Hi Friends,
Hi Friends,
Hi Friends! So glad to be back and about. Farmer Phil and Farmer Don were out and about today, visiting and celebrating our market friends and site hosts, in and around the Dancing Hen Farm Community. We were able to say hi to Gary and our friends at the Back Mountain Memorial Library, and let them know after a one year break we will be back to market for the 2022 season. Really happy to see and say hi to our friends at the Library. On to Verve Vertu, just missed Gwen, but enjoyed saying hi to our friends there and dropping off some eggs for all to enjoy. Seeing and saying to hi to Corrine, over at Balance Yoga, is always a feel support visit, and being able to share our harvest in such a healthy, positive energy environment is rewarding. Up in Mountain Top we stopped at the Crestwood Pharmacy to say hi and thank our friends up there for somewhere nearing five years of farm support as our local drop site for our friends up on the mountain. Over to Bloomsburg with a stop at Bloom Naturally, and a thank you there for many, many years of support. What a nice, friendly environment they share with our friend Mike, and the group at RT 11.
2022 Farm update
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".
Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!
We do hope that all our CSA members have been enjoying their boxes. The boxes delivered this week are Week 13 and Week 13 is an egg week.
So, first let me apologize for being so lax in getting newsletters out this season. I could come up with some real excuses, like hospitalizations, medication making me tired, and what not. But in reality it is simply because I am a self proclaimed Procrastination Queen. I can say I will try to be better as we draw the 2021 season to a close, but only the weeks will tell if I continue wearing my Queen crown or not.
After the remains of Hurricane Ida tore through the area, didn't we had some beautiful weather. Not to make light of the destruction from rising flood waters and tornados, but I truly felt like fall had arrived. Clear sunny days and cool nights! I kept telling Farmer Don it looked and felt like fall. I love fall, so this message was delivered with a bit smile on my face! Farmer Don would patiently point out to me that it was not fall yet, as the trees were still green. I would just as patiently remind him that we usually get our first light frost in September and look how short the days are becoming. I mean the golden rod has been turning fallow fields into blazes of yellow and today, while running errands, I saw trees turning a brilliant red. Only a few trees, but red none the less! Of course recently it has been a little hot and sticky, but trust me fall is just around the corner.
So on farm we are getting ready for fall as well. Winter squash is being harvested. Tomatoes and summer squash harvests are coming to an end. We have planted some cooler season fall crops, including arugula, radishes and another rotation of Asian greens. Look for greens to come back with a flourish soon, as the kale and chard are coming along beautifully. Our lettuce has also enjoyed the slightly cooler temperatures and should be available in both loose leaf heads as well as some salad mix
I want to take a bit of written space now for my annual thank you newsletter. A huge thank you to all of you, our members, friends and family of the farm. Without your continued support, we would be unable to do what we are doing, growing food sustainably here on a rocky hillside in north central PA. I want to specifically thank Farmer Phil. As many of you know, Farmer Phil has been with us since year one. Phil heads up our pack house, keeping busy weighing and portioning for csa boxes. He also is our delivery assistant, helping our driver know where to go and helping with carrying boxes. Speaking of deliveries, another huge thank you to Farmer John. John has his own farm and has been helping us this year with Wednesday's deliveries. I also want to thank our neighbor Paul for his help during the season making certain greenhouses stayed watered, seeding schedules were maintained and entertaining Dilly. We also would be unable to do this without the help of our delivery site hosts. Thanks to the staff at Crestwood Pharmacy, Corrine and the staff at Balance Yoga, the staff at Bloom Naturally and Gwen and all the artists at Verve Vertu Artist Studio. And last, but not least, a huge thank you to Farmers Joyce and Mike. Joyce and Mike also happen to be Farmer Phil's parents. They help out the farm in too numerous ways to list, but include harvest, supplementing our production, helping me with medical appointments and helping to assure Dilly is getting walks and play time when necessary. If you see any of these folks out and about, please take a moment to say thank you.
The kitchens, ours and Farmers Joyce and Mike's, have been really busy this year with canning and preserving. Early on Joyce and I canned peaches and Joyce and Mike have been kind enough to freeze beans, corn and peppers for me. In the mean time they have been busy making pickles, peach preserves and salsas. This year Farmer Don is making his presence known in the preserving kitchen. He and I have canned tomatoes and 2 rotations of salsa (a hotter and milder version). Still this season, we have plans for applesauce and tomato sauce. I have to say it has been a productive preserving season this year! As I have said before, I love to can and preserve food in general, so it makes me feel good to be back in the canning game!
Also in the kitchen, I have been waiting patiently for cooler weather for soup and stew season to start. I do love to cook and eat soups and stews. I am waiting patiently to use one of remaining stew hens to make a nice pot of chicken corn soup and I am hoping to use some of our cabbage to make an unstuffed cabbage soup. I love stuffed cabbage, but find I don't have the patience for all the steps involved in stuffed cabbage. Several years ago I found a recipe for a casserole or soup for unstuffed cabbage and I was hooked!
And then there was Dilly. What can I say about Dillburger. She is starting to live up to her sister Rosie's title of Calamity Rose. Most recently Dill has come up lame with one of her back legs. We have had her to the vet twice to be checked and of course as soon as she walks into the vet's office you can't even tell which leg is the problem one! And nothing has been found that could be causing the limping. She has also had a slight run in with a skunk. Somehow she seems to have been sprayed on her belly? We are thinking she was not the target of the spray and maybe walked through some high grass with the skunk spray on it. But, in all honesty, only Dilly and the skunk know for sure! She also had a not so slight run in with a porcupine! As she nursed a sore muzzle and nose, I am hoping she learned her lesson with porcupines and will stay clear of them. Oh yeah, and clear of the skunks, as well!
I will end here with a "be safe, be well and enjoy those veggies"
Until next week! (well, I guess I should be honest and say until next newsletter)
Greetings from Dancing Hen Farm!
