We stopped growing certain fruits and vegetables. Why?

since i don't have too much work going on and i have a little bit of time i want to talk about a vegetable we don't raise but we get a lot of questions about good morning everybody how you doing today my name's andrew i'm tracy i'm daniel i'm grandpa i'm matt i'm gavin i'm aunt becky and we're some of the veggie boys and we'd like to thank you for stopping by hey everyone we have got some stormy weather on our hands today it is raining like crazy the wind is blowing [Music] we're expected to get two inches of rain today and the rain's not the only problem we could have because of the tomatoes this high wind is not good for the sweet corn we don't plan on doing too much picking today we got a lot of that accomplished yesterday so we didn't have to worry about it and the store's not usually too busy on a day like this when it's storming i was just standing here and i hear crashing over in that little wooded area i think a tree just fell over we're having some really high winds and when the moisture starts to soak in those trees just fall right over so i don't know we're just trying to stay safe today it's a crazy day out here so i've spent much of my day watching my basement because of all this rain that we've had i'm a little gun shy when it rains a lot my basement likes to flood i just wanted to show you what we did with all of our bins and pumpkins now we put a lot of the stuff away but it's harder for you to sell it when it's away even though there isn't too many customers here so we took a tarp and put it all over our pumpkins you can see how much rain we've had that's like full oh it's been a lot of rain so you've probably guessed it we really haven't got too much going on today we can't get out into the fields it's too muddy and a lot of the produce would be muddy because of how hard it was raining it was splashing a lot of that mud up this is what we do on a rainy day playing go fish oh yeah so for the end of our day yesterday we spent a lot of time tarping stuff putting everything away and getting ready to deal with all this rain we don't know how bad this is going to affect the tomatoes we haven't had a chance to go back and look at them we are expecting some more rain it hasn't stopped completely yet but there's just not much you can do about it are we doing okay in here and to help you appreciate how much work we have going on today joel's already gone home and it's like 1 30. now even on a rainy day there's a lot of jobs that farmers could do and we have an extra job because of the farm market so we always have someone watching the farm market no matter if it's a sunny or a rainy day so what's the farm market been like today a little quiet because we had a lot of rain this morning but now it's starting to pick up now a lot of people ask me about what you guys do in the farm market so what's like your what's like your big job well as soon as we come in the morning we clean everything and you guys put everything out and then is take care of customers all day long that's pretty much all i do so grammy on a rainy day where there's not much going on what are you doing making salsa cannon red beets and making jelly you know the usual now what kind of salsa were you making what kind of jelly were you making today mild salsa jelly is tomato jelly i had a request so i have to make it now some of you may have never had tomato jelly it's pretty good it's a little on the sweeter side it's just like a sweet tomato flavor really good on toast crackers and cream cheese good too that's good too and what are you doing in the back of the farm market i'm bagging things up i had to bag up some elbow macaroni today and i did up some peach rings and another thing i'm doing andrew is i'm ordering all of the products that we need for the farm market yeah when it comes to all of the bulk foods that we provide here there there's a lot there is a lot of stuff and that's why the girls are always back here working because as my mom was doing they're boxing things up putting it out for the customers so a big job is staying on top of what we need so we always have an order every week and it's about two or three pallets large so the big things we're worrying about on a day like today is keeping the farm market filled up and making sure none of the animals get out because sometimes trees fall on the fence then the cows run free but hopefully we don't have that problem it's not too often where you'll get days like this where we almost can't do anything that rain causes a lot of problems we can't get out into the field with our equipment because we get it stuck and unlike other jobs on the farm when it comes to picking vegetables you're out in the weather you're dealing with the plants you get soaked from head to toe and it is not fun to be picking in the wet and on the farm we are prepared for days like this as we get closer to fall and into winter this is what the weather is we get the rainy gloomy days and it's not much fun for picking and you can see our upper greenhouse here our largest greenhouse it's practically empty now well compared to what it was there's a lot of empty spaces here because we've been selling so