Blog : September 2007

Out with the old in with the new

by maryellen | Sep 30, 2007

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Mimi and Peter pulling tomatoes out of the upper hoophouse to plant to fall greens for the fall CSA and Thanksgiving market mostly. The strings Mimi is tying are the strings we use to trellis the tomatoes.

I am excited about the idea of marketing longer into the fall, but again its a potential marketing/production issue. I mean, I am mostly in charge of marketing and Peter mostly production, and the two often have different agendas. Vegetable production is simplest for veggies that come ripe from mid-August to mid-September. But it is hardest to sell veggies in that time. All the farmstands are full, and people's gardens are so bountiful that they are giving away their produce. So from a marketing perspective, selling outside of the mid-August to mid-September period is easier, at least theoretically. The issue for late fall, from a marketing perspective, is delivery, how to get the veggies to the people. Even though we've had great weather on market days recently, realistically, soon the weather will be harsh enough that folks won't want to come out. So we're going to try this mini fall CSA, see how that works, maybe try having the farmstand open Friday afternoons. Whatever happens, we'll certainly learn from it and have some fun along the way.

Waverly dancing in the rain

by maryellen | Sep 29, 2007 | in

This is photo from Wednesday. It was hot!!

The middle of the end

by maryellen | Sep 27, 2007

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Maples turning color behind a stand of frost killed corn

It isn't really the beginning of the end anymore -- we are pretty squarely getting into foliage season. But it isn't really quite the end yet either. We still have a couple of weeks of our farmer's markets left, and then our fall CSA add-on runs until Thanksgiving. So we still have some farming to do this year, but the end of the end is coming up on the horizon.

Studying up

by maryellen | Sep 26, 2007 | in

Waverly and Henry attempting to i.d. a caterpillar they found on the dill. I'm pretty sure it was a black swallowtail.

The East will rise again!

by maryellen | Sep 24, 2007

Time to snap up that ag land in the northeast.

Happiness is a patch of good tilled earth

by maryellen | Sep 23, 2007

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We have this great video called Farmers and their Innovative Cover Cropping Techniques that the kids love to watch, mostly for the tractors, but is really helpful and informative. Anyway, in that video, one of the farmers, Will Stevens I think, talks about how he used to think a brown field was a clean field, but now he has come to appreciate the beauty of green fields even more. Cover crops harvest the power of the sun to feed the soil, I think he said. And I am sure he is right, but still, a patch of fresh tilled earth is a beautiful thing.

Pumpkin patch

by maryellen | Sep 21, 2007 | in

 

Henry playing in the dirt at market

by maryellen | Sep 20, 2007 | in

Wednesday was perfect market weather. Warm, sunny, dry.

Henry was totally dirty after this, with a little cloud of dust trailing him, a la Pigpen.

CSA Week Thirteen

by maryellen | Sep 7, 2007

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News from the field:

The beginning of the end? We are supposed to get our first frost tonight, and even though it is not supposed to be too cold, it is still the beginning of the end. The light has shifted, and the days are getting shorter. We even have some leaves changing here and there. It has also been dry dry dry at our place, which just gives the plants one more reason to not grow much. So we start the switch to more fall-like baskets, as we start harvesting pumpkins and winter squash and start them curing.

Note: We wrote this Tuesday night. It didn't end up frosting. Now it is actually hot -- 94 today. Its supposed to cool off tomorrow, but they're not predicting frost any time soon.

In the Basket:

Summer sweethearts: Tomatoes, sun golds, red pepper

Good greens: broccoli, lettuce

Brussel sprouts - Summer still in full swing, but the fall vegetables are starting to come on. Nana Alice, Peter?s mom, is visiting, and she cooked up some delicious brussel sprouts this way: steam them till bright green and not quite tender. Slice in half. You can do that part ahead of time. Then when you are ready to eat, cook some shallots or onions in butter, then add the brussel sprouts and heat it all up.

Onions - Five pounds of onions this week. There is a French Onion Soup recipe on the back, but if that does not interest you, these onions are cured and so will keep for a month or more.

Garlic - Also dried and cured like the onions. Roast the whole head it all now and spread on toast or use clove by clove in recipes over the next few weeks. Or if your herbs survived the frost, make up some pesto for the freezer.