We’ll have choices from the following veggies this week:
Lettuce, chard, kale, bok choi, squash, salad turnips, celeriac, kohlrabi, cucumber, cabbage, leeks, tomato, peppers, carrots, beets, onion, potato, green onion, dill, cilantro and parsley.
Where starting to bring out some of the novel fall vegetables like celeriac and kohlrabi. Celeriac is basically celery root and is great for soups or popular mashed like potatos or with potatos. Fall kohlrabi is the same as spring, but a lot bigger so you can eat more of it! And it was just pointed out to me that this is the year of the cabbage which is another great fall vegetable : https://www.vogue.com/article/cabbage-health-benefits
On the farm this week:
We had our first frost! It wasn’t too bad, but it did damage some of the squash and killed some of the cucumber plants. In anticipation for the frost we had spent a lot of time moving the ripe squash inside our nursery. I also always plant one giant pumpkin plant for fun. It sounds like fun in the spring, but then by fall when you have to move it, you realize it’s not fun for anyone. We’ll bring a few to market next week to try to give them away. And since it’s supposed to frost tonight we set up sprinlers and the rest of the squash and cucumbers to protect them. Here’s Hin holding up a big pumpkin.
Now that the squash are all in the nursery, I decided to finally mouseproof our nursery. This spring I was losing my mind because a mouse was eating all of our transplants in the nursery and we never caught it despite having hundreds of traps and sticky tape literally everywhere. I’m still going to get that mouse one day! However; we’ve had a lucky fall so far with the mice. Sandra’s been setting mouse traps in the regulary melons( which they also love to eat) and we’ve been catching a LOT – and seemingly before any of them decided to try the melons Sandra is always the most consceintious person about food safety around the farm and made sure to get sunflower butter in case of peanut allergies. But I don’t understand why she had to get the fancy organic sunflower butter! Here’s Shola and Hin digging around the nursery and installing metal all the way around.
And here is the inside of the nursery with all our squahs;
We also pulled out our tomatoes and planted the high tunnel this week to lettuce spinach, bok choi, chad, kale to harvest in fall and early winter. These are the most cold hardy greens. spinach which can survive all winter and even be harvested frozen and revive itself once thawed.
Here’s Kateryna planting lettuce. This was Kateryna’s last day as she left us for Uber which she said is much easier.
That’s it for this week. Thanks and see you soon,
Jonathan, Sarah, Sandra, Alyssa, Shola, Hin, Kateryna, Barb