many fall moms since i don't have too much work going on and i have a little bit of time i want to talk about a vegetable we don't raise but we get a lot of questions about and that vegetable is carrots let me tell you i cannot tell you the amount of comments that i've had asking me do you guys grow carrots where are the carrots and there's nothing wrong with that i don't mind people asking i've just been asked it a lot and i have told people about it in the past but this is a perfect opportunity to explain why we don't raise carrots as a lot of you have mentioned we have a lot of rocks in our soil when i say a lot of rocks i mean a lot of rocks now having that many rocks in your soil it can cause a lot of problems it's wear and tear on equipment and it can be hard for some things to grow in that type of soil but we don't only look at the negatives here we look at the positive that rocky soil it helps to drain our fields and it adds a lot of nutrients because of the rocks that are there now this is a time when having rocky soil is not conducive to growing a certain vegetable and that vegetable is carrots we've grown carrots just for fun as a family but let me tell you we have a little bit of a trouble now carrots like a sandy soil it allows them to grow straight and it allows you to get a nice size on them now because our soil is rocky those carrots let me tell you they don't stay straight they are the funkiest looking carrots you've ever seen i've had carrots grow right into a rock and look like a baseball it was crazy now although it is funny when you harvest carrots that look all kind of crazy uh it's not too easy to sell them and that's one of the biggest reasons why we don't raise carrots up here in northeast pennsylvania we just can't do it we've tried the rocks give us lots of fits occasionally you'll get a nice straight carrot that looks really good but that's occasionally it sounds kind of silly not being able to grow something because of the amount of rocks that you have but it is a big problem and that's the biggest reason why we don't raise carrots because it's difficult for us to do there are a few other things that we don't raise we used to raise watermelon and cantaloupes but we don't raise them anymore because of the amount of damage that we would receive from the animals we also used to raise onions and we used to raise garlic but this time of the year it starts to get very wet in this area and that makes it difficult for us to harvest because they rot in the soil and in the past we have grown a lot of nice onions and a lot of nice garlic but it's so difficult for us to do and we've lost crops completely that we don't like to risk it this is a business we try and make money to support ourselves and if we keep planting a crop and we can't make our money back on it there's not much of a point to plant that crop another thing we used to have orchards and we don't do orchards anymore i don't know how i forgot the orchards the orchards were a big thing we did orchards for about four or five years and we were only able to harvest the fruit i think two years we had three years in a row where freezing frost and even hail destroyed our crops completely fortunately the area we live in is filled with agriculture and we have a lot of people who have orchards so we get peaches apples nectarines everything very local and the people we do get the stuff from do a wonderful job these apples look awesome and on a rainy day is when stuff like this happens we had extra bananas we had extra zucchini grammy made banana bread and zucchini bread zucchini bread is probably my favorite with some cream cheese on there just about two inches we're expecting to get another half inch so hopefully it comes slowly like this but since it's raining i'm just gonna head back in the house i've got some editing to do i do a lot more editing than i thought i would do when i first started this but that's okay i enjoy making videos and i think some of you guys enjoy watching them even more which makes me happy you always have to remember i am your number one fan well it's finally stopped raining and that's a good thing because dad and matt got home from the auction they picked up a lot of stuff they were looking for some pumpkins and some fall decorative things like this miniature straw bales i don't know people like them so where have you been all day question is where have you been all day so how did the auction go it was good i had to go watch tracy and matt because they misbehaved sometimes so i was down there making sure they were doing what they were supposed to be doing you got to keep an eye on them they're just down there spending money it's all about matt that's what i know so most of the day they were at the auction it's a rainy day there wasn't too much going on here so it was a good day to be at the auction buying some stuff and bringing it back so we got all done closed up the farm market i wanted to come up above the house we got our truck back uh the head went in it so that's not good but we're gonna get it fixed and this truck will probably be used for picking vegetables running around on the farm you can always use a big truck like that around and i wanted to