The week’s work included tomato pruning and trellising, plenty of weeding (they’re getting to be tree-sized out there!), hunting and killing potato beetles. Then more weeding.
We had family visiting for most of the week from all around the country, getting to know the newest addition to the family, so we weren’t able to kick as much weed butt as we’d have liked, but it was still great to connect with our tribe a bit.
In other news, we have a rat! It’s living beneath our chicken coop compost bin, and has evaded all attempts at capture. Neighbor Dave is not going to give up easily though … the battle is on!
Produce-wise, the bean plants are flowering, the high tunnel tomatoes are flowering, setting fruit, and shooting upward quickly, making us question the adequacy of even the new and improved taller trellising. Overall, things seem to be doing pretty well – crops and weeds alike!
chicken of the woods mushroom Gabe found while mowing – Kristin has become allergic, so we sold it at the farmer’s market
Kristin taking a stroll through the field before the market
a tray of scallions we’d saved all winter were ruined when we were in the hospital having Otis (they froze) – we threw them in the woods out back, where they’ve taken on new life
Widget working the woodpile
CSA Member Tyler is pursued by chickens
Amelia the chicken, rendered by Amelia the WWOOFer
Box Three
Today was a rainy harvest – we set up canopies over the processing area, and donned raincoats for our forays into the field. Rainy days are actually pretty ideal harvest days – the crops stay cool and nothing is getting desiccated byheat or sunshine. (You might think the crops would also be nicely pre-washed from the field, but nope – they get splashed with sand & soil and require more rinsing than usual.)
Kohlrabi – They’re beautiful this spring! The greens are edible as well, similar to kale – perhaps chop & sautee them up together?
Steffan hauling in a load of kohlrabi from the field this morning
Kale – A mix of dinosaur, red Russian, Vates, and scarlet varieties.
Salad Mix – Red & Green lettuce, arugula, pea tips, mizuna
Sugar Snap Peas – EAT THEM BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DOES
Snow Peas – A classic for stir fries, but also delicious raw or sliced up in a salad.
Sage – there are many creative uses for fresh sage, what will you get up to this week? Perhaps when the temps get back up above 90 this weekend, you could make a nice sage iced tea!
Green Onions – the annual link to this song comes … now:
a bit of broccoli – tucked in with your snow peas … waiting for the brocollini to get rolling!
We got more rain this week, but it seems that the weeds rejoiced harder than we did. To be honest, it’s tricky not to be disheartened, walking through the field and seeing how beastly the weeds are, how little the crops are, and how behind things are in contrast to last year’s field – when we had more help, no baby, and several additional weeks of springtime to work with.
But hey, it’s another great opportunity to practice our “que sera, sera” perspectives, be reminded that the struggle IS the blessing, that our stresses take place within a context of amazing luck … and hey, it’s kind of fun to conceive of our harvests from the overgrown garden as more akin to foraging than farming. Silver linings abound!
We got the potato rows weeded and started making potato beetle genocide patrols. Got our first tow hay mulched – the brassicas and edge of the adjacent bean row. We transplanted out flowers, ground cherries, garden huckleberries, and filled in gaps in the potato rows with the sprouting taters still lurking in the back of the root cellar.
Late season crops were seeded – fall broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc got started – and we’ve now started summer squash in trays as well to transplant out – we’d direct seeded it into the field twice but both times almost literally the entire crop was mysteriously destroyed (voles definitely had a hand in some of the losses, but they can’t explain it all) – so, there will be a delay of our zucchini game this year.
We attended our first farmers’ market of the year – and Otis experienced the first farmers’ market of his life! It went well – although we didn’t have a ton of variety of fresh produce to sell, we had lots of canned goods from last fall to offer. And it was WWOOFer Amelia’s last week on the farm – so next week we’ll be even less-handed. Should be interesting!
CSA Box 2
A little of this, a little of that
corn we grew, dried, shucked, ground, and sifted for this week’s box
Cornmeal – Last autumn’s corn, field-dried, and stone-ground fresh yesterday for your baking enjoyment.
