Greetings
from Dancing Hen Farm!
Welcome to
Week 11 of our CSA. Week 11 boxes were
delivered today, Wednesday, and, is an egg week.
Attention
Chicken Share members. Next week, will
be a chicken week. Chicken will be delivered
with our CSA box deliveries on Wednesday, September 4th. Please remember to check for a cooler at your
pick up site with your chicken share inside.
Please leave the cooler at your pick up site.
Haven't
these recent cooler temperatures been beautiful! And can you believe this weekend is already
Labor Day and that most schools have already started for the year. We have a family picnic planned for Sunday,
so we are hoping the predicted showers hold off until the evening. Looking at the long range weather forecast,
it looks as though cooler temperatures are here for awhile. Cooler temperatures are good for the people
and animals at Dancing Hen Farm, but not good for some of our crops. These cooler temperatures tend to bring
disease to our tomatoes and slow the growth of most of our other heat loving
crops.
Speaking of
crops and a change in the air. A change
is on its way for our harvest. Cucumbers
and corn are over for the year. We will
do our best to get as many tomatoes out as possible. Greens are in the ground and we are awaiting
them to size up for harvest. Our collard
green planting has done well this year, although the planting is small. Peppers are starting to be harvest. We have our fingers crossed a late planting
of summer squash will produce, but only time will tell. Next week we will begin to make winter squash
varieties available. Fall cabbage is
looking good. We are hoping our last
planting of beans will reach maturity before the end of the growing season.
It is also
the time of year to talk about pastured pork.
This year's pastured pork will be available the end of October or the
beginning of November. Now is the time
to reserve your pork for the freezer. We
sell both half and whole pigs. The meat
is processed in a USDA inspected facility and comes wrapped and frozen, ready
for your freezer. We only raise a small
number of pigs and only a portion of those raised are available as freezer
meat. The remaining meat is sold by the
piece through our buying club and at farmers markets we attend. If you would like to reserve pork this year
or have questions, please contact us at the farm.
The kitchen
was busy again this week with canning and preserving. On Saturday, I made a large batch of pesto to freeze.
To freeze, I put the pesto in small jars and top them with a bit of olive oil.
This pesto will be a real treat this winter! Then on Sunday and Monday, my sister and I
made and canned tomato sauce. Sunday we
ran the tomatoes through the food mill to extract the juice and some pulp. I cooked the sauce down Sunday night and then
on Monday we re-heated the sauce and filled the canners for processing. We were excited to have all jars seal! We are still hoping to can some applesauce a
bit later in the fall. I may also try to
can at least one batch of slicing tomatoes, depending on how the tomatoes hold
up to this cooler weather.
Once again,
it seems to be getting late. I still have
supper dishes to clean up, so I will end here, in Farmer Don's words: "be
safe, be well and enjoy those veggies".
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