Our stand on October 18
It’s hard to believe that tomorrow (Thursday, October 25) will be our final farmer’s market of the season. This will be our 19th Thursday at the market. Right now the weather looks good, which means that we had quite streak going–we only had one rainy Thursday for the entire season. I doubt we’ll ever equal that again.
We’ve managed to still bring a big selection of vegetables each week, even as the cold weather has finished off our tomatoes and peppers and basil and beans. We still have a selection of red tomatoes that we’ve been ripening indoors (they don’t have August tomato flavor, but they’re still better than what you can buy in the store) and tomatillos. And now we’re getting some cabbage and fennel. The kale has been extremely strong all season.
Yesterday, I planted 750 cloves of garlic in the field (Music and a German Red). With any luck, we’ll be harvesting 750 heads of garlic next July, and we won’t run out so fast. I still have customers come to our farmstand looking for our garlic, it was just so good.
The garlic is the last thing we’ll plant. Right now, we’re clearing the rest of the field and planting winter rye as a cover crop. I’ve got to get to the field super early tomorrow morning, so I can try to pick everything I possibly can–there’s no sense leaving it in the field past the market days. (Except for 56 bunches of kale that we will deliver to the World Peas CSA on Sunday.)
It’s been an amazing season. I’ve loved getting to meet so many interesting customers and very much appreciate the support from all of them and our friends and neighbors at the market (and beyond). We’ve learned so much and look forward to farming again (twice as much land) next season. In the next few weeks, I hope to write up a series of blog posts about the various lessons we learned as first year farmers.