Baby spinach getting close to harvest!
Vanessa cultivating
Drea spraying Bt on the swiss chard. Bt is a bacteria that causes caterpillars to stop eating, and then die. We don’t like caterpillars on our greens.
As many of you may have heard the ASAP Farm Tour has been cancelled due to the risk of spreading a highly deadly poultry disease (deadly to poultry, that is).
It hasn’t rained for weeks out here! The ground is DRY! And just in time, our irrigation pump has continued to break down every time I start it up. It’s been a very frustrating week for me. Of course the problem we’re having with the system no one has ever heard of that happening before. We seem to be always blessed with unique and never before seen problems. But, as farmers, we are problem solvers and the plants must have some water. We pulled our very old pump out of the weeds, fixed it up a bit, took a few pieces off of the new pump system so the old pump could connect to the new system, borrowed a PTO shaft from one of the implements, hooked it all up and WATER! to all the plants.Vanessa and I were quite pleased with ourselves. It was a rather daunting job, which took both of us to do. We needed all the positive thinking, motivation, and muscle to figure it out and not give up.
Other than the water crisis, we’ve continued to plant more fall vegetables over the past week. There’s more going in this morning, but we’re getting close to the very end. Pretty soon it will just be the strawberries and onions and garlic to be planted. Our first frost date here in the mountains is October 15th, though last year we had a killing frost on Oct. 6th. So we have to get everything in and growing before the cold weather slowing the plants’ growth way down. There’s still some weeding to do, but we’re seeing different weeds now than in the summer months. The chickweed and gallensoga are both back. They like cooler soil temperatures. We’ll continue to clean the fields up, but the winter cover crops will go in in less than two weeks, putting much of the farm to bed for the winter.
The boxes we use for the CSA shares are waxed and are not recyclable, but we do reuse them. So PLEASE remember to BRING THEM BACK next week.
Ideas for Cooking
“People who love to eat are always the best people” Julia Child
Last year, organic food sales in the U.S. totaled $36 billion. More than half of our households are customers. For good or bad, the large food corporations are jumping in the market and it is estimated that they produce a stunning 70 percent of the items in an organic oriented store. General Mills owns Annie’s, Muir Glen and Cascadian. White Wave has Horizon and Silk soymilk. Kellogg owns Kashi and Bear Naked. The list goes on and on. Note that many of these giants don’t identify themselves as owners. Some, like General Mills are funding efforts to promote GMO. If this is a concern to you, it pays to find out who is providing your food in case you don’t want to fund pro-GMO efforts. Think local.
Jalapeno Pepper Poppers!
Cut the top off the pepper and clean out all the insides. Don’t leave any seeds or they will be very hot! Stuff the pepper with cream cheese. Wrap the pepper with uncooked bacon, using a toothpick to hold in place (optional). Either bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or grill them. Enjoy. Vanessa ate 6 of them yesterday. Beware they are good.More recipes for this week: