I hope that all of you had a great Thanksgiving! Today, I am leaving the farm a bit early to travel to Springhill for our last Thanksgiving meal. It's raining, and we wrapped up our outside work, so I wanted to touch base with y'all about the Winter season, and give you an update on the farm. We have several holiday market the first two weeks of December, so check our social media for when and where we will be jammin'!
Farm Stand
I added a good many vegetables for the farm stand. Of course we have lots of leafy greens and the mesclun mix is especially good this week. The pink daikons have been such a wonderful addition to our line-up. We should have more watermelon radishes and the winter carrots in a few weeks, just in time for the share season to kick off. The salad turnips are one of our favorite adds when grated on a salad, plus we love roasting them in the oven. They are the sweetest turnips around!
The early cool temps have added a good amount of sweetness to the greens and everything is tasting so good!
There are a lot of small-batch jam options on the farm stand as well! We harvested more fruit than ever this year. The farm kitchen has been like a factory. Last weekend from Friday-Sunday I made 500 jars for the holidays. The farm stand is going to be where you can get the best price on any of our jams. We have over 30 flavors available on currentfarms.com so if you want a few of the more eclectic flavors, you can browse all that is available.
Winter Shares
We had some abnormally early cold temps. I delayed the start of the new season, because I was unsure if our later plantings to be harvested in Jan/Feb would make it. Thankfully, everything is looking good going forward. The next season should start either the second or third week of December, depending on the Harvie processing time for the season set up. You should get an email at the later end of next week with more details about the exact sign up date.
There will be a few new pick up locations like Tonore's Wine Cellar, LA Tech in Ruston, plus we will be back at the Ruston Farmer's Market on Saturdays, so that pick up spot is back this season. We are keeping all of the old pick up locations, however, we did alter a few of the days and times. All pick ups and deliveries will be on Fridays now.
Farm Update
If you remember, back in April we ordered $5,000 worth of implements for the BCS tractor. We waiting for nearly six months for all of the parts to finally arrive. Since the end of last season, we have been busy transforming our farm. We had to sacrifice a lot of planting diversity this season, because the last of our new equipment didn't arrive until a few weeks ago. Water is a big problem in the winter, and without the rotary plow to create the walk-ways, there were several field blocks we could not plant this season. The cost of erosion and crop failure due to water just didn't make it worth rolling the dice for us. It seemed a better idea to wait, prep the bed properly, cover crop and waiting until the spring to plant in the newly formed beds. For years, we used compost to add 3-6 inches in height to our beds every year. Once we expanded our farm, that process quickly became too labor intensive and expensive. We have years of compost build up in our walk-ways between rows. The rotary plow moves all the soil from that path, and slings it on the garden bed to the right. At the same time of creating the pathway, we can also build the row up 3-6 inches. We have plowed every field block but one with this new machine. Next Spring is surely to be one of the best growing seasons we have ever had. After the past three years, it seems like the puzzle pieces are finally fitting together.
