What's new at the Farm? 10/20/10

Harvesting continues yet another week, but at least we're done with the tomatoes. Picking tomatoes provides us with plenty of work from mid August through September, an otherwise slow time of year. Not that it's ever really slow around here, but some time periods aren't quite as busy as others. We're processing squash and pumpkins this week with two under our belt already. We'll do another squash and a small cucumber before this week is over.

We've yet to have a hard frost but have had several light frosts. We brought the squash in last week as shown below:

This is about half of what we brought in; the rest is in the warehouse. The squash looks much better in here than it would in the field.

Another picture of the farm is below:

This shows the pumpkin workshop in field 9 and the Brussels sprouts trial in the foreground. To the right of the Brussels sprouts is the parsley trial. The light green in the left and left center is a cover crop of oats and brassicas we planted where the melon and watermelon trials were. We try to get as many crops tilled in as soon as we're done with them to get some cover crop planted before cold weather sets in. Our last planting was of winter rye last week; we'll see if it does anything this fall. My preference is to seed cover crops by mid September so they get appreciable growth before winter.

The Brussels sprouts will be harvested later in the season after a hard frost or two. Frost generally sweetens the sprouts, otherwise they can be bitter. They can be left in the field very late in the season. I usually don't harvest mine until Thanksgiving weekend. Same goes for rutabagas. There is no comparison between fresh Brussels sprouts and rutabagas and those frozen boxed veggies in the supermarket.

The signs of the changing of the seasons continues. I saw my first large flocks of geese on Sunday whilst on one of my last fishing trips of the season; last because of the cool weather and the fish aren't cooperating. In a couple of months, we could be ice fishing so I'll do some projects around the house until then. Among the chores: get the wood in; clean up the flower beds; winterize the henhouses; and get the bird feeders out.

Until next week, enjoy the fall.
Brian