RVP Online Farmers Market is NOW OPEN!

The Online Market is NOW OPEN. The market will be open until Saturday night until 10pm. Please place an order by then and we will harvest your order and have it ready for you to pick up on the Westside of the Courthouse on Tuesday between 5:00 and 5:30. The only delivery will be to Wakefield school and Clay Center.

If you have any questions, please email Jay at jaysleichter@yahoo.com

Greetings from RVP online Farmers Market

Hello,

I am resending this blog post as it seems that it may have been blocked due to my yahoo.com email address. I have changed it to a gmail address and I hope it works.

We will be doing our online market this fall/winter again. We hope you are still interested in allowing us to be your source of local produce this fall and winter.

We have over 5,600 square feet of growing space which is larger than an NBA basketball court! After this weekend, everything will be planted and transplanted.

We are planning on doing a weekly market until the the January.

There will be a few changes. We only are going to be making deliveries to Clay Center and the immediate area surrounding. I will also deliver to Wakefield, since I go there every day for school. We are still planning on going to Manhattan Winter market, so you can still pick up our produce there. We will also allow you to order online and pick up there, but only those days we are at market.

Please send me an email if you are still planning on participating in the market and share with others who are interested.

Send your emails to jaysjellies@gmail.com or jaysjellies@yahoo.com or jaysleichter@yahoo.com

Thanks!

Greetings from RVP online Farmers Market

Hello,

I know it has been a long time and you probably thought you would never be able to order produce online again. Well we are getting ready to start up again this November. We do have some changes for our online market. The biggest change is we will only be doing a drop off in CLAY CENTER. Also due to time constraints and fuel prices, we will no longer offer delivery to Manhattan and we will be the only vendor in our market. We will be attending the Winter Market in Manhattan, so you will still be able to get our produce there.

Linda and I haven’t “Ironed” out all the details yet, but we will be working on those this week. Be on the lookout for more information coming soon.

We just wanted to let you know that we will be planning on opening up the market in November.

Any questions, please send me an email at jaysjellies@yahoo.com

Winter Greetings

With school kicking into high gear last fall, 2 new sets of standards for 5 grades, 2 brand new curriculum series for 2 subjects at 5 grade levels, posting to my websites has been a challenge and honestly haven’t had time. If I did have time, I usually filled it with something else that had to be done! At the end of summer and during the Fall, it was crazy busy. I never really got to do what I wanted to do. Well this is what we have been doing this winter. Due to school and a very late spring, everything got pushed back last fall and we didn’t get crops in the ground as soon as I would have liked. Therefore I paid the price. I don’t have as much produce this winter. That was a double edged sword. Less produce meant, I was unable to do our online market, less winter income. However, I am thankful that we don’t have much produce available because we have had a little more family time and I haven’t had to run myself ragged to get everything done. Also with the winter we have had so far, I probably would have been more upset with loosing crops. So in the end it all worked out!

I am planning on opening the market back up this spring, once we get crops growing again and maintain it throughout the year. The last time I talked to the Wiebe’s they were probably going to not participate. It just was getting to not be as profitable as it once was. That would make it easier on me, but I sure would like to have more of their baked goods and cheeses. We have been able to sell at the winter market 2 times a month, but I have been harvesting everything to almost nothing each time. This barely gets enough produce to meet the demand. Most every market we get close to selling out or sell out.

I hope you will still want to place orders again this spring. I know I will be ready for it and I still want to be YOUR farmer!

Well I try to take a picture at each market before anyone shows up to buy. Sometimes they are good, sometimes I am an in a big hurry! Here is what our winter market offering have looked like this winter.

November 2nd

November 23rd

December 7th

December 21st The day following this market, I got sick and eventually was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, needless to say it was a very uneventful Christmas break!

January 4th

February 7th

We still have 3 more winter markets. I am hoping to plant a few things to try and attend the last two. We will be out of town for the next market in February. Winter markets have been very good for us, it is just a challenge to get everything harvested and processed when there is snow on the ground or freezing temps. It is a challenge that I am use to. I just wish I was able to afford to build a nice indoor packing facility!

RVP-Alive and well... Kinda

Well it is late July and the windows in the house are open and it is 69 degrees. That is not usual for these parts. It is usually still in the upper 80’s at least! Now if we could get some rain, it would be nice. We are finding new ways to miss it. One of these days, it will be ours again!

Due to being completely overwhelmed, #3 girl earned a trip to the ER for a possible broken nose on Wednesday during the market and #5 is in the hospital now with cough and possible whooping cough, I am going to keep the market closed for awhile so I don’t have more issues to deal with. Everyone is better now, but we have to get these family issues fixed up. I will still be attending market, but I am just out of time.

I thought I would share some pics of our later crops. Our earlier crops are producing, but they are nothing to look at. Many weeks of picking and neglected weeding has made them look bad. Here is the nice looking stuff!

2nd and 3rd plantings of tomatoes and 2nd planting of peppers.

4th planting of Tomatoes, they look awesome!