When we were in Mississippi I came across a locally produced cornmeal that promoted itself saying it ground corn “no older than a year.” Isn’t it remarkable that less than a year is considered notably fresh? Corn has such a fascinating history, and has changed so much in our lifetime alone. Ok, here is a good recipe that I’ve used to make satisfying cornbread:
You could also try making cornmeal pancakes or johnny cakes.
a Dozen Eggs – A mix from our motley crew of hens. Smaller eggs were likely laid by our newest flock members that hatched last fall.
WWOOFer Amelia pursued by hens after gathering eggs
(Hens lay bigger eggs as they age. Something you don’t realize until you have chickens.)
Radishes – French Breakfast & Crimson Giant varieties – The cute, little spring radishes that precede the intimidatingly large fall radishes.
Green onions – Sometimes called spring onions or table onions. They’re mild enough to eat fresh but good cooked up too!
Garlic scapes – nomnomnom
– bundled with the green onions, the sproingy looking things are the flowers of our garlic crop.
Salad mix – another bag of delicious assorted leaves … red and green lettuce, mizuna, pea tips, arugula.
Peas – First pea harvest of the season! Most of ya got sugar snaps, but 3 boxes received equally-delicious snow peas.
Bok Choi – bagged with the ….
Broccoli – A sprouting variety known as “Broccolini,” we cut off the heads early in order to induce side sprouts of little broccolinis for the rest of the season. The main crop of broccoli is still coming …
Well, we got off to a slow start this year … but start we did. As predicted, a newborn put some brakes to our processes – Otis usually requires someone’s undivided attention, and on top of it, our powerhouse Kristin had to take things easy while recovering from the unplanned c-section surgery at the 43-week mark.
But we knew, more or less, that this kind of thing might be an issue with a new human’s entrance into our family -which is why we did a limited membership this year.
What was less expected was the predictably unpredictable beast – the weather. First, winter refused to release its hold on the farm – we had snow cover on the ground well into April.
snowy chicken yard on April 15th
Once it finally melted, things quickly heated up to summerlike levels. Not only did we miss out on Spring temperatures, we missed out on spring rains. Week after week, rainstorms slide past us to the south, the north, the east and west … never hitting our field.
It was Memorial Day before we finally had a measurable rainfall, and we rejoiced. We weren’t the only ones, however – the weeds had been waiting too. And with a little but of rain, they sprang into action, threatening to swallow up the struggling seedlings throughout the field. A battle for the future of our food crops ensued – one that I didn’t feel confident we were going to come out of alive until recently … but now, things are looking up!
I want to write more, but Otis is super upset in the back seat right now and I can’t think – so enjoy the pictures and Kristin’s write up of the week’s veggies below!
Winter hat seeding
Germinating seeds by the woodstove
Chicken Amelia & Cousin Kylee
Mice found the hard-boiled eggs
Otis meets the chickens
Seeding hot weather crops
Deer fencing with Otis
Laundry with Otis
The sun-hardening station
Onions on the rocket mass heater bench
Rain at last on Memorial Day.
Putting down the floor in the high tunnel
one lambs quarter plant allowed to go to seed last year yields a thick patch to weed in the present
laying plastic for the tomato rows
tomato trellising
DIY post extensions made from PVC
field trellis ready for tomato transplanting
high tunnel trellising
transplanting tomatoes
digging out a quack grass rhizome mat
quack grass death cart
Extracting the carrots & beets from the sawdust
bawk bawk bawk bawk-bawk
Box #1!
Rhubarb preserves
A tart spread made with rhubarb from our neighbors patch, organic cane sugar, and homemade pectin made from apples.
One batch has grated red beet in it as an experiment in natural food coloring. It didn’t work!
Salad mix
Or unique mix of greens (and reds) includes lettuce, peppery arugula, two kinds of pea tips, zippy red & green mizuna, and tat soi.
The flower stems might be tough though so stick to the chive leaves for eating. Eggs, baked potatoes, sour cream dip, pretty much any savory dish would be good with chives.
Radishes
Little but intense. A nice salad topper. Cut the greens off and cook them, too!
Carrots
Harvested late in the fall, carefully packed and stored in the root cellar we built last year, and still looking pretty good! We’re impressed and thought you’d enjoy them too.
I’ve been peeling them to make them look pretty. I like stir frying them and roasting them, quartered the long way, with coconut oil, honey, thyme, and salt.
Beets
These spent the winter with the carrots, and they would be good roasted the same way.
