And now it’s November!
Brews for a Cause | November 15 from 4-9pm
Flight Deck Brewing in Brunswick will donate 20% of all beer and pizza sales to Growing to Give.
Moving into the month of November, we have less daylight, cooler temperatures, and a heavy sadness about what just occurred here in our lovely state of Maine.
All the television footage we have witnessed in the past, coming from places across our country, is now coming from here. Places we are familiar with, places we drive by everyday, places we live in, people in our community.
We had to close the farm for two days due to the shelter in place order. I want to repeat parts of an email I sent out to our Fix-It Team, telling them we were closed and expressing how I felt at the time. I was here at home alone, but I wasn’t. It’s times like this when you feel most loved. Friends and family from all over checking in… Are you okay? Are you safe? We love you, take care.
So to all of you, from Maine to California, from Alaska to Scotland, wherever your loved ones reside… Are you okay? Are you safe? Take care, we love you.
We are so fortunate to be able to come back to the farm and put our hands in the dirt, do good work, and support each other in whatever way we can.
We finally had a hard frost on October 30th. Those colder temperatures did not really impact the cool weather crops that we are still harvesting. It just means the vegetables are getting sweeter. The dahlias can now be cut back to harden off before digging and storing for winter. With a couple more frosty nights, we can dig up the sunchokes. The bag of sunchokes Carrie’s mom donated to us a couple of years ago has become quite an abundant crop, as sunchokes are known to do. Sunchokes can be roasted, made into a soup, and smashed (or flattened) like a small potato. I definitely will try smashing! Most of these will go to Amelia and Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness.
We tackled sandbag repair on Tuesday, a task that is no one’s favorite. It’s been on our list for most of the season. Tuesday we needed to warm up, so moving sandbags did the trick.
Wednesday we actually did a substantial gleaning. Two of our newest volunteers, Kathy and Renee, were able to help us with that. They tackled kale and chard, Monique harvested Hakurei salad turnips (you can eat the root and the greens), Dave took on the spinach, and Carol harvested parsley. We finished off the sweet potatoes and winter squashes, then loaded up Dave’s car. We were all pleased that we were able to harvest this amount and variety in November. We are really working hard to be able to harvest into the fall shoulder season when fresh vegetables are becoming more scarce at the pantries.
Friday while the Fixers were helping Carol and me take the plastic off the Rimol greenhouse.
Melanie was guiding our 3rd graders and teaching them how to successfully plant daffodil bulbs. This was their final farm visit until next Spring. Melanie asked them for a favorite memory from their time with us this season, and guess what? Tasting spinach and Hakurei were their favorites, with Hakurei coming out on top!
See, my reputation for being the Hakurei pusher is working. 🙂
Diane and the crew helped us get more bulbs planted using my new handy electric bulb planting auger. Diane was very skeptical until Bob showed us the drill was going in reverse. Okay, so there is another reason I’m not on the Fix-It Team!
Brigitta took over the bulb planting auger on Saturday, and she too was skeptical until she got the hang of it. Amy kept asking her if she needed a break, but she wouldn’t give it up! It is a bit addictive drilling all those holes!
We had a group of seven strong, determined, women volunteers on Saturday who blew through my list of jobs. Lots of compost spreading, broadforking, and even a little gleaning happened between 8 and 11AM. Thanks, ladies, for this end of the season push.
We will be at the farm next week and then back for some intermittent gleanings, and maybe some work on our, soon to arrive, storage shed kit.
The farm is looking very green and white right now.
Soon it will be all white.
Always grateful,
Theda