As you can tell by the weather — if not the many reminders from past newsletters — the season is over. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! Actually I hope you enjoyed it much more than I did; that is just how unselfish I am!
We are still taking orders for 2024. We are already a third of our way to the 2024 goal so thank you to everyone who has rejoined so far! Since it has taken us one month to sell one third of next season’s shares I have to believe we will be sold out by the end of the year, no? That’s how math works right? Now if we can get the rest of you to rejoin soon we will certainly not violate the laws of math. So sign up now and lock in this year’s price for next season’s produce.
I believe our store can now take Google Pay and Apple Pay. If anyone wants to order their shares for next season and test out either please do so and let me know so I can confirm it worked!
Farm News
I haven’t yet seen the stats on October’s weather but I have to believe it was colder and wetter than usual. Certainly wetter. How do I know this? Well, because we didn’t get done all that we wanted to get done. Most important on the list is the planting of the green garlic. We got the bulbing garlic planted with the help of many of our members but did not have time to plant the green stuff. I’m hoping, but am not too optimistic, that we can still get it planted sometime in November. We’d need a week or more of warm, dry weather and that doesn’t seem to be in the forecast (which I have learned to never believe anyway). We may have to wait until the spring to plant it. I have no idea if that will work but we’ll give it a try.
One thing we did this fall was plant a bunch of pieces of ginger from our ginger trial. I have no idea (I seem to be saying this a lot in this newsletter, hmmm) what I am doing but it is fun trying new things. I mentioned this experiment in a past newsletter. We took about 80 ginger pieces we grew this season and planted them into small pots. They were growing in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks as we cured the winter squash and sweet potatoes. Now that the greenhouse is shutdown for the season I moved the plants into our basement. They are sitting under the lights I use for grafting tomatoes. Being a shade loving plant I’m hoping these lights provide enough light for the plants to grow. Not knowing is one of the reasons it is called an experiment.
The goal is for these small pieces of ginger to sprout and grow slowly over the course of the next few months. So far nine have met this initial sprouting goal. Then in March when we start the greenhouse we can move these plants into the greenhouse and give them more light. Then, when the weather warms sufficiently in April or May we can transplant them into the hoop house. I have no idea how big these plants will get prior to transplanting them (that is why it is called an experiment). On the one hand I’d like them as big as possible so they grow bigger yet and produce more ginger. On the other hand, big plants take up more room in the greenhouse and are harder to transplant. I’ll keep you updated on their progress.
Finally, the one big fall task we completed before the snow was the mulching of the garlic beds (see picture at the top of this newsletter). Of course like every year the mulching took place on a windy day so now I have straw in just about every bodily crevice. (As an aside, did you ever notice how as you age you gain more crevices?) I have no idea why anyone would want to be a hay farmer. What a miserable existence.
What will we have this week?
Snow apparently. That’s pretty much it.
No other shares.
Joke of the week
This joke was submitted by Athena with her family’s payment for next season’s shares. It’s an original so if she becomes a famous standup comedienne someday this could be worth a lot of money!
What do you call a pumpkin that is a turtle?
A turtle pumpkin.
Keep those jokes and share orders coming! We appreciate your support and sense of humor!