Hello, and good morning!
Rolling up to Hawkins Farm this week has been a real treat. The final stretch of September has been nothing but fair from a weather standpoint, with days marked with morning fog, gentle winds, dew drops that wet your boots straight away, and a temperature tempting you to sweater up. You could say that farming is… pretty cool this time of year.
Maybe I can speak for everyone on the farm when I say that I’m a little bit dinged up, but at least it’s not summer! Woohoo! I think the swelter is past, folks. It’s staying calm and cool, making those Monday and Tuesday harvest days actually something to look forward to on a Sunday evening. I’m slowing down slightly, just enough to take a step back and assess the damage. I need new glasses asap, I don’t think I’m going to lose that second fingernail, and it’s time to duct tape my boots so they last the remainder of the season.
For those of you who are tuning in for the first time, or the first time in a while: My name is Alex. I’m one of the farmhands on Hawkins Farm this season, and the weekly "Farm Happenings" this year has sort of been a combination of my experience as a first year farmer, necessary farm related updates, and a very brief recollection of this past week's weather.
Speaking of the remainder of the season: We have eight weeks left, folks! Time to stock up on stuff! Or just mentally prepare yourself to wonder what’s missing on your Thursday, because, come Thanksgiving, your CSA delivery opportunities will drop from weekly to monthly.
This week we harvested another hundred plus bell and bull's horn peppers, beautiful bok choy, colorful nova lettuce mix, and lots and lots and lots of carrots. Spinach was hand harvested and is looking really nice and green. Just like the cucumbers and the arugula. Eggplant is still coming in, tinier and tinier by the week, whereas the tiny scallions you saw this and last week will continue to get bigger and bigger. Woohoo!
Last week we began to harvest fresh sweetheart cabbage from the ground, and this week we were chucking it! Not shucked, chucked. That’s right, you can tell your friends that you are purchasing local “chucked” cabbage: cabbage that was thrown from one farmer to the other. In an effort to save ourselves the trouble of lugging bins filled with ten to twelve cabbages, Kimberly and Erin just tossed their harvested cabbage at me, where I would catch it and place it in the cart so that we could sort it all at once later on. Just some good old fashioned teamwork if you ask me.
With October coming in crispy, the fall decorations are spreading like wildfire. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the amount of squashes, gourds, and pumpkins people can put on their porches and countertops, so at least get your squash fix through the CSA! RiverRidge Farm has been providing a great selection of acorn, delicata, spaghetti, butternut, and honeynut squash to the pack for a couple of weeks now. I have a cute honeynut squash on my counter that I’m going to turn into squash soup today.
Hey, we’ve got all sorts of new birds! Farmer Jeff wrote up a turkey memo a couple of weeks ago that you should check out so that you don’t miss out on turkey time. All I’ll say is that their gobbles have been a very funny layer to add to a normal day on Hawkins Farm. Gobble gobble!
Happy Saturday
-Alex
