What a difference a day makes! Tuesday morning we reciprocated help by loading and unloading 100 bales of hay for a friend. Hot and sweaty, and it only got more hot and more sweaty as the day progressed. And today, Wednesday, it’s sweaters and hoodies and shoes!, as this week’s share vegetables were harvested. We do like the cooler weather, and it seems our menagerie of critters do too. It also means the veggies still growing can take a breather from the hot drying winds.
As I write this column from my farm office, outside my window, yellow birch leaves swirl and fall in the breeze, dappling the hostas and Autumn Joy sedum below. The Autumn Blaze maples in our yard are also beginning their blaze, though whether it is because of the season or the drought is questionable. And finally another sign of fall is the smell of our buck goat, Oberon. As the days get shorter and the weather cooler, the seasonal breeders like goats begin turning their thoughts and hormones to courtship. Oberon doesn’t smell too offensive yet, but we know that in just a few weeks we will wish we did not own a buck goat. It is hard to believe that the doe goats find that horrible smell an aphrodisiac. But they do.
Just this morning, in the cooler weather, we dragged a pile of stock panels which formerly fenced in the sheep and horses on the back of the farm, up to the pig pen area. By next week, the pig pen will be expanded to nearly ten times its size as we put up the 16 foot panels with steel posts to give the growing porkers more room to turn into bacon and pork chops. Hopefully it will also curtail some of the extensive digging they have been doing under the edges of their current pen. The wheelbarrow full of rutabaga tops we fed them today should keep them happy for at least a day or so, and tomorrow we will add carrot tops and spoiled melons to their weekly feast.
Looking around at the fields, we have made the decision that NEXT WEEK – SEPTEMBER 20 - WILL BE THE LAST SHARE this year. We know it is early, but with the weather and drought, we simply have not been able to re-sow row short season crops to extend the season into October. The tomatoes are nearly all picked. I don’t think we have had a single year since we’ve had the CSA that we didn’t still have quite a few green tomatoes by frost time. And this year, I don’t think there will be any green tomatoes left after next week. We have been pulling up pepper plants as we’ve picked because they too are done, as are the eggplants. The melon and squash vines are completely dried away and it looks like mid October instead of mid September.
Our END OF THE SEASON – END OF THE CSA – FESTIVAL - will be Sunday, September 30 from 3:00 – 5: 30 pm . Come celebrate with us as we call an end to this growing season and an end to 8 years of CSA farming. As usual, there will be good food, good beverages, games and conversation. Please let us know if you plan to attend.
Until next week…………..Robin
What's In Your Share
Watermelon - Mickey Lee
Cantaloupe or Small Striped Watermelon
Onions - Red Zeppelin / Sierra Blanca
Squash - Delicata or Sweet Dumpling or Cream of the Crop
Potatoes - Yukon Gold
Tomatoes - Paragon (red), Pink Beauty (pink), Orange Blossom, Taxi (yellow)
Peppers - Hot: Jalapeno, Serrano and Hot Banana
Sweet - Carmen and Snapper
Eggplant - Mix
Rutabaga - Joan
Carrots - mix of orange and purple.
