Black Cat is Devil Proof — And Cheery With Krug, Too
The new bottles of California Malbec thrill the Black Cat family not just because the wine is superb. We cherish and champion the Sonoma County elixir, too, because winemaker Jesse Katz grew up in Boulder, and originals of his father Andy Katz’s spectacular...
Head To The Final Market of 2017
It arrives on a Friday every year, and the profound sense of bittersweet returns the next day, too. It is the Friday and Saturday immediately prior to Thanksgiving, which always marks our last harvest for the farmers’ market in downtown Boulder as well as the...
Spinach Returns, Plenty of Veggies Still Harvested
The bulk of the harvesting for 2018 is wrapping-up. We spent a good bit of time this week in the field that holds our polenta corn, which has been drying on the stalks since August. Now, we harvest the cobs and deliver them to a barn, where they will dry some more. At...
Farm to Table Pumpkins for Pigs
Sometimes we almost feel like those Japanese ranchers who spend so much time and effort fussing over their Wagyu herds, the kind of cattle that produce kobe beef. We don’t massage our heritage Mulefoot pigs, but we have crowned them kings and queens of the farm....
Farm-to-Table Happens in the Snow
Harvesting crops is never a breezy affair — even on a 72-degree June afternoon with the sky the color of an Adriatic lagoon it presents challenges. It is physically demanding, requiring that we bend over and pull or dig. We fill bins with arugula and Belgian endive,...
Pigs Key to the Life of Biodynamic Farm
It’s been quite the week — especially for our pigs. We raise more than 100 of them, mostly heritage Mulefoots, on one of our properties. They are one of the foundations of Black Cat Farm, which is the only certified biodynamic farm-to-table operation in the United...
Frost and Snow and Sturdy Vegetables
Our first frost in Boulder normally happens somewhere during the first 10 days of October, and sure enough, that's what happened this year. As anticipated, the hard frost whacked the tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant for the year, as well as select greens that...
The Balm Before the Storm
Winter is coming. On Monday. If you planned on making tomato sauce to put up or freeze; pickling peppers; cooking big batches of baba ganoush from local organic eggplants, calabacitas with summer squash and corn, or salsa with jalapenos and cherry tomatoes — well, you...
A Bounty Despite the Rain
Will the rain — although really, it's been more like an unrelenting mist — ever stop? Water is usually welcome in sunny Colorado, and course it is vital for farming. But it also complicates things like planting and harvesting, especially when it just comes at us day...
Here Comes Fall — Make it a Tomato Sauce Weekend
We all have sensed it in the mornings the past few weeks — fall’s arrival. We think she finally knocks on the door tomorrow morning, looking dramatic in a scarf and sweater and grinning madly. “Are you ready for me?” “We are not. But come on in, Fall. Nice to see you...
Farm Treasures at the Market and Restaurants
One of our experiments this year, in addition to sweet potatoes and Belgian endive, was peanuts. It looks like we scored a hat trick this year. The sweet potatoes and endive were triumphs, and despite research that cautioned us against trying peanuts — the legumes...
Sweet Potatoes at the Market
Finally! We will be selling our own organic Boulder County sweet potatoes on Saturday at the Market. Yes! As we have chronicled in detail on the blog, growing sweet potatoes was a surprise triumph for us this year. They are not supposed to really grow in Colorado —...
Fruits of Labor
With enough pepper, eggplant and tomato plants to supply the island of Corsica with produce for a year, we are awfully busy in the fields plucking fruit, tossing it into baskets, and hauling it on our shoulders up to the trucks. Among other things, we are turning...
Sweet Potatoes and their Greens are Spectacular
We believe you have not tried the following two things: Fingerling sweet potatoes grown in Boulder County Sweet potato greens What are you waiting for? We wrote about our sweet potato adventure here, in our last blog entry. Now that we have had a chance to bring the...
Food Laboratory Victories
Our food laboratory — the farm — persuades us to try new things every year. It is a laboratory, after all. Figuring out how to coax artichoke plants to produce globes took about five years (the photo above is an artichoke flower. It looks like it belongs in a coral...