come up above the house because matthew and tracy are working on something we're picking grapes there you go concords i'll be like you got to be very careful because these grapes should have been picked just a few days ago but we kind of scheduling conflicts didn't get up here to get them picked and so when they're this ripe they will they'll fall apart real easy if you let them so what do you guys plan on doing with your grapes grape jelly and then i was telling tracy if we had enough which we're definitely gonna have enough because we have all this to pick and then over there to pick um then if we're gonna make some some wine some concord grape wine ah so beautiful these are ready here and those are ready over there that tracy's picking but our this vine here you can see there's a ton in here but none of these ones are really ready yet i don't know if you can tell on camera they're still a little like reddish and the reason for that is is because these haven't gotten any sunshine so actually this whole canopy if you look like it did it looked like this a couple minutes ago so i'm taking some leaves off so this gets exposed to the sunshine because the sunshine is what actually ripens up the grapes once they get enough sunshine they'll start turning and i can't do the afternoon sun which would be the better sun because of these big old maple trees in the back so i have to shoot for the morning sun and clean this side off now if you're big into grapes uh we don't know too much of what we're doing we always try our best to handle the grape crop but we are not professionals we've only been getting a little more serious about it in the past couple years so hopefully we keep learning and learning now the only reason for me coming up here wasn't just to see the grapes and see what they have been up to we're actually looking for a spotter and lanternfly signs now the spotted lanternfly is a very invasive species that is going through pennsylvania right now now fortunately for us we've been doing a little bit of research because the first place we would find them is in our grapes and we haven't found one so that's really good for us now the interesting thing is we are in a quarantine county so there is that insect in our local area we actually had to go and get certified by penn state just to be able to ship things out of our county one take matthew one take matthew that's me that's not a spotted lanternfly you're good that just looks like a sentence don't worry guys it's not a spotted lantern fly i had to take a course because even though the spotted lanternfly is only in the local area in pennsylvania it's kind of moving into new jersey now it's more going that way we had to get that because what they like to do is their hitchhikers basically is how they like to travel they jump onto trucks and people and anything moving and that's how they they cover large long distances and they don't turn into a problem really quick but in a few years they could be a really bad problem they really like to eat grapes they really like to eat ornamental trees and they will eat everything they will kill everything if you let them so i got had to get certified to know what the eggs eggs look like or they like to lay their eggs on hard surfaces so we that way we're able to check all of our trucks all of our farm equipment all of our barns any any time we see them we're supposed to get rid of them and so that way we can do our part to make sure that the spread is slowed and hopefully stopped now the thing that's interesting with these bugs and why it becomes such a problem according to pennsylvania state university there is no natural predators in the state of pennsylvania so these bugs if they get into an area they can just run ramp it but upon our inspection today we have not seen any lanternfly we haven't seen any eggs we haven't seen any signs so that's good for us alrighty we are all finished with work we're up at the house we're getting ready for dinner now tonight we're having tacos how did making tacos go it's good easy to make now i see how dinner was able to be made i'm babysitting grandpa yeah so i know we didn't have too much going on today but i wanted to talk about the carrots that was a big thing and we took some time to check for those lanternflies we don't want them in this area we've seen a few but every time we see them we get rid of them right away no we're just hoping they don't come to us alrighty so now everybody is sitting down for dinner weather's over so that means this is where we're going to end the video we want to thank everyone for watching and we hope to see you next time bye bye

Channel: The Veggie Boys

Views: 204,134

Keywords: vegetable farming, the veggie boys, theveggieboys, vegetable farmers, family farm, real farming, how to farm, farm vlog, farming vlog, homesteading, homestead, farmers, day in the life, my day, day on the farm, a farmers life, farm life, farming life, american farmers, life on the farm, veggies, vegetables, big vegetables, growing tips, farm hack, garden hack, amazing, tomatoes, tomato hacks, vegetable tips, farming tips, garden, garden hacks

Id: vnT6agw_jZU

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 29 2021