Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week's CSA box has greens, baby carrots, turnips and radishes, winter tomatoes, potatoes, squash, onions, garlic, and cabbage.

Field Notes.  Well, winter seems to be here.  It was a long, warm, wet fall with lots of opportunity to do things out of doors.  I am getting the last of the roots in the root cellar.

People often ask what we do after the season '
"ends" and I have to laugh!  There is still planting, and harvest.  I have been doing the bookkeeping and now I move on to seed orders.  I want to get this done as the organic seed often runs out, but I also want to hold off as I don't want to get old seed that doesn't germinate!   We are doing more open pollinated varieties and saving seed as seed prices go up and seed germination goes down!  

Ken has been making compost, potting soil, moving animals to their winter quarters, cleaning out sheds and working on new designs for winter seed germination and plant growth.  During our less sunny winter last year we had really slow growth for our salad mixes and Ken is working on a solution!

This is also the time of year we assess how last season worked and decide where we want to make changes to improve.  We welcome input.

From the Kitchen.  With cooler weather I do more baking and roasting and soups and stews.  When I get our pork from the meat locker I put the summer cuts in the bottom and the soup bones and roasts on top of the freezer.  I did a shank with beans, onions and garlic with some canned tomato juice to go with squash and cornbread.  Ken has baked squash and made some squash soup.  I made some squash cookies with raisins and dates from Jane Broady's Good Food Cookbook.  

Now that organic lemons are in season I have been making jam with our fruit: raspberry, strawberry and plum.  

'Til December 16th, Judith and Ken