With another beautiful week behind us, we feel like we’re making progress on putting the farm to bed. But there is a lot still going on and lots of picking available. The lettuces are beautiful, the spinach easy to pick, turnips, kohlrabi, carrots and a few potatoes are available for roasting.
Potatoes have not fared well for us this year. The sweet potatoes are skinny and small. I’ll probably save mine for breakfasts. Wash, slice, microwave, and add a bit of butter and cinnamon. It’s a yummy healthy breakfast that lasts me until lunch.
A whole bed of broccoli is showing signs of heading. This broccoli will freeze well, unlike the spring broccoli. And the Brussels sprouts are finally showing some sign of enlarging. Some crops are just plain better with cool, even frosty, weather. Parsnips, Brussels sprouts, spinach, 3 crops that are often harvested too soon and don’t fully develop their sugars until “vernalization” (responding to the cold).
We have some kale and spinach seedlings ready to be covered. One is winterbor kale, the other a winter–hardy spinach. Some will go into the hoop house, some in the field will be covered in December hopefully for picking early spring. We start craving nutritious greens earlier each year.
Please pardon our mess. The barn-to-machine shed project has begun. If it looks like we have a lot of stuff, you should see what we got rid of. The shed looks a whole lot bigger already. And we shouldn’t have to wait for a thaw to move equipment in the spring. We pondered getting a new building, but the old location was perfect, the poles still solid and the roof still “good enough”. So, we begin.
Ben has been cover cropping even more. If you come out in another month, the place will be a sea of green – again. Just fertility waiting to be incorporated in the spring. It beats chemicals.
Please keep coming out and picking. The chickens are still laying and the refrigerator has lots of “cackleberries”. Honey is still on the shelf in the garage. The season is not yet over!