2009 Season, Week Sixteen

September 5, 2009

This week's harvest:

Tomatoes

Sweet peppers

Hot peppers

Okra

Basil

Onions

Garlic

Zucchini or eggplant

Lettuce

Galia melons

This week's farm news:

We harvested the butternut squash crop this week. We didn't take an exact count, but we estimate over 1,500 beautiful squashes! There's even some more still in the field on vines that crept well out of the squash patch & are hiding off in the peanuts & tomatoes, so we'll have to get them later! Fall really must be approaching as the squash are now in the barn & we've begun eating butternut squash porridge for our breakfast. Yummy!

Eric & the kids sowed a bunch more cover crops this week. They planted a wild medley of leftover seeds from this season -- peas, beans, beets, corn, cilantro, etc.; combined with more traditional cover crops -- crimson clover, wheat, & buckwheat. With that mixture we're probably certain to attract pesky deer into the garden! Our family milk cow, Darla, had her calf this week. During evening chores Eric noticed she was in labor & in the course of less than one hour he got to witness the entire event. The very healthy calf was up and nursing almost immediately! Eric hopes to start milking Darla this week for our family's own fresh milk supply!

Also this week we hosted the Allen County (KY) Master Gardeners Club on our farm for a farm tour.

2009 Season, Week Fifteen

August 29, 2009

This week's harvest:
Tomatoes &/or tomatillos
Sweet red peppers
Hot peppers
Okra
Basil
Onions
Garlic
Watermelon - medium shares
Zucchini
Lettuce
Galia melons

This week's farm news:

The biggest farm tasks we completed this week were simply keeping crops harvested & animals tended. Our focus instead was getting our cabin's addition under a roof. We took advantage of the dry weather to build the remaining walls & get the roof rafters on. We knew the chance for rain was greater in the latter part of the week so we ordered our roofing tin & kept our fingers crossed. We feel like we got so lucky as rain drops started to fall just as the final screws were being put into the tin! Yeah! Now we can chip away at the remaining parts of the project & not have to worry about rain! Our farm interns were completely instrumental in accomplishing what we did this week. Even though we didn't do much garden work, our interns learned some really valuable building skills & lessons in homesteading. It would have been great if they could have really seen the whole process -- the huge poplar tree, with its broken top from a storm, that Eric cut down; the portable sawmill that came & transported huge logs into usable lumber; etc. etc. We just attempt to provide an example of simple, sustainable living by growing our own food & building our own shelter.

Fall Shares Available

A message from the farm:

We thought you may be interested in the contents of Bugtussle Fall Shares. We consider this share the most nutritious of the season for these vegetables have been gathering the sun's energy all season.

In your share, you can expect:

Tomatoes

Peppers

Butternut squash

Acorn squash

Sweet potatoes

Potatoes

Greens such as kale, lettuce, spinach, arugula, turnips

Carrots (most beautiful fall carrots we've ever had)

Beets

Broccoli

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Chinese Cabbage

Boc choi

Garlic

Onions

Scallions

Leeks

Turnips

Rutabaga

Kohlrabi

Daikon Radish

Remember, most of these items store very well and can be kept over winter, making this share also the best value of the season as well.

The season will run from October 10th to November 21st. We will have small ($150) and medium ($250) shares available. Feel free to bring your reservation form (attached) when you pick up your current share or mail it to us directly.

Please let us know if you are interested,

Eric, Cher, Ira and Opal

(270) 457-BUGS

(click on image below for a copy of the form)

2009 Season, Week Fourteen

August 22, 2009

This week's harvest:

Tomatoes &/or tomatillos

Sweet peppers

Hot peppers

Potatoes

Okra

Patty pan squash

Basil

Onions

Garlic

Watermelon

Zucchini, eggplant, or green chilis

Zinnia flowers

This week's farm news:

Our fall garden is coming right along. Early this week we set out a bunch more fall transplants. We set bok choi, Chinese cabbage, beets, lettuce, cilantro, & Tuscan kale. We direct seeded salad turnips & more (!) carrots. Eric mowed, turned under, & then broadcast cover crop seeds on big areas of the garden where summer crops have finished. The potato & corn patches are sown to buckwheat & crimson clover with a little bit of kale & daikon radish seed mixed in. Our butternut squash vines are beginning to die back & reveal a gorgeous crop of squash -- and there's a bunch! Because our fall garden seems fairly established now, we would like to go ahead & announce this year's fall share. It will be seven weeks (Sat. Oct. 10-Sat. Nov. 21) & cost $150 for small shares & $250 for medium shares. We'll have sign-up forms available for anyone who is interested. The fall share will include a wide variety of greens & lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, sweet potatoes, potatoes, winter squashes, etc. As well as a continuation of the summer crops up until we get a frost. Just let us know if you're interested!