Late Cherry Tomatoes, kinda scrawny but they are growing like weeds!

Sweet Potatoes

A later planting of sweet potatoes

Okra, not producing yet

Melon Patch

Melon Patch from the other direction

Watermelon, We only grow personal sized ones

Cantaloupe, personal sized again. We have so many people who grow huge melons. I didn’t want to compete, so I created my own niche market. Always sold out last year, hope it happens again this year.

Story of the last two months, this is beside one of the sweet potato patches.

Thanks,

Jay

RVP- Market is open, better late than never!

The market is open. I will leave it open until 10 pm tonight since I am so late opening it.

Deliveries will be to Manhattan on Wednesday and I will make home deliveries in Clay Center on Tuesday.

Thanks,

Jay

RVP-Appologies for the market this week

Between two markets last week, helping my dad with his best wheat harvest ever and helping my brother bale straw and hay so he could attend a funeral out of state, the RVP market was not on my mind (even though it should have been).

We also finished up our first successful garlic harvest. It is all bunched and tied up in the shed drying. After we pick out our seed garlic for planting this fall, we will have it for sale. I am very happy with the harvest.

Tomatoes are starting to come on heavy, the plants are loaded. They are so loaded that one of the top strings snapped under the weight and they flopped over! The tomatoes are fine, it just will make harvest a nightmare!

Cherry tomatoes are being harvested. They aren’t as heavy as last year, I am not sure why, but they taste wonderful!

We finally hit it big with bell peppers again. It has been a few bad years with heat and bugs, but they are doing great!

Zucchini is blowing me away and the cucumbers are knocking on the door.

Our melons this year are slower, despite planting them on the exact same dates as last year, they are just behind. The like the heat, so last year they were very happy. We have cut back to our top sellers Red, yellow and orange watermelons and two cantaloupe varities including Tasty Bites, an unbelievable flavored little cantaloupe.

Our winter squash is growing nice, with lots of blooms.

Finally our sweet potatoes are looking very promising! They are vining out and almost covering their whole area.

We will be selling in Manhattan in a few hours today, from 4 til 7 at CICO, so if you can stop by it would be great!

We also will be selling in Manhattan an Clay Center on Saturday. At first I was only going to be in Clay Center, but Katie, our oldest, said “Dad, I can sell in Clay Center I did it all last week”. I guess we will turn her loose and see if she can. Mom will be near by and some helpful neighbors will be set up next to her if she needs any help.

Happy July 4th and I will be opening up the market next week for sure!

Thanks,

Jay

RVP-The market it open

I was checking email today and I was surprised that I wasn’t seeing any orders for this week. Then it dawned on me, well I never opened the market! I am sorry. With 3 playing ball on Thursday nights and then prepping for two markets on Friday, it just slipped my mind. We did sell at the Saturday market in Clay Center and in Manhattan. They were both good days, I just am not sure if we can keep it up all summer. I know we will try again next weekend too.

Farm news, the wind is still blowing and the rain still isn’t falling! Our tomatoes are close. We are picking cherry tomatoes now. I am hoping we will be able to pick some bigger tomatoes soon. With the heat and wind, I am sure it is possible by Saturday, not sure about Wednesday though.

We called it quits for the Kale and Chard. We have picked it down and it isn’t fairing all that well in the heat for me. We will have it again this fall, winter and next spring. 3 out of 4 months isn’t that bad!

I will give you some more time for orders, how about til 8pm. As I said earlier, sorry about that.

Thanks,

Jay

RVP-It's summer (ready or not)!

Hello,

Well it seems like summer is here, ready or not! We have been busy keeping crops watered and cool the best we can. It has been a strange year, to say it mildly!

Couple updates, we have picked about a basket of cherry tomatoes so far this year. The girls are eating them up fast. They will be here soon! Also, we are starting to see some slight color change in some of the tomatoes. They are almost ready!

Orders are due by Sunday at 5 pm and delivery will be on Tuesday evening in Clay Center and Wednesday in Manhattan at the Farmers Market.

Thanks!

Jay

RVP-The Market is Finally open!

Hello,

I am sorry we haven’t be able to get the market back open, we have been very busy with adjusting to farm life, work schedules and working around a new baby. I am feeling more caught up on planting, seeding and weeding. I can focus more time on markets. We will try to maintain a weekly schedule from now until Christmas. We will be delivering to Manhattan on Wednesday evenings and in Clay Center on Tuesday evenings (we will have to work around ball games until early July).

We have lots of things growing and still more things to plant. Our tomatoes are looking great. While we won’t be as early as years past, I am hoping that we will be picking by the end of the month. Little cucumbers will be ready in about a week. We just started picking Zucchini today. We will also have Napa Cabbage very soon. Crops got started late and are taking their sweet time to catch up!

Slicing cucumbers are growing and some are just coming up, so it will be awhile! I am hoping potatoes will be ready in the next few weeks. It is one of the best crops we have had in the last several years!

Remember orders are due by 5 pm on Sunday!

Thanks,

Jay