Lettuce Rejoice!
Sept 22, 2022
Here Piggy Piggy
Administrative Details:
The final boxes for the Summer Share are September 22, 29, and October 6. After that it’s on to the Winter Share!
If you haven’t signed up yet, now is your chance:
https://www.harvie.farm/farm/firmly-rooted-farm/signup
We are hosting our first ever Farm Share Farm Tour this Thursday September 22nd, from 5:30-7:00. Come see where your food is grown, taste a raspberry or two, and check out all the interesting environmental projects we’ve done here on the farm. We are at 84400 Currie Line, Belgrave, Ontario, and we would love to see you?
p.s. I mentioned we might have a chance to plant some native plants at the tour but I’ve decided that’s just too much for one evening. I’ll keep you posted about this project and perhaps schedule a different event.
What’s in the Box?
Summer is making way for fall. This will be the last week for cucumbers and tomatoes. Consider honoring them with a Greek salad where they can mingle one last time before they are but a fond memory.
This week we have our first acorn squash available, as well as the first few kohlrabi. Every knows acorn squash, but do you know about kohlrabi? This unusual bulb, whose name means “cabbage-turnip”, grows above ground and is crisp and sweet. I like to eat it peeled, sliced into matchsticks with salt, and in slaws. Of course, endless soup and gratin style recipes abound.
Kohlrabi fans: what do you do with our strange friend?
On the Farm
In case you are wondering, of course the pigs escaped. Well, half. The females took great exception to their first experience with an electric fence, and while we had attempted to set up a permanent fence behind the electric fence it was apparently not pig proof. The males seemed to more or less shrug and go back to eating windfall pears before napping deeply.
There was much running and chasing and a great deal of distress on all sides (I imagine). We were fairly certain that we had been taught an expensive lesson in animal husbandry and spend the evening fairly dejected.
Later on that night one returned and the next night so did the other. There hasn’t been an incidence since and we’ve been trying mightily to impress upon the pigs that they have in fact fell into the roses here; I mean the volume of delicious compost produced on a vegetable farm can’t be beat. They seem particularly fond of tomatoes, and who can blame them?
Not too worry, this won't be an all-pig all-the-time sort of communication going forward.
We cleared the winter squash this week. It's hanging out in the greenhouse, hardening up its skin and getting sweeter by the minute.
We are nearly out of time to plant the greenhouses for this fall. September 21 is the typical hoophouse do-or-die planting date for spinach, baby kale and radishes (we all already past the lettuce date). Practically what this means is that we've been, and will continue to be, battling with 15' tall tomato vines which are covered in immature fruits that like to drop like bullets, and fat spiders that like to find their way into our hair. Farming is so glamorous.
Well time to get back to the field. Happy eating until next time.
Farmer Tamara