Choi
Do we harvest it now, kind of small or hope it doesn’t bolt and maybe harvested it bigger next week? Seems like we have a tendency to let things go too long so we’re going to pick it small instead!
More flavorful! More tender! Cuter!
That’s it for this week, hope you enjoy it – let us know if you make anything awesome with it!
the rebuilt mass heater chimney features an old wok as a rain cap
The final CSA harvest of the season began with ice and fire, in appropriately epic fashion. Although the forecasted low for our township claimed a brief flirtation with 32 degrees, we have had enough experience with our low spot in the river valley to prepare for the hard freeze we knew was likely.
the week started off with some chainsaw work – clearing a path into the outhouse, and taking down this menace that had been threatening to crush the Rust Shack
So we spent all day Monday bringing in the hundreds of winter squash, all the peppers, the eggplants, the tomatoes. It was the end of season salvage operation, and when it was done the greenhouses were layered with pie pumpkins and squash, the trailer was packed with fresh and canned veggies, and we were staying warm in a social cluster by the rocket mass heater, which was charging up with heat that would keep things from being damaged until the morning sun finally hit.
We were prepared, and nature did not disappoint. When we woke up, the thermometer in the field was covered in crystals of ice, and proclaimed that we’d been whalloped by 24 degrees.
frosted dino kale
It was too frozen to harvest much, and since most of our crew had slept without any source of heat, we delayed harvest for a morning bonfire, gulping hot coffee and warming up bodies and spirits by the fire while waiting for the sun to ride up over the treeline and thaw out the land.
Azela’s photo of the opening of her final harvest day
frosted bees probably are even more eager for sunrise than the farmers
Once the sun finally did hit, things warmed up nicely – some vigorous squash-hauling certainly helped bring up our internal temps as well. As the leaves of the field lost their frosty coverings, some wilted completely, clearly destroyed, while others perked up and recovered. The flowers, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, peppers, eggplants, tomatillos, were not among the latter group – we bid them a fond farewell, until next year.
outside, temps fell from 36 to 24 degrees overnight – but in the greenhouse, the low was 45 on the rocket heater bench, and 37 on the opposite side … saving all our onions, scallions, and hundreds of squash from icy doom
Speaking of next year, it sure will be interesting to see how it goes, as our first year as parents, figuring it out on our little off grid farmstead. There are so many unanswered questions, so many unknowns facing us, starting with this winter – our first time making a go at staying on the farm during the coldest months. It’s incredibly exciting – I don’t know much at all, but I know this is what we want to be doing. I accepted an offer on my house in Minneapolis this week – just today, I signed the final form that will lead to the closing. So it’s a real pivot point we are on – truly leaving behind our last anchor to the City, and committing fully to our new life on Que Sehra Farm.
Widget atop the root cellar – which is on track to be complete before winter comes in earnest!
It’s going to be an interesting ride, and we’ll be honored if you decide to remain a part of it in the years ahead. I’ve avoided expressing my gratitude to you all this year, for fear of being repetitious, but it’s been a constant in my mind – thank you all, CSA members, farm helpers, family, friends, and all the critters and quirks and crinkles of fate that have made this amazing year such a memorable, wonderful, and magical step in this adventure of our lives.
Thank you, thank you; thank you.
Stay warm, stay in touch – and we hope to see you at the party on the 22nd – or over the winter, whenever … we’ll be here.
love,
Gabe & Kristin
The Final Box
Butternut Squash – you know this one. It will keep on the counter for up to a month without a problem, so don’t worry if you still have one from before!
Acorn Squash – these are alleged to be a top notch variety of this type of squash; tastier and better textured. We haven’t tried one yet ourselves, but they have good reviews. We like to halve them, bake in the oven, and then stuff with something delicious, maybe a sausage and rice pilaf or something like that.
Parsnips – great in soup, awesome with other roasted veggies. Noteworthy for being among the earliest planted, and the latest harvested veggies in the field … along with …
conquering the parsnips
Celeriac aka Celery Root – cut off the rough outer skin, chop up the bulb and add it to a veggie roast or a soup. The tops are also good for chopping up and using to flavor soup.
Bag o’ Herbs (parsley, sage, Mexican taragon (with the yellow flowers), thyme) – great compliment for soup or roasted veggies. Use them fresh or dry them for use later (bunch small bundles and hang in a dry spot, or spread out in a paper bag)
Brussels Sprouts – frost sweetened!
