Week 17

Hi All,

As we move into the last third of the CSA year, we just want to thank all of our farm hands that have helped so much this year and have gone back to their real jobs. Liz has taken a job teaching at Montessori Manor. Barb has gone back to her teaching job at Youth's Benefit. Lydia and Blanca have decided their job at the nursery is way to busy to come here as well after work. So that leaves Tina and Maggie who are still plugging away picking veggies, getting crates ready, putting on row covers, weeding and now beginning to do Fall clean up. Daughter Chelsea has been helping as well cleaning eggs and other must do chores around the farm.

Just to give you an idea on the rain we've received recently, as of last Friday we had 20.5 inches of rain in the previous 13 days. That's a lot and it keeps raining a little each day it seems. It makes it wet enough so we can't get some Fall things in that we were hoping to plant. Hopefully it will dry out enough in the next couple of days so we can till some ground.

We've installed some lights on timers in the hen houses to expand daylight hours for the birds that should keep them laying better as we get into the shorter days. Last Winter was crazy, we went from getting 10 dozen eggs a day to 3 on some occasions. We hope the light trick works! The only trouble with this plan is that we here the rooster in the back barn crowing at 4 in the morning!

I think we will take our final hundred incredible edibles (chickens) to the processor on 9/27 which means we will have them back on 9/29. We are keeping this group a bit longer than normal to get a little bigger bird. Hopefully we will have some 5-6 pounders in this group.

In your crates this week:

Green beans
Eggplant-both from here and Farmdale Organics
Green tomatoes
Yellow Squash-Outback Farm
Onions
Garlic
Zucchini-Windy Hollow Organics
Sweet peppers
Pumpkin
Basil
Bok Choy

See you Wednesday.

Steve and Vicky