Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm! Welcome to Week 10 of our Summer season
CSA. Hopefully all our members are
enjoying their week 10 boxes. Week 10 is
not an egg week. Week 10 is a chicken
week.
Did everyone get a chance to experience the eclipse this
week? Quite the media hype and such
crowds of people traveling to see darkness fall during the day! I have to admit, I would have loved to
experience the darkness! On farm, we
didn't get the fancy glasses, and obviously we didn't experience darkness, but
we still were able to view the event.
Thanks for farm volunteer/helper Stacy and her beautiful eclipse viewing
box, we were able to watch the moon move partly over the sun.
WOW! That is all I
can say about the upcoming weather. The humidity
and, what seemed to us like daily rain showers, is being replaced by sunny mild
days and cool nights. This dry stretch
will be very welcome after such a wet growing season for us. However, the weather forecast just showed
some predicted overnight temperatures in the upper 40's. Soon we will be saying the dreaded
"f" word. Frost! Generally, here on farm, we get some light
frosts in September, and a killing frost in October.
So, what does all this talk of frost mean to the farm and
our crops. The killing frost will
generally mean our true summer crops will come to an end. These crops include, tomatoes, summer squash
and beans. We will harvest what we can of
these crops right before the frost to save what harvest we can. However many of our crops actually improve
with the cooler weather. Greens, both
salad and cooking, love cooler weather. Their
growth will slow, but with some minimal row covers greens will survive some
fairly low temperatures. As the
temperatures cool, kale will become ever so sweet and chard will deepen in
color. Lettuce will also become sweeter
and more tender. And yes, the animals
will also enjoy the coming cool mornings.
Cool mornings is when I really miss having cows and horses on farm. Watching a horse or cow, run and buck through
a frosted pasture, is sure to bring a smile to my face. But, it is also fun to watch Rosie and Shady
run around in the frost or watch the pigs snort and charge around their
field. The cool weather will even have
the chickens more active and foraging more.
Ohhh! All this talk of frost and here it is August and we
are in the middle of an explosion of summer crop harvest! There are still lots of crops growing in our
fields and lots of harvests still to be done.
It is officially tomato season on farm!
Lots and lots of tomatoes are being harvested and they should continue
for quite a few weeks to come. Farmer
Don has started some tomato tastings at market and it seems everyone has a
different favorite. I think the
heirlooms, obviously, have the best flavors and I am still amazed at the
differences in taste from variety to variety.
And who can deny that sungolds are a universal favorite. Looking to do some tomato tasting, stop by
one of our markets and ask Farmer Don for a sample. We should have beans available for quite a
few weeks, as our plantings are finally really starting to produce. Lettuce and salad mix should become readily
available again and kale and chard will continue. We have an arugula planting which has
germinated and we are awaiting it to size up and hopefully not be devoured by
bugs! Asian greens are in the ground and
will become available in the upcoming weeks.
We also have another planting of summer squash and cucumbers which are
looking really good and we should be harvesting from these in the upcoming
weeks.
We are busy planting and preparing for this year's
Fall/Extended season CSA. To assure
crops are available, we are planting our greenhouse and building mini
greenhouses in our fields to protect plants for the upcoming cool temperatures. Storage crops; potatoes, winter squash, sweet
potatoes and carrots, will be harvested and made available as well. We already have quite a number of members
signed up for this Extended Season.
Thank you to everyone who has signed up!
We do have some memberships available.
Please remember, as is always the case, we hold your membership when we
receive your payment. We do anticipate limiting the number of membership for
this part of our CSA.
The kitchen was busy this past weekend with tomato
processing. It was tomato sauce
weekend! 50 pounds of Roma tomatoes were
processed and cooked down to 20 pints of canned sauce. Processing tomatoes can make a quick mess of
the kitchen, but the ping of sealing jars somehow makes the mess seem
unimportant. And 20 pints of sauce cooling
on my kitchen table is a beautiful sight, even if I am still wiping tomato
splatter off my wall! The cool, wet
summer has me a bit behind in canning as crops have taken their time in
ripening. My plans for this year's
preserving is to still can some tomatoes and possibly another batch of
sauce. In the upcoming weeks I will also
freeze some green beans and hopefully some cooking greens. Not sure I will get much else "put
up" this year, only harvest and time will tell. I do love preserving! I find spending a day putting food away for
the winter months extremely satisfying and it brings back such fond memories of
my childhood and many summertime hours spent with my Mother, Grandmother and
sisters canning, pickling and freezing.
This weekend looks like a beautiful weekend for market! If you haven't visited one of the local
farmers markets, I would encourage you to do so. On Saturdays Farmer Don is at the Back
Mountain Library Market in Dallas and on Sundays he is at the Mountain Top
Farmers Market at the Crestwood High School. If you are at one of these markets, please
stop by our table and say hello and ask to sample some tomatoes. We really love to meet and connect with our
members and markets allow us that opportunity.
So, the sun is up now, the dogs are patiently, ok not
patiently, waiting for their breakfast.
Time to get off the computer and get on to the chores of the day.
Until next week......
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