The wild mushrooms finally started popping in our woods this week; we got our first on-farm chicken of the woods – and our first lobsters. The chokecherries and blackberries are increasingly ripening out in the Barrens around us. The storms missed us, for the most part, although we did get one solid half-inch rainfall. This was much appreciated by all the dehydrating flora, as well as the fauna. Also, it meant we could back away from running the field irrigation, for a bit longer.

A small hawk is hanging around our tree tops a lot of the time, the mice are active en masse, There are more slugs in the garden than we’ve ever before seen, and we rejoice in the zipping of more and more dragonflies. The bear hasn’t been seen. Nothing seems to be preying on the chickens.

Some old friends came out to help out – CSA Member Tara and her clan paid visits, harvesting a gazillion beans for the Market amongst the socializing, and Steffan reprised his role as a harvest hand today, helping fill your boxes with the fruits of our labor. With Grandpa Jim, we started to build a small addition to the screen porch, to serve as a little mudroom entryway. The tomato plants are taller than Kristin so she wields a stepstool to trellis them up. And the harvest today went smoothly; this is what we got for you:

inside box 10

• Carrots (orange & purple) – We weeded them this year! For over 20 hours.
• Green Cabbage
• Cucumber – we might have to do a large pickling project this week. 
• Zucchini 
• Beans – greens are on the wane, purples and dragontongues wax.
• Onions
• Tomatoes – now they’re starting to come on for real.
• Cherry tomatoes 

It was another one of those weeks where it was hot and it was rainy, it was smokey and we were busy being farmers and parents and family and friends. The usual. 

The weeds continue to celebrate the frequent rainfall; we have been pulling and burying and mowing them but it feels increasingly like a zombie video game where there are always more coming than going and, inevitably, inexorably, inescapably they shall overwhelm and consume the human holdouts. 

Well, maybe not exactly like that. Really, I was just feeling dramatic for a moment there and really, we are staying ahead of the horde better than ever, I dare say. Sure there are a few rows that will take heavy artillery to beat back, and I may not make it through another week without losing another mower belt. But it seems pretty decent. And with the rain, plus the deer fence keeping 100% of the deer and 95% of the rabbits out, we have some unexpectedly vigorous production. Liiiike the peas, which I hope you enjoy because guess what.

And the rutabagas …. yeah, the rutabagas. That’s a weed thing, too. See, these are normally a fall crop, and they’re a lot larger – but due to an unfortunate series of events they were planted in a bed with a lot of early season crops that finished up for the year, and the weeds snuck up en masse and we decided we would have to call in a huge piece of landscape fabric and/or a riding lawnmower, to get the row under some semblance of control.

Aaanyway, first we had to salvage the rutabagas early, today, and so here we all are, with early season, tender rutabagas on the menu.

When we weren’t weeding, we were often trellising and transplanting. For the moment, there are no plants in the Little Greenhouse, for the first time since March! But soon more fall crops will be getting seeded, so that won’t last for long

In the meantime, there’s

Box 6

Cucumbers (Slicers & Pickling)

Zucchini & Summer Squash – it’s officially summer everybody; get your zucchini game on line and on point.

Kale (Curly Blue & Scarlet)

Sugar Snap Peas – people enjoy these, scientists say

a small amount of either Snow Peas or Broccoli. Or maybe this one weird-looking cauliflower.

the aforementioned Rutabagas

Onions

This week many weeds gave up their lives so that crop plants might flourish. The giant western weed wall fell, but not without a valiant fight, taking one of our riding lawnmowers down with it in its death throes (with a melted belt). The corn rows got their final weeding of the season, which took two people a whole day – from here on out the corn will be tall enough to shade out any competition that emerges. The peppers, eggplants, and melons all got weeded, and an entire knee-high row of lush weeds were rolled flat and buried beneath landscape fabric. So much weeding … it’s been awhile since we’ve had so much repeated rain, and therefore so much vigorous weed explosion.

Potato plants were mulched, potato beetles were picked, and old seed potatoes were discovered – the root cellar potatoes have gone feral in there. (The boys and I partied with them when we beat the heat by transforming the cellar into the Art Cave.)

WWOOFer Rog made two kinds of delicious ice cream with ingredients we procured – strawberry with a foraged juneberry swirl, and a mint leaf chocolate stracciatella. Where has Rog been for the past decade?!

inside Box Five

• Zucchini – the first of the season!
• bit o’ brassica bag – some broccoli, cauliflower, and/or kohlrabi
• Rutabagas – they’re almost always eaten cooked. Boil em, mash em, put them in a stew. Or roast em and use them like potatoes.
• Sugar Snap Peas – toss into stir fries for crunch, blanch into a chilled salad with vinaigrette, or saute with garlic and butter as a quick side … if you’re bored with eating them raw like an animal.
• Green Onions
• Napa Cabbage – Asian cabbage – usually has more of a head, but we picked it early because it’s hot and we feared they were going to bolt. Great raw in a salad with seasame dressing, or the crunchy stems make for delicious stir fry.
• Oregano – season your zucchini with some of it, add to pizza, or dry it to use at your later leisure.

It was hot there for awhile. We hydro-cooled with hoses, rivers, showers & sinks, and ran several fans overnights. Today’s 80 felt deliciously almost-chilly. Next time I want to try to make the root cellar feel habitable perhaps – there’s room for some furniture this time of year, right?

