It was cool and rainy outside on Monday, but warm and dry in the spinach tunnel. It took 5 of us about an hour to pick five cases of fresh spinach. These were large boxes full to the brim and weighing in at a total of 16.23 pounds. That’s 259 spinach salads at 1oz each. Here’s what one ounce of spinach looks like plated up. We are so happy to be able to harvest all this spinach in this last week of October. It looks like we will be able to keep harvesting from this tunnel for a few more consecutive weeks. This is why we have all these tunnels–being able to send fresh food to our recipients late in the season when fresh local greens become scarce.
Also on Monday morning, it took three of us five minutes to harvest and clean eight daikon radishes weighing in at 17.86 pounds. These are growing in our cover crop mix and are grown especially to break up some of the hardpan clay at the base of our newest fields–a yummy side product in our cover crops. They are delicious roasted (treat as you would a carrot) with a mixture of other root vegetables or eaten raw in salads. The leafy greens can be eaten, too! Enjoy them sauteed with a typical Japanese flavor profile of sweet and savory or simply sauteed with garlic in olive oil and seasoned with red chili pepper flakes. As fun as it is to hunt for those long radishes weighing in at almost 2.25 pounds each, the 259 spinach salads seems much more gratifying to send off with the gleaners.
I will return to another shout out to spinach later in this week’s report.
Friday Fixers worked on draining and shutting down the water on the farm. This included purging the line from our well, the hand washing sink, the water heater, all the irrigation lines, and closing off the ends so creatures won’t decide these might make nice winter homes. John Newlin helped the process move along with his air compressor and first hand knowledge gained from doing all this himself for the past 6 years. Thanks, John! We always appreciate your guidance and insight on matters Carrie and I (mostly me) have little to no experience with. We still have water at the orange handle pump, which will serve us until next May. Another task completed as we move towards colder temperatures and another big thank you to the Fix-It Team.
We had a scheduled visit for Saturday morning with Amy Ford, Faith Formation Coordinator, and a group of families from All Saints Parish in Brunswick. There were 7 children in the group, so we saved planting garlic for them. Carrie and I have been reading about garlic, and this year we decided to add nitrogen to our beds as we prepared them for the planting. I won’t go into the details of adding nitrogen at this time of year, just the fact that what we are looking to accomplish is having it still be available in the spring when the ground thaws and the plants start to grow. Saturday morning the temperature was 29 degrees at 8:00AM, but sunny and no wind! I asked the Saturday volunteers to get ready for the kids and mark the lines for planting garlic. They had to work with a bit of frost on the surface, but picking up tools and moving around began to warm us up. Genevieve started gathering everything we would need for our group, and the Saturday crew went ahead and planted two out of the four 50-foot beds. Three rows across, 6” apart–that’s 1,200 cloves of garlic we needed to plant. The 8AM team got started, and the 9AMers arrived in time to help finish up planting, top the beds with a light layer of chopped leaves, straw, and row cover to hold it all in place. Time to do your thing, garlic!
Thank you, Saturday volunteers, for shifting gears and moving on to….can you guess? Hauling and spreading wood chips! All I had to say was that the locations were on the board as to where chips were needed, and they were on it. We are fortunate to have so many regular volunteers who can just be given a bit of direction and little or no supervision. Genevieve was also there for any questions.
The families arrived, I explained our project, gave a quick demo, and promised goat time upon completion. The garlic got planted in record time, so we went to pick some cabbage leaves to feed the goats. I told the group there was something I wanted to show them first. I took them over to see Wendi’s spinach tunnel because anything that prolific and bright green this time of year amazes everyone. I invited them to pick a spinach leaf and taste how sweet it is. Rarely do we have anyone say, “no thanks”, but one little boy told me he didn’t like spinach. I told him this was a very different kind of spinach–very sweet, and if he didn’t like it, he could spit it out. I saw him take a tiny bite, and then we headed over to the goats. I heard his mom ask “where is your spinach leaf?” He had a sweet smile and said “I ate it–it was good!”
As the kids were enjoying the goats, the same little boy came up to me and asked if he could take some spinach home with him. I asked if anyone else was interested, and I had three takers. The little one with the spinach leaf in his mouth is my latest convert. 🙂
The weather is about 10 degrees above normal and continues into next week. We are finishing up so many little projects that are putting us ahead for next spring–pruning and weeding the hedgerows, looking for voles (Zoey’s job), and weeding and mulching elderberries. We will just keep tweaking those last minute chores into next week. There’s still some harvesting going on, and there’s always wood chips.
The kids brought us some thank you cards they had made. They are thanking us for what we do, but I want to thank them for being interested, open minded, and engaged. You never know how one spinach convert could change the world for the better.
Another amazing week at G2G.
Theda