Fall Rush

The rains are coming and that means lots of last minute details to attend to. Getting the grenhouses battenend down, stocking firewood and getting in the last of the cover crop and overwintering crops in. This week noted the first frost of the season. Not a killing frost but enough to remind us that winter is definately on the way. I'm actually looking forward to the rain. It's been a long, hot, dry season. Plus I'm just looking for an excuse to sit inside and watch it rain and contemplate the season and begin the planning process for yet another year. I'm still commited as ever to providing fresh and local produce

Our pigs are sizing up and I'm beginning to think it's getting close to slaughter time. We'll give them a little longer and see how they do.

Garlic is in and we are just beginning to take tomato plants out of the hoophouses and replace them with lettuce. Once again, just an amazing tomato year. I'm probably a little late for the lettuce but how can you just rip out a healthy tomato plant you've nurished for damn near a year? I can't, besides, the greenhouse's are great and all for growing winter crops but the reality is they are so small relative to what we actually harvest that it just does'nt make that big of a difference. Our outdoor plantings of winter hardy greens are much more practical and provide us with a much longer/larger harvest.

Although we put in our fall and overwintering crops slightly late this year, they are doing well and looking like they will produce. Broccoli will be on soon followed by cabbage and other misc. brassicas. Hopefully my late sowings of greens and Hakurei turnips will make it. I'm also sowing peas and fava beans for spring harvest. Just as a side note, we have been harvesting some nice sugar snap peas that I sowed on July 1st. Note to self, do that again next year only more.

Time to getty up. Biscuts for breakfast!

Farmer John

Yo!

Wow! The weather this week has been wonderful. Looks like a change is on the way soon though. The rains cometh. I'll be pushing to get firewood in and under cover this week. Daily routines on the farm continue but things ar definately slowing down. Our reastaurant accounts are ordering less as their volume begins to slow down. The Farmers market has now moved inside to the Oddfellows Hall. Traffic seems to me like it's a little slower this year but we are actually up from last year. Same time last year sales volume is definately slipping. It's too early to determine if it's a developing trend. We'll just keep pushing to bring as much to market as we can. Part of the slip has been on our side. Deer ravaged our strawberry and potato fields causing a major shortage in those crops both which are in the top five sellers. I personally dropped the ball on salad green production (our premier crop) It was just so hot this summer it was hard to keep it rolling. Once you fall behind it's hard to catch back up. All is well for now, hopefully the weather holds long enough for the newly sown greens to come to maturity. It appears that most of the fall broccoli and cabbage crops will come to fruition. This time of year you can't really count on anything until it happens. It is all weather dependent.

This week will be the last of the summer squash, cucumbers and outdoor tomatoes. They had a nice long run and I am happy for that. Best tomato year I've ever seen and the cucumbers as lowly as they may seem reigned as kings this year. I'm shocked at how many we sold. I'm leaving the indoor toms in for a bit longer. They have tons of tomatoes on them and seem to be continuing to ripen. The end will come soon. With that we will be officially be in fall crop mode. Lots of root crops, beautiful fall greens and winter squash and hopefully a few lingering tomatoes that have ripened off the vine.

That'll have to do for now. Thanks to you all for helping us have another great season.

Keep well,

Farmer John