November News
Thankful for the harvest.
The cold has settled on the farm, 24° last night and looking at 18° Friday night. Yikes! All able bodies have been working tirelessly to get the radishes, turnips, beets, and carrots out of the ground before it freezes; It will be cold enough to damage even some of the hardy cole crops so Glenn has been cutting cauliflower and protecting other greens with row covers.
The apples have all been harvested too. We transfer them into
large wooden bins that are stacked up in the cooler. It’s pretty impressive but what’s even better is the warm feeling I have looking at the bounty we have put by and all the people that will be nourished with it.
Farm Dirt
| Well, there’s more mud on the farm than anything. All that rain we had last week finished off the raspberries and made navigating the fields more complicated. We had hoped to use our machinery to assist the harvest of the root crops, but we were no longer able to drive down most of the rows with the equipment. Subsequently, we’ve had to dig and pull all the roots by hand, so it’s taken much longer. BUT, it got done- that’s what counts. The overall coolness of this summer delayed many crops, so we don’t have as many daikon radishes and turnips as we had hoped, yet we have many more carrots than last year, so it’s all good. For those of you who shop from us weekly, or who are CSA members, you know how thrilled we were to have peaches. In the Spring we rejoiced at the bloom, but with everything farming, you cannot count your chickens until they’ve hatched, and you definitely cannot sell your peaches until they’ve ripened (avoiding cold, too much water, hail, creatures, etc, etc). We had not only weeks of peaches, but MONTHS of peaches. It was great! We also had months of fabulous tomatoes, berries, corn, beans and so much more. We are truly thankful for the harvest. |
| A few big projects were accomplished this year too. The rest of the “new” barn floor finally got concrete. The barn has been a work in progress for many years, but the end is in sight. Several doors were constructed and now we wait for more funds to buy two large roll up doors and the whole thing will be enclosed! Glenn finally got his office – they finished off a small room in the old barn and now he does not have to walk all the way back to the house to write out lists or receipts. He’s delighted. We partitioned off a section in one of our walk in coolers to serve as a walk in freezer. It’s almost done! Now that we are having produce frozen for resale at BPM, we have been really short on freezer space. This new freezer space will allow us to expand what and how much produce we can put by for the winter…and who doesn’t want to be able to buy freshly frozen, conscientiously grown green beans in January? Other farm dirt includes me getting a bull for Glenn. He sold all but 4 Belted Galloways last year after fighting the no water, no land issues last summer. Now he has the promise of possibly 4 calves next summer! There’s hardly anything cuter than a new Bletie calf frolicking in the pasture – all fresh with a clean, bright, white belt. |
Da Bears
Look hard, there’s a big sow and 3 cubs. The cubs are all sitting/standing up. What you see in the background is remay (spun row cover) that is protecting the late tomato crop. They’ve had a great time in the corn and fruit this season. This is by far the coolest wildlife on the farm of late.
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CSA
Sign up for 2018 summer CSA! Returning members were sent a special coupon code for returning member discount. You can click on the code and it will appear in your cart. You also have to be logged into your account to use it. Email me if you cannot find your coupon.
If you will be new to our CSA, we offer a HUGE early order signup though November 30. Use code NEW2018CSA for 15% off. If you create an account on our website, you will also see those coupons on the cart page.