2009 Fall Season, Week Five

November 7, 2009

This week's harvest:
Rutabagas
Sweet potatoes
Butternut squash
Garlic & Onions
Carrots
Daikon radish
Kale
Choice between: Kohlrabi, Arugula, Red mustard, Green cabbage, Mizuna, Turnip greens, and Red cabbage

This week's farm news:

The turkeys had a big adventure this week. Maybe they're sensing their impending fate, maybe it was the full moon, I don't know, but something shifted in their world & they took off! On Sunday morning Evan & Laura went to do chores & came rapping on our door with the report "The turkeys are gone!" They had flown from a fenced garden where we had been keeping them. So Eric, Ira, Laura & Evan took off on a big hike to find them. After a few hours, they had basically given up & moved on to some garden work when Evan thought he heard them off in the distance. They found them over in the neighbor's pasture. They managed to walk the turkeys along a fence & into an old shed with the plan of going back to get them after dark. When evening came, Eric, Evan & Ira went to load the turkeys into the van to bring them back to the farm. When they got to the shed they realized that 6 of the turkeys had managed to fly through a hole in the shed's roof to find more suitable roosting about 40 feet up in a walnut tree overhead. So with head lamps & the full moon's light, they had to shimmy up trees to round them up. Exhausting & stressful for the big boys but from 5-year-old Ira's perspective -- "This is GREAT!!!" Somehow Eric managed to drive the thrashing turkeys (Evan & Ira in the safety of Evan's car) back to our farm. There was a big turkey on the dashboard right in front of his face, a big tom pressing hard against his legs, & warm turkey droppings seeping through his pant legs... Now we've put them into a portable shed to move around on the pasture for their final days.