Greetings from the Farm! And Happy Halloween! Griffin is dressing up as a ninja and Maggie is going to be a skeleton. We plan to go down the road a little bit to trick or treat in a friends a neighborhood with lots of houses close together as we live back in the woods and don't have a neighborhood. Yesterday we went to the Glade Valley Pumpkin Patch on Liberty Road. After driving right past it everyday for several years, we decided to finally check it out. It was perfect for us. Very laid back, inexpensive, not crowded, and lots of activities. Two of the activities that most places don't have were a corn shooter and a pumpkin cannon. I had always wanted to shoot a pumpkin out of cannon and finally made that happen! All the activities were included in the $10 ticket price, and we ended up hanging out there for about 4 hours. Be sure to check them out next season!
The weather is forecast to have a frost this week. Contrary to what you might think, this will actually be good for the cool season crops. All of the greens will easily survive light frosts and actually become sweeter and sweeter. The plants build up sugars to protect their cells from rupturing in the cold. The frost will also help to rid of insects and disease pressure. Disease has been pretty bad this fall, causing two plantings of broccoli and cauliflower to fail. The Tuscan Kale has it very badly, and there is also lots of diseased leaves in the other bunching greens. The greens take us much longer to harvest when they have blemishes and we strive to only include the near perfect ones for your share. It should come back nicely after a few cold snaps knock the disease back. We will be harvesting all of the eggplant tomorrow before the cold comes, as it will be killed by Jack Frost!
We had a great response to the bread offering last week and will keep it on the menu for the remainder of the season. We are offering the Classic County again this week. Please be sure to add some on-it is really good! We also restocked on coffee, ground beef, and have extra EGGS from Whispering Breeze for you this week.
Looking forward to shorter days, colder weather, and continued eating with seasons. As always, thank you so much for all of your support. It means the world to us!
Be Healthy. Be Happy.
Farmer Ben and the crew at PHP
