A lot can change in a week, especially when you’re talking about the weather in the last few weeks of Fall. The Next couple of weeks are gonna be bringing on the real chill with days mostly in the 30’s and nights that will be well below freezing. The weather over the past few months has been tremendous and allowed for a bounty to be grown outside. Protected with row cover for over a month now, we’ve been able to keep most of the harvest coming from the outside spaces. However, with the extra cold nights ahead it is time to pull as much as we can from the outside. Not only to preserve as much of this veg as we can but also to remove and store the row cover that has been protecting them. That way we can keep using it as many seasons as possible. All it takes is one good snowfall and many of the things we use around the farm could be buried and forgotten about for months. So the first snowfall is always a good reminder to get organized while you can.
This past week was a great chance to take a break from selling with the holiday and focus on a few things, getting all the garlic and tulips in the ground as well as getting some quality time with friends and family. It might sound simple enough when we say it at first, “we’re planting 400 lbs of garlic”. But when it comes down to it especially without mechanization, it’s quite a lot of work. With so much garlic to plant, Jen needing to focus on the 5,000 tulip bulbs getting in the ground and in keeping with the idea of seeing friends and family we called in Durham’s resident Garlic Scientist himself, David to help. So on Wednesday for a few short hours it was like the old days on the farm in Durham with just David and Joel planting the same German white garlic we have been planting for years. Meanwhile Jen and Adriana(and Annie)finished planting the seemingly endless supply of tulip bulbs. A nice thought to carry us through the cold to come 5,000 bulbs blooming next Spring.
Beyond getting organized, we’ll be getting back to business as usual with the last three weeks of markets and on farm sales of 2025. It’s been a great year and it really is incredible how fast the time has gone, some part of us feels there has to be more than three weeks left. Nope, those are the facts 12/5, 12/6, 12/12, 12/13, 12/19 and 12/20 will be the final 2025 Farm sales. That means just 3 more Saturday markets in New Haven, 3 more Fridays of open farm shop from 3-6 in Middlefield and 3 more weekends of preorder pickup. Oh where does the time go.
Have a Great Week