons that the “buy local” movement is so important today. If you buy local, you know where your food is coming from and in a lot of instances you can get to know the farmer who grew it.

Of course, buying only local produce also has the tradeoff that you only buy what is in season and right now for us, local onions are not in season. So, the big challenge is to find a decent onion that we can grow and will store a bit longer for winter use. Maybe one of the new ones we are growing this year will be the one that will solve our winter storage problem. Let’s hope so!

We really had the snow today. It started this morning and continued most of the day. The snow was blown around by a strong east wind. Not very pleasant outside. It made for a great day to stay inside and try to stay warm.

However, it wasn’t like that all week and the crew was able to get out to the orchard and do some pruning. Here are some photos:

On the Eat Local Challenge website, I stumbled upon a list of ten reasons to eat local. These reasons make a great straightforward case for buying from your local farmer (Magicland Farms). You can check out the whole post at this link, but here is a quick summary, with my comments:

1. Eating local means more for the local economy. This just seems to make sense. When you buy from a local source, your money stays in your local area which helps keep the local economy moving.

2. Locally grown produce is fresher. At our stand, we pick every day, several times a day. Compare that to a grocery store where their produce is shipped in after being picked when?

3. Local food just plain tastes better. Ever tasted a just picked tomato vs. a store bought one? The difference is remarkable. Or a store bought strawberry vs. a Magicland Kids strawberry? I used to think I hated strawberries, having only tasted the ones sold in the local grocery chain in Chicago. It wasn’t until I got here in Michigan that I realized the difference in taste. Need I say more?

4. Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen. Produce bought at the grocery stores is oftentimes picked before it is ripe in order to withstand the rigors of shipping. Our produce is allowed to ripen on the vines, thereby giving you the best product we can provide.

5. Eating local is better for air quality and pollution than eating organic. The organic food in the store is shipped in from far away places including overseas. What is the impact on the environment?

6. Buying local food keeps us in touch with the seasons. Because of the grocery stores and the year round availability of most produce, consumers today don’t know what is in season. For example, while I am down at the stand, I have to explain to customers why we don’t have Fuji apples in June and conversely why we do have Quinte apples in July. (Quinte ripen here in mid July while Fuji not until Halloween.) Fruits and vegetables all have their seasons and learning when that is enables to you buy the freshest best tasting produce you can find.

7. Buying locally grown food is fodder for a wonderful story. Get to know us when you visit. Learn how we grow things, how we choose what we grow, what our motivation is, learn about us. We have lots of stories to tell!

8. Eating local protects us from bio-terrorism. I would add to this that buying local also helps avoid most of the contamination problems of recent months, including the peanut salmonella problem currently going on and the pepper/tomato e.coli contamination scare of last year. But bio-terrorism is also a legitimate concern.

9. Local food translates to more variety. We grow a lot of things that stores are not interested in since they concentrate on mainly the most popular varieties (Red Delicious apples are a good example). We have the freedom to grow things that you wouldn’t find in the grocery store. For example, we have close to 100 different varieties of apples (modern varieties and antique) in our orchard, many different varieties of heirloom tomatoes. We grow around 20 different varieties of sweet corn. All of these varieties have their own flavor and story. We don’t only grow green beans, but french filet beans and yellow wax beans. Our peppers reflect the colors of the rainbow, everything from white to orange to red to purple to green. I could go on but I think you understand my point.

With just the heirloom tomatoes and the apples, many of our customers get great enjoyment out of trying the different varieties and finding out how different they each taste while settling on their favorites.

10. Supporting local providers supports responsible land development. As long as Magicland Farms is in business, you know the land won’t be developed or transformed into something that destroys the rural nature of our area.

So there are lots of benefits to buying local. Hope to see you down at the stand this summer.

This is a very important picture to us here at Magicland Farms.

In Magicland’s history the peach crop, and in fact the peach trees, have been wiped out by severely cold winter weather – the last time this happened was in 1994. Every time we get temperatures below zero, the peaches are the thing we are the most concerned about. This year, as you may know, we had a couple of bouts of Arctic weather where the temperatures plunged below zero. As far as we can tell from the data we gather, it got down to -8 at the farm.

As soon as we were able, we got out to the orchard to cut some small branches from the peach trees that had buds on them and put them in a vase at the house to see how they withstood the weather. Well, happily for us, they blossomed so it would appear that, so far, the peach trees have withstood the cold weather this winter.

No, not the planting in the field but the planting in our basement and small attached greenhouse. In order to get the produce to our customers as early as possible, we need to start some of the vegetables inside. Right now, we have started onions, tomatoes and peppers in seed flats. The picture above shows one of the flats of tomatoes.

After they grow a bit, they are then transplanted into peat pots to await planting in the fields and the high tunnel. We wait until sometime around May 20th to plant the tomatoes in the field; the ones destined for the high tunnel can go in earlier, somewhere around the end of April.

Magicland Farms is a family owned and operated roadside market located in Fremont, Michigan. We sell a wide variety of fruits and vegetables.

We hope to keep our customers abreast of what’s happening at Magicland Farms, from the start of our farm activities to the harvest of all of our delicious fruits and vegetables.

Check back often to find out what is happening at Magicland!