Fall eating is here once again!
The stripes on our gradually-ripening Delicata squash are starting to turn orange against a lemon-cream background and a couple of frosts have helped sweeten up the Brussels sprouts. There’s something so scrumptious and cozy about the foods we eat through the fall and winter and I, for one, am glad it’s time to be eating those delicacies once again.
Kale is getting tenderer…
We had a wonderful time at MOFGA’s Common Ground Country Fair at the Pine Gate farmers’ market. It was a major endeavor to switch from our summer routine–making hay, milking cows, weeding crops, clearing for logging roads–to what is normally our fall routine of harvesting, washing, packing, and hauling vegetables off for other folks to eat. I think it was the perfect send-off for our market season, though. Thank you to everyone who supported us and our farm (which was lots of people): those of you who bought the food and also friends and crew who helped harvest in the wee hours of the morning, family who played with Ada so we could tend our customers, and everyone who stopped by to play a tune, sing a song, lend a kind word, or drop off some french fries and ice cream. We hope to do it again next year.
The 2013-2014 Winter CSA starts next week, and we are hot to trot. It’s hard to know how everything has grown until it’s harvested and packed into the root cellar, but the onions, squash, shallots, sweet potatoes, and garlic all did well. It’s looking like there’s going to be a bumper crop of carrots:
Rainbow and orange carrots for you to eat!
And we packed over 5000 lbs of onions into the root cellar:
Top: Rossa di Milano, Copra and Cortland onions. Bottom: Varsity onions, plus Prisma and Conservor shallots.
A glimpse of our stand at the fair.
Equine update #1: Beau the giant Percheron was not getting the training and attention he needed from us, so we brought him back to his previous home. I also learned that he actually belongs to someone in Massachusetts who doesn’t have time for him but doesn’t want to sell him, so she finds other people to host him.
Equine update #2: We have bought a cart pony! She is a seven year old Haflinger draft pony named Lily, raised and trained at an Amish community. She’s kind of a mixed bag at this point–sweet, a little jumpy–but I am thrilled we have someone smaller than April and May who can be out alone (those two get antsy when they’re separated).
Other work on the farm has included bucking, splitting and moving in firewood, painting and installing windows in the barn, seeding a fall cover crop, and planting our two greenhouses with winter greens for hungry CSAers.
