Farming typically isn’t all that sexy of a profession. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of sex going on here at the farm; in fact there is probably more sex here than at a typical household. But farm sex is not sexy sex. It is like practically everything else here at the farm — dirty and filthy. Why am I suddenly writing about farm sex? Because I was trying to come up with a title to this week’s newsletter about what we are doing on the farm lately and the best I could come up with is “Topless Farming”. Sounds kind of sexy.
Anyway, topless farming is what we are doing here at the farm and it is hard to claim it is sexy. Over the last several weeks we’ve spent any free time or rain days cutting the tops off all the garlic bulbs we harvested and cured this past August. We would have preferred to be totally topless awhile ago but it just didn’t happen. But it is done now and allows us to move onto the next free time/rain day project which is another topless farming project — cutting the tops off the onions we harvested last month. After we harvested the onions we put them in the greenhouse to dry and cure. They are now ready to be topped. We got through about a quarter of them so far but of course still have a lot to go.
And the pressure is on to be totally topless soon. Why? Because we need the greenhouse to cure our next big project — winter squash. Thankfully we don’t have to top winter squash; it is just a matter of keeping them warm for a few weeks to heal any cuts and toughen the skins so that they store longer. We do this in the greenhouse since it is a fairly large space and can hold a lot of winter squash. So our focus will be getting totally topless as quickly as possible. Anyone care to join us?
Here is another reminder about the Garlic Planting Party. It will be held Saturday October 10th starting at 2:00 and running until all the garlic is planted or 5:00, whichever comes first. Following the planting we will hang out by the fire pit and enjoy a delicious meal with wonderful conversation. Come out, meet your fellow farm members, and get a little dirty. RSVPs are appreciated.
We are still running our 2016 seed potato fund raiser. We are calling it The Spud Fund. So far we have raised close to $100! Not a bad start but still far from our goal of $1000. So if you want extra potatoes please let us know. We’re selling them for the low, low price of $1/lb. Your contribution will go toward buying replacement seed potatoes for the 2016 season.
What will we have this week? New this week is celery! I probably mentioned this before but perhaps you weren’t listening, but we don’t blanch our celery; we haven’t figured out a good way to do that. So the celery we grow is a bit stronger flavored than the pale green celery you find in stores. And by stronger-flavored I mean more delicious. It is great for cooking but may be too potent for fresh eating. But everyone has different tastes. In any case, give it a try in your favorite soup, stew, chili or other recipe calling for celery. Besides celery we have beans, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, kale, chard and tomatillos.
No fruit, cheese, meat, seafood or eggs this week.
Flowers are slowing down but we will keep making bouquets until we just don’t have enough. You may notice a decrease in the size of the bouquets though.
Coffee comes on Monday.
I think that is all for now. Feel free to contact me for all the usual issues (e.g. jokes, brain teasers, etc.)