We have our first frost possibility night. If it does frost that will mean the end of a few things on the farm: flowers, peppers, eggplant, swiss chard (depending on how cold it really gets). The crew spent some of the afternoon covering some crops that we want to make sure make it through the cold or continue to grow through the cold weather. It seems to me that in year’s past there has been less to do, but that can’t be true, perhaps it’s just that we still have much produce to harvest we’re spending more time harvesting than in year’s past.
After this week there will be two more CSA weeks. We’re feeling like it’s been an exceptional season in almost every aspect, including the weekly boxes. We’d like to solicit any feedback you may have: too much or too little of some thing that you especially like, that sort of thing. If you have any thoughts about how this season went please take a moment to let us know.
As you will hear from Nick, we made the sorghum molasses on Monday. If we do say so ourselves, it’s the best batch ever. It hasn’t been bottled yet, but you will all get some in one of the last two boxes.
It looks like next week will be the week to plant the garlic and onions. It’s a fun job, one which can always use a few extra hands, keep that in mind if you still have work days to complete or just want to see how it’s done.
We’ve heard that there are some of you that seem to have a lot of onions that you haven’t gotten through. Well the great thing about onions is that they store fairly well. Simply keep them in a cool, dry location and they should last a couple of months. The reds will last the longest, so use the white and yellows first.
Nick’s Corner
As I’ve said the past few weeks Fall is here. No more subtle hints that Fall is on its way. This year is the third year that we have gone to Andy and Cathy Bennet’s place up in the Grapevine Valley, near Marshall. Our primary objective: Process our sorghum from start to finish in one day. From an intern perspective this place is downright cool. Almost everything they do at Double Tree Farm is done via horse power. From moving things around the farm to processing sorghum, the team of horses at Double Tree do it all.
The process of making sorghum molasses takes some time. Alex and I arrived at the Bennet’s place around 7:30am and Andy brought out the first of three horses we would use to grind the cane. The cane is first fed through a mill where it is pressed flat and all of the juice is squeezed out. The cane juice which is bright green is gravity fed down the hill in a tube where it was contained in two 55 gallon barrels.
Let me stop here and say that the cane juice is SUPER DELICIOUS. We all had a sip or two and decided that it was indeed yummy. Our final juice total was around 105 gallons. This juice was placed in a large 4 foot by 8 foot pan which was over a raging fire where we cooked the juice for around 5-6 hours. As the juice was boiled foam was removed to leave the cleaner cane juice. Out of the 105 gallons of pure cane juice we probably made around 15 gallons of molasses. It was an amazing to be a part of the process. The molasses this year is quite lighter in color and thicker in viscosity than last year’s batch. It was a nice change of pace to have something like making molasses and to break the day to day work here on the farm.