Farm Report 9/12/22 - Growing with the help of Morning Glory

I have been adding photos of the beautiful flower bouquets made by our volunteers to my weekly report for most of the summer. I would like to give a shout-out to Morning Glory Natural Foods store in downtown Brunswick–the destination of these flowers and a Partner with us in feeding our community! In 2019, Morning Glory came on board as one of Growing to Give’s most generous business partners. Their support continues to increase, and their dedicated staff help tell our story.

Morning Glory has been at their downtown location for over 40 years. Owners Susan Tarpinian, her partner Craig, and son Toby are passionate about organic, locally sourced food and believe that quality food should be available for everyone in our community. With their wonderful and knowledgeable staff, they are making that vision a reality.

In addition to their generous financial support, Morning Glory allows us to sell flower bouquets for direct donation from mid summer through fall at the checkout counter, even though space there is at a premium! Stop by on Friday afternoons for a freshly picked bouquet (suggested donation $10) and shop for all your food and wine needs for the weekend. Help us show our gratitude for all that Morning Glory Natural Foods does to support a healthy and vibrant community.

We had another bountiful harvest again this week–over 1,000 pounds donated, which edges us towards 12,000 so far this year. The Monday gleaners came on Tuesday and braved the still wet conditions from the inch and a half of rain we got on Labor Day. A few of them walked away with squash prizes. Don’t they look happy?!

We have had so much to harvest this week I’ve been asking volunteers to help out with gleaning. Our Friday volunteers jumped in and helped glean green beans, peppers and tomatoes, so we would not waste anything in the fields. Green beans are so labor intensive! It was great having the extra hands to harvest.

Luke, Olivia, Paul, and Grace, all Bowdoin students, came this week to volunteer. Thanks to all of you for giving up some of your precious weekend to come and volunteer.

Our Friday was crazy busy as usual. We had our group of now 4th graders from the Waldorf school come back for a Monarch butterfly lesson with Carrie. Carrie took them around the farm to let them see what has been growing since we last saw them at the end of the spring. Carrie has been very excited to share an experience she had tagging Monarch butterflies. So after a very detailed explanation of how and why we were tagging, the kids set off! Around the farm they ran in pairs, sharing nets. Three Monarchs were successfully tagged and released. I believe no butterflies were harmed in the process of this endeavor! I was able to take this photograph of a tagged butterfly resting after being tagged. This was so exciting for everyone at the farm on Friday, adults and children alike.

Shanti and Anna also came to help us on Friday. They helped by gleaning carrots and were so happy to find so many big ones. Shanti thought he could hide behind a handful, but came out to show off his carrots in a photo with his Mom. We love these little helpers.

The Fabulous Fixers were fixing away, but I noticed that I had not gotten the memo. When I asked them about not getting the blue shirt memo, I was told that I needed to stand out and my orange shirt was a power color! Boy, do I like this team of Fixers!

We accomplished a couple of big tasks with our Saturday volunteers. Cleaning out more tomato vines, planting lettuce, and sowing cover crop mixes. Carrie wanted to experiment with sowing a cover crop mix directly into squash vines still in the garden. The squash needed a little more time so everyone helped weed, sow the seeds and then rake them in the best they could amongst the vines. This way we are ahead 2 weeks with getting the seeds in the ground.

There seems to be a green tomato soup contest going on since Tom (a Fabulous Fixer) saw the big crate of green tomatoes and asked if I had ever tried green tomato soup. I asked for a recipe, and he of course said “Google it!” I forced many volunteers to take some and hopefully try making soup. My “Google it” brought up a vegan green tomato stew that I will try since I have all those ingredients on hand and fresh cilantro in my own garden.

Carrie and I arrived at the farm one morning to these elaborate very large spider webs. I was wondering why now, so I looked up spider webs in Autumn. There are a couple of reasons, one being the nights are now longer, so they have more time to spin. Since I don’t have arachnophobia, and Carrie is not afraid of anything in the natural world, we ran from web to web admiring the spiders’ artwork. How lucky we are to arrive at the farm each day and watch what has been going on while we were away.