Happy Tuesday all,
It's the week of Thanksgiving and we are diving headfirst into the holiday season. Our winter crops are beginning to come into play, the days are shorter, the air is cooler and breezier and I'm enjoying all of it thoroughly. As the seasons change, we've begun to notice different pest and disease pressures as well. The deer are hungry for our crops it seems, so we have been staying vigilant about maintaining our deer fencing to protect vulnerable things like our greens and baby watermelons. Other pests we have been combatting are stinkbugs which seem particularly fond of our tomato crop (UGH!) and red leaf footed bugs who enjoy consuming our zucchini almost as much as we do. We had planned on having a much larger crop of zucchini at this point in the season, however our methods of combatting the leaf footed bugs have been somewhat ineffective, so we have resorted to squishing them by hand...
In order to preserve some of our products that we have an excess of, we have been maintaining a strong supply of value added products such as pickled goods, pesto and jams. Our carambola chutney has been a big player these past few weeks since our trees are fruiting at such a high volume. Pictured above, farm dog Bosco is enjoying some shade below my favorite carambola tree as we harvest for our chutney mission. Carambola chutney pairs excellently with meats, cheese, toast and all kinds of fun things that you might find on your Thanksgiving table this week.
Whatever your plans may be for the holiday, we hope that we can add some excitement to your meal preparations. I'm currently stateside for the holiday but made sure to bring back some Crucian pumpkin, ginger and turmeric to whip up a little spiced pumpkin pie for the family...got to stay warm somehow!
All the best,
Elizabeth and the Farm Crew
