I like to use this newsletter as an opportunity to re focus on the beautiful and wonderful aspects of our life on the farm. Sometimes that is simple, but on days like today it don’t come easy. I guess it should; at the top of my head there are easily a dozen major aspects of our existence that fill me with excitement for the future, and love of the present.
But dammit, I am just so irritated at the damages the deer are inflicting upon us during their midnight raids of the garden. We’ve had deer that learned to leap the fence before – most years, really, one or two will figure it out as summer shifts to autumn. But this year is different. The deer are absolutely voracious, and they don’t arrive until long after dusk. It seems clear that they are working in coordination with the cunning colonial voles, timing surgical strikes without ever being seen or heard … leaving behind nothing but hoofprints and the truncated stumps of our fall brassica crops.
Harvesting the cherry tomatoes from the row next door this morning, I walked past hundreds of feet of chewed up stems and stumps. And I did not see the beauty, and I said some very foul things, and being a conscious living being seemed downright unpleasant for awhile. I mean, it wasn’t a full on meltdown, but ugggh there was a distinct absence of happy thoughts. The “what will be will be” of last week’s perspective felt far away, and probably pollyannaish.
Well. The deer aren’t really eating everything. Just seems like it when my focus is specifically on the damages … and when undamaged plants happen to catch my eye, they bring only deepening darkness since they are just future casualties waiting to disappear down a bottomless white-tailed gullet. I can scare them away with some mid-night patrols, we can more aggressively seek a hunter to transmute the garden gobbler into venison seasoned by sweet sweet revenge. Or we could just … say “whatever” and let nature take its course. From here, that’s tempting. And I have a feeling that everything will be just fine, however we decide.
And hey, at least one of our CSA members actually hates the entire brassica family (and may in fact be in league with the deer and vole alliance striving to avoid kale, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts entirely, hmmm)
Anyway, I’m bored with deer, what else? The baby is threatening to start walking, the winter squash is looking great, winter plans are starting to come into focus, and we live and grow surrounded by wild critters and weeds and we love it even when we must struggle to create abundance for ourselves and our fellow humans. Ack I’m back on the depredations of the local mammalian population again … let’s just see what’s …
Inside the Box
- Zucchini & Summer Squash – one of each
- Potatoes – purple & red or purple & white
- Onions – Redwing & Patterson varieties
- Hakuri Salad Turnips
- French Breakfast Radishes
- Cherry tomato mix – watch out for the little red ones – they love to split after they’ve been harvested and packed.
- Tomatoes – a variety of types including Striped German, Pink Berkley Tie-dye, Damsel, Cherokee Green, Kellogg’s Breakfast, and several others we can’t even hope to remember just now, all ripe or very nearly ripe (even the green ones).
- Peppers – assortment of ripe sweet peppers, including Glow, Carmen, Ace, Islander varieties
- Cucumbers – there are about 5 surviving plants inside the high tunnel, although the main row in the field is completely done for the season.
- Arugula Microgreens – peppery goodness
if you’ve made it this far, you’re definitely on the list for this:
