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Alan
and Nancy Brown About the farm |
Early October 2009
The crunch is
on for the fall and winter preparations to begin. So far we have missed the
couple of light frosts that the lower valleys have had already. Our basil
however is being all picked today! We have been enjoying the late raspberries
too – they are the best! Lots of tomatoes are still waiting to be made into
sauce this week too. Luckily between our Tuesday and Thursday delivery weeks,
we have a little extra time to focus on farm and garden tasks. So since we’ve
had all kinds of time, we decided it was time to finally get that rescue dog we
have been talking about so we spend time in training! Lucy, Lucille, Lacy, we
are still trying out names for her; she’s a sweet “follow you everywhere”
German Shepard with a little something else that makes her tail really long and
her legs very prettily shaded. She has black stripes on the top of each toe!
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There has been
a little growling with Shadow and Maggie, mostly about food, but we think she
is adapting quickly and will be a great pal on herd checks through the
pastures.
I’ll make it
short this month since there are other announcements to follow.
Please take
care, enjoy this lovely weather and fall colors and as always, come and visit!
Nancy and Alan
Late October News:
We never seem
to time it right to pick the last bowl of the late fall red raspberries. After
a couple of frosts, they all are still hanging from the drooping canes looking
way darker than they should be and some look a little grey. You would hope that
the vibrancy of the berries that are left would be sucked back by the cane to
the roots where the energy could be stored through the long cold winter. We
love this raspberry that has two picking seasons! But by now all the annuals and
some of the tender annuals have been frozen and are standing, browned, and
waiting to be cut and piled and carried to the pigs to scavenge any goodness
from their stalks. The garden and the perennial gardens cleanup is a big fall
job done mostly on the warmer days so your hands don’t freeze trying to work
the pruners all day. We still have golden leaves here on our hillside; many
other places are bare of leaves except the golden tamarack tress that provide
some of the last color of the season. Our maple trees were stunning this year,
although way more yellow than their usual red, orange, yellow combination. It’s
raining again today and the animals that have shelter, the pigs, horse, donkey,
cats and dogs, are all inside curled up sleeping. Our newest batch of five
small weanling piglets arrived this week. They are pros at sleeping in a heap,
the proverbial pig pile. There are three pink pigs and two brown and black
spotted ones. They are still learning the daily routine and getting used to us
who visit them multiple times a day which so far scares them into a corner of
their big farrowing pen. In a few days we’ll let them have a bigger area with
another older pig that has an injured leg. Then they’ll have an older buddy to
teach them the ropes. Right now all the fences in the pasture are set up for
much bigger pigs so they’ll have to grow a bit before they can go outside
ranging with the big ones or they will be trotting all over the place.
We are
beginning to get ready for the onslaught of the turkeys. Consolidating all of the
inventory into the tightest spaces possible to make room for the many boxes
which will be arriving around mid November. Please check at your site in the
next couple of weeks for the last vegetable delivery date, as some of the CSAs
are ending before our Thanksgiving deliveries and you may be having a new
distribution site for the week before Thanksgiving.
All of the turkeys and any regular
orders for other foods for your holiday eating will be delivered on November 19
or November 21 or November 24.
In our website
for you at www.csalewiswaitefarm.com
there is a menu option for you to see all the delivery dates. We are making our
best effort to keep this up to date and accurate so use this to double check
when and where your distribution will be.
Beginning in
December we start our once per month deliveries again. Most of your CSAs are
participating and have found locations for the winter distributions either at
your same summer location or at the home of many of the coordinators. We will
enter these schedules soon so you can see the dates on the website as well.
Just a few
more weeks left to CSA season – boy did it fly by this year. Hope you all are
getting acclimated to the chillier weather – my sister in