Here’s What We Grow at
Shady Brook Farm:
Tomatoes
· Plum
· Cherry
· Chello
· Heirloom
· Grape
· Beefsteak
Peaches (freestone)
· White
· Yellow
Melons
· Cantaloupe
· Canary
· Sugar Baby
Beans
· Green (snap) Bean
· Wax (yellow) Bean
Eggplant
Squash
· Yellow summer
· Zucchini
· Cousa
Berries
· Strawberries
· Blackberries
· Red Raspberries
· Golden Raspberries
Peppers
· Green
· Red
· Yellow
· Frying
· Cherry bombs
· Jalapenos
Cucumbers
Apples
· Gala
· Cameo
· Fuji
· Golden Delicious
· Honey Crisp
· Jonagold
· Courtland
Pumpkins
Broccoli
Corn
· White
· Bi-color
· yellow
Asparagus
Bees play an important part
at Shady Brook Farm.
They pollinate our crops and
produce some of the honey sold
in our Market.
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Honey bees’ wings beat 11,400 times per minute.
Bees’ flight speed averages only 15 miles per hour.
Honeybees have 6 legs, 2 eyes, and 2 wings, a nectar pouch, and a stomach.
The honeybee is the only insect that produces food eaten by man.
Honeybees are environmentally friendly and are vital as pollinators.
Honeybees’ stingers have a barb which anchors the stinger in the victim’s body. The bee leaves
its stinger and venom pouch behind and soon dies from abdominal rupture.
Honey bees communicate with one another by “dancing” so as to give the direction and distance
of flowers.
A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.
A colony of bees consists of 20,000-60,000 honeybees and one queen.
The queen is the only female in the hive.
The queen bee lives for about 2-3 years and is the only bee that lays eggs. She is the busiest in the
summer months, when the hive needs to be at its maximum strength, and lays up to 2500 eggs per
day.
Each honey bee colony has a unique odor for members’ identification.
Only worker bees sting, and only if they feel threatened and they die once they sting. Queens
have a stinger, but don’t leave the hive to help defend it..
Drones only function is to mate with the queen. Drones do not feed themselves; they are feed by
workers.
Worker honey bees are female, live 6 to 8 weeks and do all the work.
Life expectancy of a worker bee is approximately 28 to35 days.
The honeycomb is composed on hexagonal cells with walls that are only 2/1000 inch thick, but
support 25 times their own weight.
Honey is nectar that bees have repeatedly regurgitated and dehydrated.
In the course of her lifetime, a worker bee will produce 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey.
To make one pound of honey, worker bees in a hive fly 55,000 miles and tap tow million flowers.
The average hive temperature is 93.5 degrees.
Honeybees have hair on their eyes.
In on trip, a honeybee visits about 75 flowers.
Worker bees gather pollen into the pollen baskets on their back legs, to carry back to the hive
where it is used as food for the developing brood. Pollen carried on their bodies may be carried to
another flower where a small portion can rub off onto the pistil, resulting in cross pollination.
Almost all of civilization’s food supply depends greatly on crop pollination by honey bees.
Worker bees will take wax from wax producing workers and build the comb with it.
Shady Brook Farm
has been growing
pumpkins since 1985.
Pumpkin Facts:
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Pumpkin Seeds can be roasted as a snack.
Pumpkins contain potassium and Vitamin A.
Pumpkins are used for feed for animals.
Pumpkin flowers are edible.
Pumpkins are used to make soups, pies and breads.
Pumpkins are members of the vine crops family called
cucurbits.
Pumpkins originated in Central America.
Pumpkins range in size from less than a pound to over 1,000
pounds.
The largest pumpkin ever grown weighed 1,140 pounds.
Pumpkins are a fruit.
Making pumpkin pie or soup? Try these varieties.
· Cheese Pumpkins - dense sweet flesh
· Baby Pams
· Blue Hubbards - squash, but great!
· Long-neck squash - very smooth flesh
Shady Brook Farm has been growing apples since 2002.
We can fit 1,000 trees on 1 acre of farmland.
Here are the kinds of apples we grow in our orchard:
Gala Apple is excellent for fresh eating. A very pretty,
medium size, conical to round fruit with yellow skin patterned with
bright orange-red. Firm, juicy, fine textured, yellow white flesh.
Sweet slightly tart flavor.
