The last of the summer squash (bottom) surrenders to winter carrots, beets, and other crops that create shadows, ridge lines, mountains, and monsters — all of our own making.
Happy first-frost, farm friends. You may not have gotten it at your place, and even here in our little cold-settling deep pool of the valley-bottom you had to be paying attention to notice. When we stepped outside just before sun-up to go let out the hens and walk the dog, I immediately noticed the misty fog rolling off the canal, rising up from the grass of the edges of the north field, the familiar pattern. It made me look, with a little thrill of excitement, even though we hadn’t covered the basil or maybe closed up the flower tunnel early enough. And sure enough, bending to the grass in the orchard, I found dewdrops that were solid, scraped white off a blade of grass with my thumbnail, and looked up to see a touch of frost on the roof of the house. Over those next ten minutes before the sun cleared the Sapphire mountains, it spread and bloomed across the grass at my feet. Just barely a kiss of frost, not even settling in the field, just the cold pockets and the roof of the house. But still it felt like something, the start of a shift. First frost is sort of a floating holiday on the farm. The first killing-frost, the first deep freeze, all special days in their own way, though we are never quite sure what the celebration should be.
Harvesting the first two beds of potatoes with the tractor-mounted harvester was celebratory, as was digging another bed and a half of carrots to store for fall and winter. We celebrated the first frost with a warm sunny round of washing carrots, and more harvests rolled in all day: all the normal greens, carrots, beets, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, sweet peppers, hot peppers, tomatillos, potatoes, onions, basil, garlic, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, boc choi, fennel, eggplant, and more. There are just a few more items to grab if our headlamp batteries and our energy reserves hold out tonight (and certainly something I forgot to list here; rest assured the market trailer will be bursting at the seams again).
It was also a week of shifts and surprises from elements out of our control, and even less predictable than the weather. We learned just today from the market management that they have decided to do away with the “extended season” markets at the end of October meaning we actually have just 6 more Saturdays on Bedford, when we thought we had seven. Neither of us is on the market board this year, the decision has already happened, and this season we just don’t have the fight in us to protest. We understand their reasoning, especially given that some years it has just been us and a few other farms on those final weeks, but it’s still a shock when we planned out planting and harvesting for all the way through that final week of October. But don’t worry, we’ll set up at the farm on that final week, and work to entice you out because the food certainly will not be stopping early. Feedbag members, there’s plenty of food for you all the way through that last week of October! And yes, there will be winter memberships, though we’re still sorting out the details and signups are not yet live. Shifts within the farm include Noah still working out how to include creative work—from the aerial camera just back from crash repairs, to planning for film-making storytelling both on and off farm. It’s not an easy wrangle, from the struggle of hard-drive collapses to the mundane problem of not enough hours in the day for everything.
Two small farmers in a sea of greens: Sabrina and Mary bust out a serious hustle on one of our big harvest days. Here, they harvest both salad and arugula with custom harvsters powered by drills and SRF-designed and made carts that straddle our 30-inch permanent beds.
We also have a seismic shift in the size of the farm crew coming after next week, as two of our team (a couple) let us know that family on the other side of the country suffering some really difficult circumstances need their support and they’ll be cutting their season here short, leaving after next Friday. We understand this one too, and want people to take care of their people. But the crazy thing with farming is, no matter how good the reason, it doesn’t change the workload. Fall is always a wild beast even with a full crew, so cutting down by half means we’ll be hanging on the best we can, grateful for one new team member coming on board the final week of September and still looking for some extra hands for bulk harvests and fall field re-sets.
The farm is still there, in full force, the beautiful monster we created, something far beyond our control in many ways. Today, after the team wrapped up, I harvested well over my own body weight in sweet peppers while Noah tended to the hens. “Body-weight” harvests are another type of milestone on the farm, and the tsunami of sweet peppers is one thing I look forward to each year—even as I find myself fully overwhelmed when it takes four bucket-fulls to get through one 60 foot bed.
The farm seems big from the birds-eye view, even when it’s not all of it. Missing from this view are all of the Southwest crops, the mini blocks and flowers, all of the 600 laying hens, and some of the north field. All the headlands and pathways got a serious mow this week, so it’s a great time to come walk around your farm. If we could go back and show this photo to our ten-years-ago selves with our messy quarter acre and some dreams of a real farm, I don’t think we would believe was where we’d be now.
With all those peppers, it’s time, or long past time, to have everyone out for a pepper roasting. We’ve been short on the goals for farm-gatherings this year, but this is one we can’t miss. This Tuesday, during the farmstore hosted time (3:00-6:00 pm), stop on by to see the pepper roaster in action, buy a bulk batch of peppers, and even run them through the roasting drum yourself! Both the hot peppers (we’ll have plenty of anaheims, poblanos, jalapeños, and some pueblo chilies), and the sweets roast up to a magical suite of flavors, and freeze well for winter cooking (we top winter pizzas with roasted sweet peppers, puree them into soups, add them to frittatas, and fold roasted chilies into burritos and scrambled eggs). It’ll be a great time to take yourself on a walk around the farm if you haven’t before, and with all these bulk harvests, we’ll have options for big bags of carrots, beets, onions, etc as well as the peppers. We may be a little ragged around the edges, but it’s the time for big fall food. We hope you’ll join us for all the good eating. We’ll be at market tomorrow (Saturday) morning from 9-12:30 as usual and the farmstore is open all week too, with so much good food.
Gratefully your lightly-frosted farmers,
Mary and Noah