Farmers Market

We made it to the Farmers Market on Saturday and was it ever nice to be there!  It was so good to say hi to all of the vendors.  We even met new vendors, Mike and Peggy.  It's great to welcome new people to our market.  Diane, our market manager, tries so hard to attract new vendors.  Lara had a good time.  I kept her under our new market canopy, but even so, she still got a little sunburned.  We didn't have much to sell:  potatoes, onions, garlic, sweet corn from Tom's garden, a little dill, three small red cabbages, some green beans and about a pound of peas.  I sold all of the sweet corn, beans, and peas; most of the dill; one red cabbage; and a little of the rest.  I didn't see many of the usual customers, and there wasn't one single FMNP or WIC customer. 

Lara

Our Farmers Market Stand

A Day at the Phillips Farmers Market

I took a nap when we got home.  Going to market is a lot of work!

Today I worked in the back yard and the garden boxes.  I transplanted all of the fruit trees I planted earlier this year into the garden boxes to protect them from the loggers.  I'll give them new permanent homes next spring.  Then I thinned the carrots and pulled the peas.  The beans are still producing so I'll give them a little more time before turning them under.  I ate the sole blackberry I found and it was delicious!  I am debating transplanting the grape vines into a garden box for the winter.  And, I will transplant the red and black currants, and take down as much of the forest garden fence as I'm able to get too.  Some of that fence is crushed under downed trees.  The loggers sound like they are making getting close to our property and I want to get as many plants protected as I can before they get here.  That also means I have to get busy and build a gate for the chicken run.  There's no telling how the chickens will react when the loggers get here.

I got the new Hancocks of Paducah catalog today.  I drool over these fabrics!  Sarah told me I should sew pillow cases and sell them.  That's a pretty good idea!  I thought the handkerchiefs were a good idea, and pillow cases are quite useful, too.  Looks like my winter crafting schedule is filling up.  It's a short step from pillow cases to grocery tote bags.  I have a pattern for a quilt that folds up into a pillow that I've been wanting to make for a long time, too. . . .

Boy, I tell you it is suddenly Fall outside.  I woke up the other night to the sound of the wind rustling the tree leaves and I recognized the end of summer.  Sure enough, the leaves are changing color rapidly.  We miraculously made it through August without a hard frost, but I wonder how much longer our garden luck will hold out.  Most of the birds have already flown South.  It's actually kind of eerie not hearing any birds; the woods are so quiet (except for the loggers).  That reminds me, I meant to tell you about how ill I felt before the tornado.  I was super dizzy and there was so much pain in my bones for days before the storm hit that I could hardly stand it.  I even remarked on it on a web site I frequent.  Then, I remember watching the trees snap as the storm hit and thinking the sound was like bones breaking.  And when the storm passed, my dizziness and bone pain was gone.    I felt the same way before the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.  Makes me wonder if I'm an "earth sensitive", if you want to call it that. 

Have you noticed how clear the skies are lately?  No chemtrails here for a while now.  It's actually taking me a while to get used to seeing the sun shine regularly in a blue sky.  Maybe the bad economy is finally affecting whoever is responsible for making the chemtrails.  Well, they can run but they can't hide is all I have to say.

Tomorrow I'll go out to the field and see how the Indian corn is coming along. 

Talk to you soon!

Quick Notes

For those of you interested in growing and saving heirloom, open pollinated, and organic seed, this is a really sad time.  Seeds of Change is closing its doors very soon.  Some of my favorite seeds came from them  (Indian Woman Yellow and Pawnee Bush beans). Check out the news story for more details.   http://www.riograndesun.com/articles/2010/08/19/news/doc4c6c173529485237508050.txt  I loved this company and hate to see it close.  What a loss!

Also, for those of you who are interested in the Shape of Things to Come reports put out by Clif High over at Half Past Human, Issue 7 is available.  To be read with chamomile tea in hand -- or something stronger. 

Harvest

There's just something about harvest time that makes you feel good.  Whether it is all the different colors of the vegetables and fruits that you gather, or if it is simply psychological satisfaction with the idea of having a full larder, I don't know.  I do know that harvest time is my favorite time of year.  Then again, maybe it's the moon . . . .

Full Sturgeon Moon

I spent the afternoon scrounging out in the field garden.  It was a lovely day for a change:  not too humid and there was a nice cool breeze out of the north.  I took my time among the rows getting a good look at everything.  I harvested some nice yellow warted crookneck squash and some Early Fortune, Boston Pickling, and one Australian Lemon Cucumber.  There are green tomatoes on the tomato plants, and the leeks are looking good.  Instead of pulling them, I will leave them where they are to over winter and produce seed next year -- the start of a permanent bed of leeks.  The Jerusalem artichokes are looking fine; I've never grown them before so am not sure how or when to harvest.  I'll have to look that up in one of my gardening books.  The Ebeneezer onions left in the onion bed are setting seed but it isn't ripe enough to gather yet.  The cutting celery is gorgeous and so is the bulb fennel.  I am most pleased with the two herb rows.  I'll never start herbs indoors again; they just do so much better direct seeded outdoors.  I am so tempted to harvest leaves and flowers from many of the plants, but I'll wait till next year.  I did cut loads off of the chocolate mint, spearmint, and peppermint and have them drying in the dehydrator.  The house smells SO good.

Yesterday we dug up a row and a half of Tom's potatoes.  What a job!  It was so much harder this year because we couldn't keep up with the weeds because of all the rain. Still, Tom's potatoes were much nicer than mine and his harvest yield is better than mine.  He grew Norland and Kennebecs while I grew Red Cloud and Katahdin.  Still, I'm partial to my spuds because I grew from my own saved seed.  Tom's corn is about where mine is -- a week or so before it's perfect to pick.  That is, if the racoons don't ruin it first; they are having a tasting contest in both of our gardens. 

The onions are cured and I put them in baskets.  I gave Dad a half bushel of onions and a bushel of Red Cloud potatoes.  He can go pick all the corn he wants from Tom's garden.  Speaking of Tom's garden, despite the fact that there is a HUGE red pine in the garden that was downed by the tornado, he counted about 15 Sunshine winter squash still growing.  I figure the deer can't get to the squash because they are under the tree branches so we should be able to harvest them all.  I wish I had some winter squash.  There are loads of flowers on the squash vines that grew, but no fruit.  I only spotted one halfway decent New England Pie Pumpkin in the whole pumpkin patch. 

The good news is that when I went out to work in the garden boxes after supper I discovered that I have LOADS of green beans.  Hurray!  I can take potatoes, onions, shallots, potato onions, bulb fennel, garlic, and green beans to the farmers market.  I told Lara that I will get our supplies together and plan to go to the market on Saturday.  We will see how it goes and then contact Linda Daubner who emailed me about going to the Park Falls farmers market outside the hospital and maybe selling there, too.

I love the way the kitchen looks at harvest time.  It's a comfortable messiness that feels so creative.

What shall we do with the green beans?

 Potato soup or latkes?

Oh, onions with everything!

And there's nothing like fresh eggs.

Of course, fresh food addicts like myself always wind up dealing with sugar fiends --

From Sarah's Torturing Dieters Manual

Ahh, I love it when there's no room on the buffet . . . .