A few important announcements then onto this week’s topic: Farm Machinery.
Garlic planting is this weekend. We need some more of you to come out and get a little dirty. The forecast calls for sunny weather with a hint of garlic in the air! Please let me know if you plan to come out. This is a great opportunity to meet fellow members and learn more about your farm. We’ll start at 2:00 and go until 5:00 or earlier if we are finished. Following the garlic planting we will have a bonfire and potluck dinner!
Don’t forget to sign-up for 2016! We will base next season’s total shares on your commitment to next season. The more people who sign-up this month the more shares we feel we will sell next year. Don’t wait or you may not get in (we are trying to prevent this season’s issue with over planting the early crops).
We have extra potatoes ($1/lb), onions($1/lb), shallots($2/lb), and garlic ($10/lb) for sale. On-farm members can pick-up what they want when they pick-up their produce. Drop-site members can let me know what you want and we will send it out with the next delivery. All of these make great gifts! Plus what neighborhood kid wouldn’t want a garlic bulb or an onion in their trick-or-treat bag? Think outside the box and pick-up some extra produce to share!
We have three more weeks left in this season’s season. Please plan accordingly.
Farm News. Though it may seem like I am responsible for the wonderful produce you are receiving this year, I am but the level that turns the mechanism which is Fresh Earth Farms. Behind the scenes are the cogs, sprockets and gizmos that make this contraption rumble. Without these others I would be nothing but a crank. So it is my pleasure to enlighten you to the other components of this year’s well-oiled machine.
In order of seniority our first gear is Rebecca. As many of you long term members know, Rebecca has been with us for most of our farm’s existence. She is the main driveshaft making this farm purr. If any gadget is unsure of its role their first stop is Rebecca. She knows the ins-and-outs of this place as well as I do. Without her, my role as chief crank would be far more difficult.
Second on the seniority list is our chief doohickey Big Chris. Much like Rebecca, Chris has been here since the inception of the farm, he just wasn’t old enough to work here yet. The last two year’s he’s taken on great responsibilities and has become a valuable cog in the works. Plus he knows how to drive the tractor.
Third is our one new sprocket this season Rachel. Rachel is new not only to the farm but also to the Twin Cities. She comes to us from down south (like Indiana) via Pennsylvania. She may be new to us but she is not new to farming. When she went off to college her family decided to move away and start a farm. Once she found them she decided to help out during the summers. She brings this expertise to help us find our crops when they become lost in the weeds.
I also must thank two other widgets who stepped up when I was down, as in down south in the Florida Keys scuba diving with the Boy Scouts. My wife Susan and son Alex covered for me that week and I was told did such a wonderful job people were disappointed in my return. These two sprockets kept the machine going without the head crank here to keep it turning. So thank you Susan and Alex!
And thank you to all you members for without your support this machine would be nothing but a pile of wingnuts topped by an old crank.
What will we have this week? Great question yet again! Making its 2015 debut will be Brussels sprouts! Typically we like to wait to harvest BS until we’ve had a few good frosts. Frosts make the sprouts sweeter. (Un)fortunately we have had only a couple minor insignificant frosts. But unless we start harvesting them we will run out of season. So this week we start! Also new this week is celeriac. Celeriac is like celery only a root instead of the stems. It has the same flavor as celery and as one of our members said last season, “It looks like a vegetable that needs a shave”. In addition to these two new items we have potatoes, carrots, onions, shallots, leeks, garlic, beets, winter squash (we’ll be handing out the butternuts this week), peppers, some pie pumpkins, some salad mix, lots-o-radishes, some Napa cabbage, some kohlrabi, and maybe some odds and a few ends. The broccoli is maturing very slowly and I am getting a bit nervous that is might not mature in time; keep your fingers crossed!
No Meat, Eggs, Fruit, Seafood, Salmon, or Cheese this week.
I believe Coffee comes on Monday.
FlowerShares will get a big pumpkin or two depending on what we find out there (as long as they are ripe, which they weren’t two weeks ago).
For those who ordered WinterShare you should have received your onions, garlic and shallots. Some of you have also received your winter squash. The potatoes will be put together and distributed sometime in the next two weeks.