Harvest Season - September
Honey Crisp is excellent eating and keeping qualities. Color is
Red mottled over a yellow background.
Harvest Season - Mid September to October
Golden Delicious is firm, crisp, juicy, flavorful flesh. Mild
sweet distinctive flavor. High quality all purpose. Shrivels in
storage. Requires gentle picking, bruises easily.
Harvest Season - Mid September to late October.
Jonagold is firm, crackling, juicy, slightly tart, flesh. Superb,
rich, full flavor. Finest dessert and eating quality. Good
cooking properties. Will store in common refrigerator for 3
Months. Large fruit striped red over bright yellow.
Harvest Season - Mid September to late October.
Cameo is medium to large size with a crisp, creamy
white flesh and a tangy flavor that seems to get better in
storage. Keeps very well.
Harvest Season - Mid September to late October
Fuji is tall, rectangular, medium size fruit. Yellowish green
skin with an orangish red flush and darker stripes. Darker
blush on sun side. Crisp, juicy slightly subacid white flesh
with outstanding texture. May require up to 200 days to
Mature. Good Keeper.
Harvest Season - Late October
Cortland is excellent for eating, salads, sauce, pies and
baking. Good for freezing, sweet with a hint of tartness,
juicy, tender, snow white flesh.
Harvest Season - Mid September to October
Apple Facts
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The crabapple is the only apple native to North America.
Apples come in all shades of reds, greens, yellows.
2500 varieties of apples are grown in the United States.
Apples are grown in all 50 states.
Apples are fat, sodium and cholesterol free.
A medium apple is about 80 calories.
The pilgrims planted the first United States apple trees in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony.
Apple trees take four to five years to produce their first fruit.
Most apples are still picked by hand in the fall.
Apples are a member of the rose family.
The largest apple picked weighed three pounds.
The average size of a United States orchard is 50 acres.
Many growers use dwarf apple trees.
Some apple trees will grow over forty feet high and live over a hundred years.
Apples have five seed pockets or carpels. Each pocket contains seeds. The
number of seeds per carpel is determined by the vigor and health of the plant.
Different varieties of apples will have different number of seeds.
Planting an apple seed from a particular apple will not produce a tree of that
same variety. The seed is a cross of the tree the fruit was grown on and the
variety that was the cross pollinator.
One of George Washington’s hobbies was pruning his apple trees.
America’s longest lived apple tree was reportedly planted in 1647.
Apples ripen six to ten times faster at room temperature than if they were
refrigerated.
A bushel of apples weights about 42 pounds and will yield 20-24 quarts of
applesauce.
It takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider.
The five most popular apples in the United States are Red Delicious. Golden
Delicious, Gala, Fuji and Granny Smith.
Archeologists have found evidence that humans have been enjoying apples
since at least 6500 B.C.
Fresh apples float because 25% of their volume is air.
Shady Brook Farm
has been growing corn since 1985.
Varieties: Yellow, White & Bicolor
An ear of corn averages 800
kernels in 16 rows.
There is one strand of silk for
each kernel on the cob.
Most sweet corn varieties will
have one to two ears per plant.
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Corn, also called maize, is grown on every continent except Antarctica.
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Corn was first grown as a crop by Native Americans, probably in the country that is
now Mexico more than 7,000 years ago.
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Corn even used to be used as currency in some places.
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About 800 million tons of corn are produced annually around the world. More than half
of the world’s corn comes from the United States. Half of the corn grown in the United
States is fed to livestock.
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Corn is a type of grass and the number of rows on a kernel is always an even number.
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Corn plants typically grow between seven and ten feet tall.
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Corn silk must be pollinated in order for corn kernels to grow.
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Christopher Columbus found native Americans growing corn in Cuba in 1492.
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There are many different kinds of corn. Popcorn is made from on kind of corn that is
allowed to dry on the stalk. The corn on the cob we like to eat is called “sweet corn”.
Popcorn is a favorite snack. The type of corn used to make popcorn has moisture
inside that turns to steam when heated and builds the pressure inside the kernel.
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The use of corn to produce ethanol is gaining popularity as a renewable fuel resource
in the United States.
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The corncob (ear) is actually part of the corn plant’s flower.
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Corn is measured in bushels. A bushel is about 72,800 kernels of corn.
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It takes 25 gallons of water to grow one ear of corn.