1st week of October 2009
One morning I came in with half numb fingers after gathering salad bags. Fall is definitely moving along and with the cooler weather, salad is again in it's glory. The lettuce looks lush and the arugula, mizuna and kale are much sweeter than they are in the heat of summer. I'm also pleased with my one trellis of fall peas that add flowers, shoots and snap peas to the salads. After a full summer of veggie gathering, I decided to make this the last week for weekly salad bag customers. My family is needing more of my time as we establish our homeschool routine again. I also have some projects needing attention like putting finishing touches on my coldframing DVD, Backyard Coldframing: The art of growing fresh greens year round, and exploring printing options for our book manuscript, One Forkful at a Time: Getting started with local foods. I'm telling my customers and friends though that I will gladly swap any extra salad or veggies still left in the garden for labor to help me clean up the garden for winter, plant garlic, put cold frames in place, etc. Speaking of salad, I was happy for opportunities recently to influence more folks away from the "iceberg lettuce syndrome." One gal that visited this week had her first taste of arugula and was smitten. I also took all my leftover coldframe plants and some seeds and helped an Amish friend plant a corner of their tomato high tunnel with gourmet salad greens. She said she liked to try new things so I gave her about a dozen different varieties to experiment with.
This week we finished cutting the sugar cane (which I learned is more technically called sweet sorghum cane up north here) and sent it off to the Amishman's for pressing. Here is the pick-up load of bundled canes ready to go. Looks can be deceiving because that nice neat load was the result of a mountain of labor and plenty of garden space. We are curious to find out how many gallons of molasses it will produce. The molasses will be used for our family and the "cash crop" part of it will actually come from what most folks just let lie in the field, the beautiful seed heads. Here I am cutting them off and we will let them dry on the barn floor before transforming them into fall decorations. I'll be inviting some friends to come help make swags using the cane heads plus other things we've dried over the summer like mini sunflower heads, rye, teasel, sea oats and more. The beauty of these arrangements is that at Thanksgiving you can set them out for the birds to enjoy their little feast. Another time we'll be using them for fall decorations is a Natural Fall Crafts Workshop that I'm coordinating at my Amish friend's cut flower farm near Mt Eaton. See the Events page for details on this October 24 party.
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