2009 Season, Week Thirteen

August 15, 2009

This week's harvest:
Watermelons
Tomatoes
Basil
Sweet peppers
Hot peppers
Green chiles &/or eggplant
Garlic
Onions
Patty pan squash
Cucumbers
Yellow beans
Tomatillos
Okra -- free choice

This week's farm news:

This week's big item in the basket is watermelon. It's an old heirloom variety called "Strawberry"...and as you will see, very delicious! We've been saving our own seed for this variety for a number of years. If you get a really good melon, we'd like to ask you to help our seed saving efforts by selecting 10-20 seeds from it for us. Just rinse them a bit & fold them up in a paper towel. Thanks!

Our big project of the week was digging our potato crop out of the ground. We had lots of great help so the task wasn't too overwhelming. This year's yield was not as great as we had hoped, but we did get potatoes! You'll be receiving the season's first potatoes in your baskets in the coming weeks.

We had some rain early in the week so when the garden was too wet for working in, we started a new construction project. We're putting an addition onto our little cabin to better accomodate our growing family! The goal is to increase the size of our kitchen & add another bedroom. We don't anticipate having everything completed by the time the baby arrives, but we're working on it! Later in the week, once the garden soil dried up a bit, the crew was back in the garden cultivating all the young fall crops to keep them happy & growing. Next week we've got a bunch more fall transplants to set out into the garden!

2009 Season, Week Twelve

August 8, 2009

This week's harvest:
"Halona" muskmelons
"Red sails" lettuce
Sweet corn
Tomatoes
Cucumbers
"Patty Pan" summer squash
Sweet red peppers
Hot peppers
Basil
Onions
Garlic
Eggplant
Yellow beans
Tomatillos

This week's farm news:

We had a few more rains this week, but nothing too severe or intense, thank goodness! Just nice gentle rains which were absolutely perfect for germinating carrots! Otherwise the weather this week felt much more like summer -- fairly hot & sunny. The garden is really ripening & bountiful now. It's been a good challenge keeping everything picked. The muskmelons really ripened this week and we've harvested lots of them! They are incredibly delicious so we hope you enjoy this special summertime treat! Looks like next week we'll have a load of watermelons!

We did a bit more fall garden work this week. Eric direct seeded 2 types of daikon radish, arugula, mizuna, & red mustard (which are remarkably all up & growing already). The interns started some beets in soil blocks for later transplanting into the garden. All of the transplants that were set just over a week ago are settled into the garden & looking good. The fall peas are poking their little heads out of the soil. And so it goes... The seasonal shift of crops is happening. Even though there's a lot of summer produce yet to come, we are transitioning the garden back to cool-season crops. It seems amazing that fall is just around the corner!

2009 Season, Week Eleven

August 1, 2009

This week's harvest:
Cucumbers
Sweet corn
"Patty Pan" summer squash
Tomatoes & cherry tomatoes
Yellow beans
Lettuce
Basil
Eggplant
Hot peppers
Onions & garlic
Tomatillos
Muskmelons -- We have to harvest these as they ripen so if you don't get one this week, you will next week

This week's farm news:

Happy August! Well folks, even though our main crop of tomatoes are still craving some good sunshine, lots of other summer crops are finally starting to come in. This week's basket is really starting to have the diversity of summer goodies we've all been waiting for! Yeah!

We've got a great jump on this year's fall garden. We had a big push to get a bunch of transplants set before (yet another!) rain. We set over 1000 various baby plants -- brussels sprouts, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, & kohlrabi. Eric direct-seeded another bed of carrots so now we've got nearly 2000 row feet of them in the ground! That's potentially 24,000 carrots! He also seeded some fall shelling peas. Once it rained & we had to stop garden work, our intern Laura taught the two new interns, Jessie & Jaykub, & our short-term volunteer, Andrea, all about starting seeds in soil blocks. They started lots more fall crops -- bok choi, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, and Tuscan kale. On Wednesday we had the big project for the entire crew of digging potatoes. Even Ira & Opal were in on the action, searching around in the soil for all of those buried starchy treasures! What fun!