beautiful sunny Fall days

The last few weeks have been extraordinarily beautiful; mostly sunny days with cold evenings. The leaves on the trees are their amazing Fall colours, and it is hard to stay inside. Perfect days for doing a lot of clean up at the various properties; removing spent warm weather crops, planting rye and clover.

Below is a picture of the rye/legume mix coming in next to the brussels sprouts. These brussels sprouts plants are the same ones that were struggling a couple of months ago when they were inundated with flea beatles - look at them now, talk about a come back!

legume mix and brussels sprouts

Next year I will be expanding the business. Steve at the farm has kindly offered me more land! This new patch is right next to my existing area (see below). Steve grew potatoes on this area this year and has recently put rye on it. Combined, the area I will be working on the farm next year is approximately 9,400 square feet. Very exciting!

the new area at the farm that I will be using next year

One of the bigger projects I worked on recently was clearing out the hoophouse at the farm (it was full of tomatoes and basil (and weeds!) and then adding compost to the soil. I then planted some different types of lettuce, radicchio and mustard greens into the beds. These will be covered with remay (floating row cover). With the double protection of the plastic hoophouse and the remay I'm hoping that the greens will survive well into the Winter. My Grand Experiment!

the hoophouse at the farm cleaned out and replanted

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Fall harvesting

Today is week #19 of my csa main season! I can't believe there is only one more week to go, and that I did it. What a great feeling!! Amazing what you can achieve with a dream and hard work, and support from a few key people. Next year will be very exciting; I'm planning on expanding the csa and being prepared for the farmer's market (this year it was an after thought) - maybe I'll make some money! :o)

I would like to introduce some of my wonderful csa customers. These people committed to a brand new venture based on my word alone; I had no previous experience or reputation to show them - that is a huge leap of faith and I'm extremely grateful for their support.

Sally

Karen

Nick

Matt

It is amazing what I am still producing from the gardens. Below are some pics of the veggies at the pick up last week:

Sweet peppers and 'fairtytale' eggplants

Pole beans and broccoli sprouts.

Salad mix containing lettuces, mizuna and arugula.

Rainbow chard.

I've been busy lately preparing all the beds for Winter. The beds that aren't being used have been weeded and seeded with rye and clover. A few beds had manure added to them and I've planted garlic in them. The cloves I planted came from the garlic I grew this year at Lee Ann's house. It is fabulous! Huge, beautiful cloves. Paul hates to see them put in to the ground - he wants to cook with them!

I've also started cleaning out the hoophouse at the farm, removing old basil and tomato plants. I'm going to add some compost to the soil and then start some Winter greens in there. It will be interesting to see how they do. I'm planning on putting row cover over them too, so with the double protection of the plastic and row cover they have a fighting chance perhaps. I do wish I had put the hoophouse in a different location though. I'm finding now that the sun is lower in the sky there is a good portion of the day when the hoophouse is in shade because the sun is behind a large tree. I'm not going to move the hoophouse now though, maybe in the Spring if the Winter greens don't work out as well as I hope.

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