It's been 6 or 7 weeks since we had a moment to write. Or, truly, since we've had a moment to do just about anything. The farming season is far from over, but finally the pace is a bit more sane. If nothing else it gets dark earlier now, and it's awfully hard to farm in the dark (believe us, we've tried). The picture above was from early in August, when everything was looking a bit greener. By now the winter squash in that picture had died back, and just the other day we got all the winter squash and pumpkins into the shed. They're delicious! We're not sure what exactly is magic about our soil, but everything (carrots, cukes, squash...) is super sweet! We'll take it!
August and early September were marked by a serious bounty of tomatoes, especially cherry tomatoes. Talk about sweet! We were picking up to 300 lbs of cherry tomatoes a week. Selling most, drying as many as we could on our food dehydrator (dried cherry tomatoes are amazing!)
Also in the bountiful category has been the flowers. Several weddings' worth, and many farmers markets bouquets coming from the fields. We've been building flower customers. Ben's mom Addie has fully taken on the role of floral arranger, and has been a super help! And the bouquets are beautiful!
A couple weeks ago we survived hurricane Irene. Overall things weathered the storm fairly well. The flowers particularly took a beating (the picture below is the same patch of sunflowers photographed above after the storm). A few other things were particularly hard hit by the wind, and perhaps salt spray. It's hard to pin point whether the leaves suffered from wind burn or salt burn. But the hurricane sped up the decline of our tomatoes.
... our tomatoes are pretty well done for the season (which is earlier than expected) ... but that's okay, we were pretty tired of picking them anyway. And replacing them is lots of fall veggies. Bountiful greens,
Really nice sweet beets, and excellent sweet carrots.
We also have a beautiful crop of onions drying in the barn. And a ton of variety still coming out of the fields. The weather is getting cooler, and we're thrilled. We're loving coming home at the totally civilized hour of 8pm and roasting squash, onions, cabbage, leeks, potatoes, eggplant... mmm. Deliciousness.
