Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!
CSA members: The boxes you received Wednesday, 10/20/2021,
was our last delivery of the 2021 CSA season.
This week was not an egg week.
Farmers Don Phil will be making the rounds to our drop sites in the next
few weeks to pick up share boxes, so please leave (or return) you box to your
drop site. We hope everyone enjoyed the
2021 CSA. THANK YOU to all our CSA
members for trusting us to deliver farm fresh, in season, vegetables to you.
The weather, what can we say about the weather so far this fall. I feel we have had our share of clouds, but this week we had some beautiful fall days - lots of sun, a light breeze, lower humidity and not a cloud in the sky. We have had few cooler days and nights, but we still have not had a frost here on farm. Some areas have seen frost and we were worried the other night. This resulted in Farmer Don out with his headlamp trying to harvest any temperature sensitive crops. But no frost here. That night we bottomed out at 42.
With this warmer weather, our fields look pretty good and we still have some harvestable crops to be picked. Our collard greens are probably the best we have ever grown and our Swiss chard is coming on beautifully again. In fact all of greens are looking great and we will be able to harvest and store some other crops, such as peppers and eggplants, before we do get a frost. On a side note, greens tend to get sweeter as the temperatures get cooler. So fall is the perfect season to pull out those recipes for kale, collards, Asian greens or chard.
Since we still have crops to harvest, we are finalizing plans for a fall and early winter buying club. The details are still being worked out, so please watch your email for buying club information.
I must say this has been a good growing season for us. We felt the CSA boxes looked good going out and although we dealt with our usual invasion by weeds, deer and groundhogs, our crops fared quite well this year. Farmer Don and I, for the most part, are on the mend, feeling healthier and stronger. By reducing our CSA numbers and pulling out of markets, we accomplished one goal for the 2021 season. This goal was to bring the stress level on farm down and have some time to spend enjoying life and the farm. We have had a nice growing season. We have both felt more relaxed and have been able to spend more time together, including time to create meals from our veggies, enjoying the back porch and reviving our decades old ongoing Scrabble challenge.
Our kitchen has been quite busy this year. I am happy to say as the summer moved along, my energy has increased and I have been doing more cooking and canning. Farmer Don and Farmer Phil's Mom Joyce are huge cheerleaders for my "take back the kitchen" campaign. Our pantry is filled to overflowing with cans of preserved veggies and thanks to Joyce I have green beans, peppers and corn in the freezer. Most recently eggplant has been the chosen ingredient in our kitchen. We have made eggplant parmesan, eggplant lasagna, eggplant gratin, eggplant stew, eggplant soup; I think you get the idea! Lots of eggplant to be used. I still have some in storage and may try to bread and bake them and then freeze them for later use in parmesan or lasagna. With cooler temperatures coming on we will shift into greens mode. I need to find a good recipe for collards. I have to confess these are not my favorite greens. With our collards being so beautiful (and healthy!), they are, however, calling my name and I need to start cooking with them more.
Of course, what would a newsletter be without an update on Dilly. Dilly has had a bit of a rough summer. She was recently diagnosed with Lyme disease. This explains her intermittent limping and general joint stiffness! She is now on medication and doing much better, although she still seems to have some occasional stiffness in her back and hind legs. However, despite Lyme disease Dilly is still Silly Dilly. She still loves coffee and her bouncy balls. She also still enjoys helping us with the newspaper. The other day, while I was on the phone with the doctor, she decided to be helpful and fetch the newspaper for me. However, the paper never made it off the patio, where she made a nice pile of shredded newsprint. The front page and some of the ads were shredded completely, but Farmer Don was happy that the Sport's page remained mostly intact.
I want to again, take this opportunity to thank everyone for your continued support. As I said above, this has been a nice growing season for Dancing Hen Farm. Farmer Don and I have been more relaxed and I think this has been evident in the quality of crops we were able to distribute this season. So, thanks to our farm family, our community. And Thank You for reading my newsletters.
Did you know we have a social
media presence? We have a facebook page
and a blog. You can always find farm
pictures and information at these sites.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Farm/Dancing-Hen-Farm-111155465564952/
and our blog
http://dancinghenfarmcsa.blogspot.com/
Please remember to watch your
email for buying club announcements and ongoing farm news.
In closing, the words of farmer Don, "be safe, be well and enjoy those veggies".
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