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!

In the beginning of the week, we all thought it was too cool, too soon. By the end of this week, we were steamed into eagerness for fall. So the storm came and the temperature dropped twenty degrees whilst the wind tore apart the mosquito gazebo and felled dead oaks pell mell through the chickenyard.

With a headlamp, predawn, I surveyed the damage and noted a rain covering askew upon the Playhouse RV, fetched a ladder and leaned it up and ascended to yank the roofing home. The storm I’d thought I’d dodged before bed came upon me unannounced in a deluge, as if a bathtub had been upended above my head, and I had literally to laugh aloud through the waterfall.

A day that starts with such a baptism feels good to live.

The vegetables were into it, too.

inside box 12 is a melon, and

• Onions – Onions are not to be placed into direct association with your melons; the internet is full of charlatans that will mislead you into wasting a perfectly good summer quinessence of a melon, if you do not be’ware.
• Potatoes
• Melon – take your melon and cut or ball it up and drizzle with honey, then scatter your holy basil up onto it, tiny piece-meal? Or, you can just eat it.
• Tomatoes – This is the time of year in which I try to blend the words “tomato” and “tornado” in a satisfying way.
• Cherry tomatoes
• Zucchini 
• Eggplant 
• Ripe peppers, not hot.
• Radishes
• Edamame – Don’t eat the pod. The storm knocked a bunch of dirt onto things so wash them first. Then boil them, salt them, and eat them. Could boil em and pop them out of their pods to use in your stirfry or blended into dip.
• Cabbage
• Tulsi/holy basil (you’ve been down too long in the midnight sea)– makes magical tea, or you could do something with it and your melon.

PS – Did you find the hidden toad up top?

The predator came back this morning and found where mama and the dozen had bedded down near the bird feeders. The chicks escaped while mom sacrificed herself to save them. It was not a great way to start the day and it wasn’t until the end of harvest that I stopped feeling gloomy. Hmm, I tried glossing over the Part 2 of the Bad Morning Blues I see. Well I was raised catholic so let’s do confession; when I tried to herd the 10 baby chicks to safety at dawn this morning, I fatally injured one of the chicks. A metal wall I was using to corral them tipped over on him (I’m gonna pretend to know it was a rooster to take the edge off, ok? and I had to end his life by hand. You might not be a baby chicken massacrer but perhaps you have made poor decisions that you regretted vehemently and you understand how it goes. Ugh.

But then there were ten, and after harvest was done we had a comical time trying to corral them, finally succeeding in capturing half the Orphans (as that generation are now collectively known), enabling us to box them up and send them to their new home at CSA shareholder Cody’s house – where they will grow up adored by her two children and spoiled as the only poultry people present. So that was nice. The remaining five will be bravely facing life and the lurking predators and the dangerous Gabe Guy with the rest of the flock.

There is also a vegetable predator marauding in the greenhouse – a woodchuck, so with the aid of a motion sensor alarm I send him running with a warning shot from the .22, but if he returns and continues to evade the live trap while making an absolute hog of himself on our produce, we might get to find out how his species tastes.

The deer, however, are no problem at all this year and it’s relaxing not having to worry about them – especially since we finally finished the amazing new deer fence yesterday (that last part was unlikely to be breached, but the possibility of being proven wrong had kept your farmer up at night worrying about the tender little fall crop seedlings growing up just inside there).

Foraging continues: this time of year is all blackberries and wild mushrooms – this week we brought a load of chicken of the woods over to Neighbor Marcia’s to refrigerate for the market, and found a hoard of far superior quality and quantity when we were driving away up her driveway looking into her woods! All rejoiced, and the abundance helped make the farmer’s market our most successful ever!

And in happiest news, mighty enough to counterbalance the chicken problems; the cat has officially adopted us and its name is Ranger and the boys love it and it purrs when we pet and pick it up.

Farm Life taketh away but it also giveths … so, so much.

Inside Box 11

• Little Old School Pears – eat these fast or they will become mush. Ideally eat them at the exact moment the greenish tint turns yellowish. If you wait too many minutes longer the flesh softens and browns. But they’re pretty yummy so try your skills at timing their consumption. Put them all in a shallow bowl where you can see them all; the comparison allows you to see which are yellow. Yellow ones might last a few more minutes if refrigerated but why not just eat it now?
• Bok Choi bagged with Baby Broccoli
• Melon – note: melons don’t keep getting riper/sweeter while they sit, unlike tomatoes
• either Radishes or Tomatillos
• Eggplants
• Zucchinis
• a Cucumber
• Tomatoes
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Shallots
• Italian Frying Peppers and one ripe Bell Pepper – use them the same.
• Jalepeno
• Sweet Corn
• Lettuce Leaf Italian Basil
• Kale Microgreens

I’m not going to dwell or bemoan or wax forboding but it is just a science fact felt in the bones of all life local that summer has peaked and is now on the slow opening slide into the wintertimes. Trees know it, we know it. This part of the ride is really pretty. We’ll strive to remember to look up, and look out(ward).

We foraged lobster and chicken if the woods mushrooms, said forever farewell to the last O.G. Ginger chicken, and picked 10 pounds of chokecherries and a nice little pile of blackberries … we missed the opening salvo of these but are ready to ride the rest of the wave.

This week,

, which of course means that we mulched, and weeded, and welcomed the white and grey kitten to hang around if it wanted, and a chick got munched by a larger wild bird, and the pole beans got weeded. Wwoofer Margaret joined us, speaking of pole bean weeding.

Inside Box 10

TOMATOES – Prime tomato sandwich season is upon the land (and there was great rejoicing.) The green ones are likely almost peak ripe, as are almost all of them. If you don’t eat them within a few days, maybe move them from the counter to the fridge … or eat them. Eating them is a popular and correct path, with much potential for creative expression and joie de vivre. Tomatoes!

(PS do you need to buy a new jar of mayonnaise?

Cherry Tomatoes– like the other tomatoes, but little and adorable, in the manner of babies.

Purple Potatoes – If you’ve been mindful of how beets might color a dish, you’re equipped to handle the potential of the purple potatoes to dye a soup in an unpleasant direction (light colored soups become murky gray. Boiling them removes their color, but roasting is pretty purple preservative.

Red Onions – they are like the white onions, but they’re red. Pretty on a sandwich raw, if you swing that way.

They also stay pretty pickled.

Shishito Peppers – usually left whole. best blistered by high heat; grilled or on hot oil. Sprinkled with a little sale, and some garlic when you’re almost finished cooking them,

Sweet Corn – just a couple ears, and rather smallish. The corn is not having it’s best year. We have theories

Zucchini

Slicing Cucumbers

Summer (?) Savory – it might go well with your roasted potatoes, or in a compound butter. Use fresh or dry some for a later soup or something.

a Melon – either a cantaloupe or a sunjewel, or the one Yellow Canary Melon if you are that one box.

Arugula Microgreens – They have some spicy zip.

Maybe Ground Cherries – the hand of farmer fate is handing out a pint of ground cherries to the half of our members who missed a melon last week. So it be. Don’t worry if you miss them today – there will be more.