Posts filed under 'cycles'
A hard frost!
The farm frosted hard this morning! This may be the last week of veggie harvests that teeter in the space between eating seasons. The very last peppers, the very last summer squash…although the tomatoes are always picked to ripen in storage just so we can spread out the season of everyone’s favorite summer fruit, and we may just get another eggplant harvest next week because the plants rebounded quite unscathed from this morning’s layer of frosty white. Other signs of change abound. Waking at 5:30 this morning to help a wee one get a drink of water, I was struck by how much it felt like the middle of the night. It was dark, the bright moon set for the night, and no sight of the rising sun. I just couldn’t imagine staying awake, the feeling that it was still night was too strong, even though this was the hour we did wake on Tuesdays not long ago, sky light blue, ready to begin the harvests for the day.
In many ways, everything around us is telling us to slow down. The days are shorter, the sky telling us to sleep more, work less. The crops that needed us to tend to them day in and day out, to harvest, harvest, harvest their mad rush at setting as much fruit as possible while the heat lasts, the weeds competing with our plantings in a summer long race to win, all done for the year. The frost itself calling to us to take the time to start the fire and warm the kettle again, because no harvesting could be done until the leaves thawed. The farmer’s market ends this week too, and in a flash, our summer routine is gone for another year. Slowly, slowly we inch towards winter.
So alongside your summer squash this week we have the first of the season’s winter squash! And everything that has been touched by this morning’s frost (and our two softer frosts before this) has been infused with the sweetness of the season. This is the best time to eat fresh food, the sweetest and fullest of all. We were caught off guard this morning, the first really cold fingers of the season, but harvesting food for all of you through the fall is one of our favorite things to do. Unlike in the warmer months, food becomes such a treasure, a source of warmth itself, as we head into colder weather. If you are at all busy bees like we are in the summer, the true savoring starts now, when nature beckons us to slow down and sip some soup!
Add comment October 6, 2009
Autumn Harvest
Even though this month has been wonderfully warm and we have been holding on to the tail end of a great summer as tightly as we could, September is almost behind us and there is no denying that things are in transition here at the farm. The cucumbers are done for the year, most of the winter squash have been harvested. The kids pulled there first pumpkins from the field and carved them just because. The sunflowers have all tipped their heads to the ground, there’s not enough sun left in the day to lift their yellow faces to. The very last thing to be planted in a year on the farms will be in the ground soon, garlic for next year.
September harvests begin to show a change in harvest items, October even more. Both are a mix of the last of summer’s goodies with the next wave of cool weather crops. The fields hit their high point in September, and because we plant so much for the fall and winter, we see a kind of plateau here in abundance through the rest of the year. It isn’t until around the winter solstice when we have to harvest more discreetly, knowing that the growth that plants have put on until this point it is until things pick back up in early spring. It is is hard for us to believe that Farmer’s Market ends in just two short weeks…we still have so much food to harvest!
Because of this, we are spending a lot of time shoring up where we will be selling all of this food. To verify for all of you, we will be making CSA harvests through all of October and November and December 1, 8, and 15. We will then offer, by order, a holiday harvest the following week. This will finish out 2009, and we will announce our 2010 CSA details that December as well to existing members, and we will go from there for next year!
Add comment September 29, 2009
On the first day of fall
I will miss the sound of the crickets, on nights when it takes more time than it should to quiet the day’s mind. This was just another thing to think about last night as the planet held even until too heavy with the fruits of summer’s labor, tipped over into autumn today. Still, the weather holds on to its warmer days even when the crisper morning air and cooler breezy nights lull the leaves toward the ground. For the first day of fall, we have been given the perfect start. Let the season change slowly, I say. Each step, small and measured, so we can take it all in while still lingering in the memory of the season past!
The farmer, who likes to take photos, finally caught his breath and got his camera out for me. The pictures, this week, beginnings (for us) at a season’s end.
Heirloom Corn
Apples!
Many Kinds!
Grapes!
So Good!
Add comment September 22, 2009
Savoring the seasons
We here at the farm are enjoying the lovely warm weather this September has brought with it. There is no denying that some mornings and evenings have been cooler, but that feels refreshing even when we know it sends a different signal to the vegetables than the warmer nights of July and August do. As much as we really want our pastures to green up, especially before the goat buck comes to visit our ladies next month, we would be thrilled with a warm, warm, warm September and October.
We love seeing such lush growth going on in the fields for our winter crops, so different than when we plant them out in the spring and they go at it much slower while they wait for temperatures to warm. We can’t help but remember the stark contrast between main season harvesting and winter harvesting, how things we normally harvest from again and again and they just keep growing and growing are doing nothing of the sort come mid- December. Everything just sits until the next big change in the fields is flowering brassicas and the start of rapini harvesting begins in early spring. We are feeling some trepidation, but an equal amount of confidence.
One thing we know for sure is that just like the summer crops in the ground in spring, these plantings are just as mouth watering for the flavors they provide, for the shift in cooking methods and meals on the table. Cold weather broccoli and cauliflower, hearty cabbages, sweet frost kissed roots and cooking greens, special winter salads of crops that just are not feasible to grow in the summer but everyone loves—spinach and arugula—as well as more unusual greens such as chicory and endive! And this year, potatoes for the winter instead of the summer, hooray! Winter squash and leeks and garlic and onions….mmmm! I am really enjoying the last month of summer meals and these lusciuos summer vegetables, but we have a lot of tasty food to look forward to and the wonderful compression of the colder months, where our wide open soul expansion can be wrapped up for the year by the warm hug of hearth and home. The recipes this week are pure summer, and seeing as how that is almost gone (well, true summer is really gone), I thought I should include them as they make perfect use of the last of summer’s fruits. Gazpacho on one of these last warm days, ratatouille a sure sign of September for us, and before the last of the cucumbers are gone, Tzatziki. Well, these are just suggestions, anyways. Whatever you make with this weeks vegetables, savor it and let the flavors of summer shine on your table as brightly as they can before the shift becomes complete, and we are fully into the fall.
Add comment September 15, 2009
September is here!
“By all these lovely tokens
September days are here,
With summer’s best of weather
And autumn’s best of cheer.”
- Helen Hunt Jackson, September
This week on the farm we (with the help of two strong friends)…
-said good-bye to one of our goats
-milled the rest of our old fallen oak
-felt inspired by the beauty of wood
-weeded leeks
-planted almost all we will plant for this year!!
-ate tomatoes with many meals (finally!)
-made plum sauce
-wore a jacket in the morning!
-fed the pigs squash upon squash upon cucumbers too
-contemplated the coming winter
Add comment September 2, 2009
