Nitty Gritty News

From The Farmers: 

This is the last week of delivery for the 2011 season.  Following the two killing frosts last week, we’ve been scrambling to pick and glean of all of the harvestable produce left in the fields.  We were not sure until we began the final harvest if this would be the last share box or if there would be one more.  We decided that if everything would fit in one final box, you would rather make one trip to pick up the last of the veggies than two.  So you are getting one final generous storage share.  The potatoes will keep for several weeks at cool room temperature, both kinds of onions are good winter keepers and will keep up to 6 months at cool, dry temperatures, and the squash should keep for several weeks to several months. 

This whole season from start to finish has been a quirky one weather-wise.  At the end of May we were still heating the greenhouses and by the first week of June the temperature shot up to 90 degrees.  For most of July into August, the temperature remained extremely hot and humid.  The first of September, we had a 90 degree Monday dropping to coats and hats by mid week.  Just last week, we had two night of extreme cold – dipping down to 28 degrees overnight.  We woke up to fields layered with frost and ice on the livestock water buckets.  As the sun rose, the crisp frozen leaves sagged into a moist looking dark green, - sure sign that no more growth will be happening this year on any but the most cold hardy.  And yet, as we come to the end of another year, we rejoice in the abundance the land has produced:  spring salads to summer melons to fall squashes. 

Coming to the end of the harvest and delivery season is bittersweet - we are ready for a slower schedule and sad about no more fresh food, no more visits with all of you, no more long days in the fields.  Our summer interns are already sitting in college classrooms or increasing their hours at other jobs.  The barn is (literally) full of hay to feed the livestock over the winter.  The new Saanen buckling who will be our newest dairy goat herdsire will be arriving at our farm very soon and sex camp will begin shortly after.  Our two Coopworth rams will begin courting our ewes on October 10.  We plan to harvest one more batch of honey from our six bee hives, leaving 70 pounds of honey for each hive to feed them during the winter. 

What we don’t look forward to is all the fall clean up:  tearing out vines of melons and tomatoes, eggplant and peppers; pulling dirty, muddy plastic mulch and drip irrigation lines from the fields; disking down vegetation; fall plowing some of the fields to aid the break down of crop residue and hay mulch;  changing out the canvas Quonset covers on the intern housing to poly tarps so they become winter storage;  adding support to the big processing and packing hoop houses so they can withstand the weight of winter snow;  putting equipment like buckets and hoses away in the reverse order that it will be needed next spring. 

Loading hay is exhausting.  (Actually, they were just waiting for the hay to arrive)

See you October 2^nd at the End of the Harvest Farm Festival. We’d like to thank you in person for being part of  Nitty Gritty Dirt Farm this year. 

Check out the right hand column for upcoming special events including Robin’s FIBER ARTS DAY on Saturday, September 24, Our END OF THE HARVEST FARM FESTIVAL – October 2;  STARK WINE  OPENING on October 1st, and opportunities for next years CSA shares. 

What’s In Your END OF THE SEASON Share

Watermelon:      Mickey Lee, Starlight, Sunshine, Picnic, New Orchid

Winter Squash:  Delicata (long striped), Sweet Dumpling (heart shaped striped),

                        Butternut (beige dogbone), Cream of the Crop (cream acorn), Burgess

Butternut (green turban), Mooregold (orange turban), Blue Magic (mini

blue hubbard).

Onions: Red Zeppelin (red winter keeper), Copra (yellow winter keeper)

Potatoes:          Red Norland (good keeper)

Turnips:            Scarlet Queen Red Stems

Tomatoes:        Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Orange Blossom (orange)

Sage:                Common

Nitty Gritty News

 From the Farmers

With the weather forecast predicting widespread frost, we’ve spent the day hustling to bring in as much of the susceptible crops from the field as possible.   The morning started in the potato patch where the challenge of finding the rows can be difficult.  Then on to the melons which more than filled the trailer.  Some of them will be in your boxes this week and some of them, we will try to hold until next week.  After harvesting the bouquet of herbs and zinnias, Robin found a whole section of cucumbers, enough to get them into the shareholder boxes as well.  The day ended in the tomato rows.  A rainbow of colors filled the harvest buckets along the edge of the field.  The buckets were loaded into the truck with the topper, so they will be protected from the possible overnight frost too. 

The ewes were moved in to the one of the corn fields a couple of weeks ago.  It looked then like they were wandering through a corn jungle.  We could hardly see them as they pushed their way through the stalks.  Now, that field looks cleaned out and they are becoming quite vocal about wanting to move on.  Soon, we’ll move them again to another patch on the west side of the barn. 

Yesterday, Robin and Gigi butchered the broiler chickens with the help of Robin’s daughter Katy.  We have processed our own birds at the farm every year.  This year, we decided to find another resource and found two.  One was a shop in Little Falls who would do it for $2.50 a bird but we would have had to get them there on what turned out to be the hottest day this week.  The second choice was someone who would come here, charge $50 for his travels and $3.50 a bird.  Consequently, we decided to continue the tradition of doing it ourselves.   

The neighboring farm fields of corn and soybeans are yellowing from the end of the season and from the lack of rain.  The leaves on the trees aren’t turning yet but the DNR predicts brilliant colors this year.  Hard to believe it was 90 degrees on this past Monday. 

This has been a very interesting year for weather patterns. 