The annual garden abundance has begun in earnest now, well beyond a do-si-do, though still well shy of a mosh pit. (that’s August or so.) Things are remarkably lush and orderly, in spite of the farm being all ours, without any of the usual WWOOFers to help. The kids are older, and we are, perhaps, wiser.

inside Box 3

• Strawberries – don’t sleep on these for long. Ripe and ready!
• Peas – Edible pod varieties, sugar snap and snow peas. Good for fresh eating and stir frying or sautéing. 
• Garlic scapes – Garlic scapes are a fun part of growing garlic. They are the flower stalk of the plant and they are removed so that the plants energy goes to forming larger cloves. Chop them up and use like garlic. 
• Green onions – annual soundtrack plays on
• Bok Choi – Last one until fall! The recipe in last week’s newsletter has been well received. We added some spiciness to ours, which paired great with the sweetness.
• Salad – various lettuces, a smattering of rugula, and some pea shoots.
• Broccoli – the heat wave startled it a bit. but it’s all good.
• Kohlrabi – Peel the outer skin and enjoy this crunchy mildly broccoli flavored vegetable. Good raw or cooked. 
• Radishes
• Salad Turnips
• Micro mix – broccoli, red cabbage, kale, amaranth, radish, pea shoots

Here we are at the last newsletter of the season – and the end of our first decade of living on the farm, off the grid, on the land, in the woods.

It’s been quite a ride, surfing this learning curve, and I am pleased to report an uninterrupted streak of no regrets – in leaving behind the life we’d known – career, city, and microwave ovens. I know a decade is an arbitrary point, but it truly feels that we are making a pivot from learning to live, and into living the life. Planting, harvesting, selling at the market, firewood and drinking water and electricity and all the basic activities and necessities come … not easy, but with much less stress and confusion.

We started without a business plan or a financial prediction, just winging it with faith that things would work out somehow. Without knowing if we might hemorrhage away all of our little savings, we leaned hard into learning to do without, and scavenging all the free detritus we could from the edges of civilization. Today we find ourselves with a new confidence, feeling that we know when and where we might choose to spend some of our precious nest egg to better our lives.

This week, that came into play with two major upgrades. Power-ups, indeed:

First, the replacement of our minimalist low budget solar battery bank with a mightier lithium ion system, thanks to our WWOOFers Evan & Nikki, who planned and built the upgraded 24v system while they stayed here … making it possible to power everything we do, including the daily irrigation of the high tunnel.

We have also powered up our abilities out on the land, with the purchase of a modern tractor! After 10 years of wagons, carts, backaches, wheelbarrows, and borrowing Neighbor Dave and his tractor, we took the plunge and committed to the most versatile, powerful, and iconic of farm implements!

We’ve window shopped online for years but the right thing never came along until, like our dogs and cat have done, the Right One came along with divinely perfect timing, flowing seamlessly into our lives, clearly meant to be.

The tractor came from a friend from the farmer’s market old days; we named the machine after her once we got her home. And getting home with the tractor was a journey, no mere shopping trip. I sent the picture below of Bonnie and the Boys to a farmer friend, and he responded that “Tractor trips are epic and mythical” – and mere minutes later, a tire shed its tread beneath Goat Dave’s trailer, laden with thousands of pounds of tractor.

It could have been a disaster. It should have been. But somehow … it was just a lovely little adventure, likely ling remembered by us all. We managed to limp four miles along the shoulder of the highway to the next exit, where a lovely trailer rental business quickly and painlessly set us to rights and gave the boys hats to remember the epic and mythical tractor trip with.

The best and most important things in our lives flow, unforced, and the best adventures feel epic and mythical, from getting power-ups to raising a farm and a family to growing vegetables for you all for another year.

It’s a profoundly lovely way to live our life together, and I feel like I should thank you for giving us the chance to do it. It’s been beautiful. Enjoy your veggies.

Thanks.

Inside the Year’s Last Box

Winter squash – a butternut & a storage squash (either Tetsukabuto or Winter Sweet). The storage squash will be better in a couple of months than in a couple of days – could go longer too, but keep an eye on it in case it starts to turn evil whilst forgotten in the back of a dark cupboard.

Note: I was knocked out of a spelling bee in third grade on the word “cupboard” and I haven’t forgiven it.

Russet Potatoes – best for mashing or baking whole

Kale – a nice addition to winter squash soup

Brussels sprouts – our finest crop yet; we think we might know why, and make it The Way we do them henceforth.

Carrots – not our finest crop of these yet; Que-rrot sera, sera.

Zucchini 

Tomatoes – I love having these all the way into October!

Cherry tomatoes – you’ve had a lot this year, since we had a lot …. here’s a couple recipe ideas if you’ve forgotten the feeling of winter in your bones and don’t want to eat them raw anymore:

• Cherry Tomato & Cheese Galette
• Roasted Cherry Tomatoes

Onion

More Beautiful Peppers – they have been finding their way into everything here. Stir fry, fajitas and tacos, sauces, salads…

Salad Turnips

Sage – left to my own devices I might just sniff the bag of these periodically, for pleasure, but Kristin recommends eating it. It is delicious to snack on battered and fried, or you could make a brown butter sauce.

See you at the party, or next year; wishing you sunny days & cozy nights!