Broccoli – these lost a little snappiness from the frost, but should be sweet and tasty.
an Onion & a Shallot
2017 final CSA harvest crew!
calendula drying in the solar dehydrator
Gabe & Jim building the bracing to hold up a 12×12′ 6″ thick wet concrete slab
Marty through an exhaust ventilation hole, screwing down the roof support plywood
Wow. It’s hard to believe how quickly this season shot past – it’s already October, and next week will be the final box of 2017. What!?
It may not be all that cold, but the weather still makes it clear that big changes are afoot; lots of wind, storms, and rain – last night alone we had over 3 inches fall.
impressive overnight rainfall!
You know it rained a lot when there are puddles atop a hill that’s essentially a sand dune!
wind and rain took this tree out – and very nearly our outhouse
And when we went to harvest the salad greens for the farmer’s market on Saturday, we discovered that a patchy frost had left thin crusts of ice on the lowest-lying leaves. This forced us to delay salad harvest until the sunshine hit the field, thawing the tender greens while still attached to their roots (if picked when icy, they wilt when they thaw out). First frost of the year … the countdown to the Killing Frost is on now for sure.
Let’s see, what else … a 3-week old baby goat from the Munch Bunch came to stay with us over the weekend, and it was just as cute as you’d expect.
We’ve been busy preserving the autumn bounty – smoking and dehydrating peppers, and making ground cherry jam and spicy salsa.
apple prep squad – peelers, cutters, and crushers
And just when we could see the end of the apple pile, neighbor Russ Hanson let us come forage another four bushels from the many dozens of trees that his father had planted.
smoker in the background full of peppers, pressed-out apple pulp in the foreground
Ripe raspberries have been popping up from the scraggly little bushes we planted a couple years ago, grapes in an unprecedented abundance from the vines our friend Paula gave us around the same time, shiitakes from the log pile, and apples on one of the old and one of the new trees.
Kristin harvesting apples while Gabe juices a different batch
The voles tunnel network has been found passing right on through the potatoes, and the turnips, and the carrots … fortunately, we planted far more than the tiny little terrorists can devour. The deer are everywhere you drive in the dusk, and they’ve have been sneaking in to eat the leaves from our baby strawberry plants – but leaving us the fruit, which is a nice concession. Or maybe it’s a rabbit?
Kingsbury watches for intruders from his favorite perch
The home invader mice are scarce, compared to last year’s rodent blitzkrieg. A big pileated woodpecker flies from oak to oak in the front yard when he thinks no one is around.
The week went by quickly, looking back – but at the time, every moment was forever, and it sure was a nice time.
the Second to Last Box:
Butternut Squash – Great for soup, and this here’s soup season fo sho. It’s a darn versatile squash, you can go sweet or savory with it … let us know if you do an experiment that rocks!
Leeks – hey, these are great with soup, too … and we included potatoes so you could do potato leek soup, a fall favorite. Maybe I’ll rename this this Soup Box?
Red Potatoes yep
tater-dry-washing crew
Fall Chop Salad Mix – torrential rain, or maybe hail, blasted the spinach and tat soi in the night last night, but most other stuff was unharmed ….
Tomatillos – you could make tomatillo soup perhaps? These also pair well with your peppers and cilantro.
Jalepenos – these are hot if used whole, but you can declaw their heat by removing the seeds and their surrounding membrane, if you are cooking for anyone sensitive to spice.
Assorted Sweet Peppers – if it’s not a jalepeno, it’s not spicy!
Cilantro – best cilantro we’ve ever grown. Sorry if you’re one of the unfortunate folks who lack the ability to enjoy this flavor.
Cutting Celery – chop up finely for the tasty celery flavor (it’s not easy to eat whole, due to the strong fibers)
Tomatoes – we only had room in your boxes for a few this week … but also, the plants have definitely felt the coming of autumn; the field tomatoes are almost all kaput, and even the high tunnel plants are slowing way down now/
Widget’s paw print in a tomato that got in her way
Ground Cherries – if you can avoid simply eating them all plain, these are great in salads, pancakes, muffins, oatmeal …
ground cherries on their way toward jam
Kristin’s dad Jim helping install the solar panels, using a frame he and his son Joe welded for us