The Mighty Harvest
Did you hear that? It was the fields (well, most of them) slurping down all of that much-needed water this week. We irrigate our fields, so water falling from the sky is not always vital. But of course it is usually welcome. The downside? The weeds sure do love water...
Harvest Entering the Sweet Spot
Tomatoes? Check. Peppers? Yep. Eggplant? You betcha'. Tomatillos? Indeed. Our harvests lately have been downright cornucopian — and wouldn't it rock if we had a goat's horn to display the things we are pulling from the fields? But alas, no horn. Not yet, at least....
Retreat of Temperatures + Rain = Good
It's been nice, hasn't it? Summer had been plodding along, climatically, as a parade of hot, dry days. We began to look west for signs of smoke. But then the temperatures dropped, some rain fell, and the haze that seemed to occupy the sky for weeks evaporated,...
Pepper & Squash Palooza
The first chunk of every farmers' market season gets dominated by leafy things and rooty things — lettuces, kale, spinach, turnips, spring onions, radishes. And then the fruiting vegetables begin appearing — peas are early fruiters, but the rest of the summer...
A Farm Dinner and the Market — Thank You Open Space
We spend a lot of time in fields — preparing soil, planting, weeding, harvesting, tending to animals, irrigating and as of this week hosting a farm dinner as well, our first-ever at Black Cat Farm. None of it would be possible without our partnerships with Open Space...
Time For Basil and Shishitos
We finally are harvesting some fruiting vegetables: summer squash, Anaheim peppers and ... shishito peppers! We are so very pleased to raise the little flavor bombs known as shishitos this year. They have many preparations, but the easiest is probably tossed in a hot...
Ripening Into Summer
Longer days, warm nights, the strong sun arcing over the fields day after day, plenty of irrigation (thank you mountain snow!) — all of the above makes Black Cat Farm's plants exceedingly happy. Growing up in such healthy soil, under conditions like these, leads to...
Carrots, Peas and So Much More
And now comes the heat. The mixture of quick afternoon thunderstorms combined with daytime temperatures in the 70s and low 80s has been ideal. The farm looks plugged in — like it somehow is being lit from within. The colors can be incandescent. The 10-day forecast,...
The Mighty Market List — Plus Delicious Cover Crops and Chrysanthemums
All that we do here in Black Cat World — farming, cooking, service — revolves around something we treasure: hospitality. We toil to make sure our actions on the farm are earth- and community-hospitable. We sell this food at the market, and we transform it into dishes...
A Week Of Planting, Weeding and Harvesting
Farming would be so much easier if we planted just one thing, like corn or tomatoes. Prep the soil in the spring. Wait for the right day during the planting window to put things in the ground. Plant. Weed. Harvest. The end. Since we supply our restaurants with most of...
From Pastoral Idyll to Cold Mudfest
Happy Friday, Black Catters. It has been a busy week. We have been planting at a fevered pace for a few weeks, and due to the snow/rain that we saw coming earlier in the week we understood we had to get seeds into the ground before it all began. So we planted corn. We...
Potato Planting Palooza and Market Bonanza
Now is a favorite time of the growing season — we are planting summer. In go the tomato and pepper starts. In go the eggplant and cauliflower and tomatillos. And this year, in go the potatoes. We grew potatoes a number of years ago, and then stopped. We wanted to...
Spectacular Weather, and Farmers’ Market Bounty
Happy Friday, Black Catters! And what a Friday it is — 71 degrees at 11 a.m., with temperatures supposed to hit 81 on Saturday. Sure beats last week's market experience — below freezing and snow. We have been busy weeding again, naturally. And of course, harvesting....
Snow On The Way — But First We Weeded and Harvested
Santa Monica, this ain't. The week of sun and slightly cool weather mixed with rain pleased the soil and plants quite a bit. Weeds seem to have encountered steroids, and as they beef-up we spend a lot of time yanking them (and in the above photo, we are using a wheel...
Goodbye rain, hello farmers’ market sun
Happy Friday, food lovers! It's gloomy and chilly, and we have been busy harvesting for the restaurants and the market. Tomorrow, however, the forecast calls for sun. Chilly again, but bright and springy. Before we deliver our haul to the market and restaurants, we...
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