Thank goodness for seed catalogs!

We have at least 8-10 inches of snow on the ground - it's cold and white everywhere! Though we did have some broccoli for lunch - picked while it was frozen in the field. It was still pretty good!

With all that cold out there, thank goodness the seed catalogs have been coming. We've gotten about half a dozen of them or so. What lovely pictures of fresh veggies, beautiful flowers, fragrant herbs...makes us dream of next year's market season.

Prices of seeds have gone up this year (haven't they for everything else too?), but not the 50% higher as some folks thought we'd have.

We'll have to select what varieties we want of items we already grow, plus find a few things to experiment with this year! Any requests?

Fall Happenings at the Farm

This fall we've done pretty well at getting the fields cleaned up. We actually got the garlic planted on Columbus Day (the "official" garlic-planting day).

Charles worked a long time to get the plastic mulch and irrigation tape pulled up from the fields. We keep transitioning further and further away from using the plastic mulch - but we're not quite ready to get rid of all of it yet.

Charles got the cover crops planted last week. (Except the tomato patch - haven't tackled that one yet). Hopefully the rye will sprout this week and will soon start working its soil conserving and soil-building organic matter magic!

We're still eating a little cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and kale from the fields. Though they aren't growing very fast with these cold nights! A lot of the broccoli is starting to get a little brown inside the stems - too cold for them we suppose. But the tops and outside of the stems are still pretty good.

Charles has one tunnel ready to plant our summer strawberries - we're trying a different planting scheme this year. We'll be using landscape fabric in the strawberry tunnel to keep weeds from overtaking us!

As always, lots to do at the farm!

Markets are over! (Tested out the strawberry mix last night)

Though we love our customers, the conversations, the jokes, the family updates, and interactions at our markets, we're pretty relieved that yesterday was our last market of the 2008 season!

We actually had some broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collards, and cabbage at the market, along with our value-added products: hot pepper jelly, medium salsa, and strawberry slushie mix.

Speaking of the strawberry mix, this stuff is sooooo good! It makes wonderful slushies, smoothies, daiquiris, and is terrific as an ice cream topping. Charles tried it mixed in the blender with some yogurt, a few ice cubes and a little milk, and it made a wonderful slushie/milkshake type drink.

We'll be getting the mix (and jelly and salsa) in our store on the local harvest website so you can order online soon.