This would be a good week to cook up a tomato sauce with lots of peppers and onions. Robin is planning some chili for tomorrow for lunch and will be canning some tomatoes this weekend.  Tis the season…

Until Next Week…

What’s In Your Share:

Onions:  Red Zeppelin

Potatoes:  Red Norland

Watermelon:  Sunshine (stripe – yellow), Starlight (stripe – red), New Orchid (stripe orange), Mickey Lee (pale green – pink), Picnic (green oblong – red)

Pepper Sweet:  Carmen, Gypsy, Merlot, Lipstick and Sweet Chocolate

Pepper Hot:  El Jefe Jalapeno, Serrano del Sol, Yellow Banana

Tomatoes:  Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange),
Green Zebra (green), Tough Boy

Okra:  Cajun Beauty

Herbs:  Bouquet of Dill, Lime Basils, Thai Basil, Zinnea Garden flowers

Cucumbers:  Raider, Sweet Slice and Diva

Swiss Chard: Fordhook Giant

Cilantro:  Santo

September 8, 2011

What’s in your share:

Onions:  Sierra Blanca (white), Walla Walla (yellow), Red Zeppelin (red)

Potatoes: Yukon Gold

Watermelon: Sunshine (stripe - yellow), Starlight (stripe - red),  New Orchid (stripe – orange), Mickey Lee (pale green - pink), Picnic (green oblong – red)

Pepper Sweet: Carmen, Gypsy, Islander

Pepper Hot: El Jefe Jalapeno, Serrano del Sol

Tomatoes: Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange),

Green Zebra (green), Austin’s Red and Beam’s Yellow Pear

Collards: Georgia

Okra: Cajun Beauty

Herbs: Bouquet of Dill, Sage, variety or Basils, Garden flowers

Surprises:  cucumbers, summer squash, eggplant, cantaloupe, honeydew melon

From the Farmers………

What glorious weather!  Starting this week, we have shifted our farm day to begin at 9:00am as it is so wet in the fields earlier.  The goat still gets milked and other livestock fed at 8:30, but field work doesn’t begin until 9 – time to have another cup of coffee! 

Even with the glorious weather and the continuing abundant harvest, it is a bittersweet time of year.  Every week, our intern crew gets smaller as interns leave to return to college or go on to other ventures.  This week, we bid goodbye and wish the best to Susie and Holly.

We had a couple of wonderful days at the Minnesota State Fair.   Our excuses – if we really needed them – were that we took Holly to the airport on Friday morning and we figured as long as we were already in town, we’d go to the fair. We had a really good day eating and wandering through the Creative Activities building (getting ideas for knitting projects for winter), the Horticulture Building – especially the Mn. Winemakers wing, and the Dairy Goat barn.  However, we realized that the majority of the Dairy goat show was not until Saturday, so we figured, what the heck, and we went back to the fair on Saturday so we could watch the Saanen Dairy goats being shown. 

Our excuse for this is that we have been looking for a new herd sire for our growing Saanen dairy herd.  We think we found the perfect herd  and will soon be making a trip to just north of St. Cloud to look at a couple of potential buck kids.  We will do this soon as we want to have our does give birth and begin producing milk by the first of March.  This means we will need to breed them by October 1.  Gestation for goats is 145 days.  We are pretty excited about the small dairy we will be beginning next spring.

The farm really looks like fall.  Just today, we pulled out all the summer squash plants that have completely quit producing, and ripped up the plastic mulch.  On Monday and Tuesday, we harvested all the rest of the onions and spread them out on shelves all along the sides of one of the big hoop houses to cure.  It’s a LOT of onions!   The sweet corn is also done and soon we’ll be fencing the sheep into that part of the field to graze on whatever is left of the corn.    They have been grazing on the Ambrosia and Sugar Buns fields and have eaten everything including the weeds!  

Our pigs continue to enjoy eating a lot of cracked cantaloupe and honeydews and watermelons.  We know why our pork is the sweetest tasting around!   And our broiler chicks are huge, ready for the freezer.  The year is winding down………….

Nitty Gritty Dirt

From the Farmers

We are a farm of few words this week.  So here’s what’s in your share this week and some pictures to enjoy.

Watermelon: one of the following Starlight (red), New Orchid (orange),

Sunshine (yellow), Picnic (solid green outside, red in), or Mickey Lee (deep pink)

Cucumbers: Raider, Fanfare, Sweet Slice, Diva

Potatoes: Yukon Gold

Onions: Sierra Blanca, Red Zeppelin, Walla Walla

Sweet Corn: Delectable

Swiss Chard: Fordhook Giant

Tomatoes: Taxi (yellow), Orange Blossom (orange), Pink Beauty, Red Pear

Sweet Peppers: Snapper (green bell) or Lipstick (red heart), Sweet Chocolate (brown), Carmen (long green or red)

Hot Peppers: El Jefe Jalapeno (fat green), Bulgarian Carrot, Hot Banana

Eggplant: Dancer (pink), Classic (purple), Galine (purple), Thai Green (long green),

Orient Charm (long pink), Orient Express (long purple), Kermit (round green)

Summer Squash: Sunburst, Cavelle, Slick Pick, Bennings Green Tint, President,

Cash Flow, Horn of Plenty

Herb Bouquet:  Genovese Basil, Purple Basil, Dill, Lime Basil, Zinnea

Radishes: Pink Beauty

Carrots:  Forto, Bolero

Until Next Week…..



Su Casa, a place for interns to spend their free time





1948 Ford 8N.  Great for hauling trailer loads of melons



The Taj Ma Shower Hall with sink, composting toilet and landscaping..



The great Yukon potato dig



The choreographed Yukon potato dig

Our two new Corridale lambs, Orbit and Orion, good wool for spinning and felting



Odetta, the first of two Angora rabbits, more spinning material