Giant Daikon

I was just out in the field and I found this giant daikon radish that was out there still!  Daikon and carrots for dinner tonight!  Unfortunately the picture I took to illustrate turned out a bit blurry, however, I still felt the need to share.

Real Pumpkin Pie, Not From the Can

This Thanksgiving I made a couple pumpkin pies with pumpkins from the farm.  It was a smashing sucess.  I am not a great recipe follower when it comes to flavoring pies and I tend to forget to write things down or measure.  So here is a recipe that I found, not the one I used.  I believe I used nutmeg and allspice.  And you can use honey or substitute brown sugar, though probably not is the same proportions.  For those of you with a Winter Produce Share you will find pumpkin in your December share.  Thanksgiving is not the only time to try making a pumpkin pie!   

 

Fresh Pumpkin Pie  

Ingredients

• 1 medium sugar pumpkin
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch single crust pie
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup honey, warmed slightly
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. Cut pumpkin in half, and remove seeds. Lightly oil the cut surface. Place cut side down on a jelly roll pan lined with foil and lightly oiled. Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) until the flesh is tender when poked with a fork. Cool until just warm. Scrape the pumpkin flesh from the peel. Either mash, or puree in small batches in a blender.
2. In large bowl, blend together 2 cups pumpkin puree, spices, and salt. Beat in eggs, honey, milk, and cream. Pour filling into pie shell.
3. Bake at 400 degrees F ( 205 degrees C) for 50 to 55 minutes, or until a knife inserted 1 inch from edge of pie comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

Harvest Days

The goal on the farm for the next couple weeks is to harvest everything that is still out there.  We have rows and rows of beets and carrots which we harvest and stack in our root cellar, storing them for the winter months.  There are also still cabbages and leeks in the field as well as the greens that are still showing up in the share.  Other than that much of the share is now being pulled out of the root cellar, instead of the ground.  The garlic in the share this week is strong in flavor and potency.  It was planted last November, harvested in July and left to dry in the barn since then.  Last week we cut all the garlic down and sorted it into groups.  The largest bulbs with the most cloves went in one bucket, to be separated into individual cloves and planted to grow more garlic.  Then we planted most of that garlic.  The rest of the bulbs were cut and placed in buckets to distribute to you all for the next couple weeks.  In the share this week we included sweet potatoes.  Sweet potatoes are a hot-climate crop and I was excited to embrace the challenge of growing them in a cool climate with a short growing season.  There are so many things that can be done with these little gems.  I am excited that they were such a success. 

Here on the farm we are harvesting and putting the farm to sleep.  We have one more week of CSA distribution for the main season.  We are all sold out of our Winter Vegetable and Egg Shares and are very excited about the Winter Shares.  If you are interested in a Winter Chicken Share or a Winter Meat Share and you have questions please let us know!

Winter Shares

Just a reminder that the deadline to sign up for the winter share AND receive a 5% discount is coming up on October 31st! 

Click here for a registration form and prices!

If you have any questions feel free to send me an email. 

A Look Back

About a year ago Kevin and I moved our farm here to this land that has become Groundworks Farm.  There was nothing here and we set about the task of building a farm, something that Kevin had done once before but on a smaller scale.  

First we spread manure, then we had the ground plowed and we planted cover crops of oats and rye.  We built the greenhouse next to our house, and planted garlic.  We made plans and reorganized the barn.  We built the cooler by our house.  We welcomed 11 piglets onto the farm.  We began to plan and map out the future of the farm and we went out seeking members, people to grow the food for.  

Then spring arrived and everything that had been a plan began to take real form.  Baby chicks arrived, and more pigs.  I spent hours, and days in the greenhouse, seeding tiny plants that would grow into tomato and eggplants, lettuce and kale, everything that you have received in your share for the past 5 months came from tiny seeds that I planted in the ground or into trays and then transplanted out into the fields.  June arrived and with the chance of a frost well behind us we raced to transplant all of the frost sensitive crops. From there on we weeded, harvested and cared for the vegetables all season.  Now the season is coming to a close and we are preparing the ground for another season.  We are turning in old crops, pulling up plants and planting cover crops.  As I write this, despite the encroaching darkness Kevin is out on the tractor, turning up ground that we grew on this year so we can plant cover crops on it and rejuvenate the land for future use.  The farm, which seemed a year ago like a piece of land, now feels like a living thing.  I understand so much more about it now than I did then.  I cannot even begin to think how much more this land can continue to teach us.

Frost on the Farm

These pretty little flowers survived two nights of frost

The frost finally arrived, blackening basil plants, leaving the flower garden a bit darker, and killing off several other things as well.  However, most crops affected by the frost were nearing the end of their lives anyway.  The tomatoes, already diseased and rotting, were already begging us to pull them out of the ground.  The eggplants have had a good solid run and we hope you have enjoyed them and found many ways to cook them. Prior to the frost we stripped the eggplant plants of their fruits as well as the peppers.  We covered some of the basil and brought out a large cover to protect the greens for the winter share, which are spring seedlings right now.  I woke in the morning to a frost covered world, but it seems to have come at a perfect time.  Now the air is crisp and the sun is shining.  The mosquitoes are nowhere to be seen.  Today we dug up sweet potatoes, beautiful treasures that have been hidden under the soil all summer.  Then we dug the celeriac, or celery root, and took it to the root cellar.  As I type this I can smell celery from the scent the plants left on my hands.  We continue to harvest and fill our root cellar with delicious storage crops for the late fall and winter.       

Potato Digging and Dreaming

Our main focus this week has been harvesting potatoes.  Back in May we planted the potatoes, making small holes in the ground and dropping in seed potatoes cut to the size of a golf ball.  These little pieces or potato sprout to form a plant and then many more potatoes below the ground. The rule of thumb is that you should yield about 10 lbs of potatoes for every pound that you plant.  We grew ours under plastic mulch for weed control and this week we pulled the mulch up, drove a tractor implement through which stirs up the ground and then we crawled through on our hands and knees digging up the potatoes.  There is a very simple machine, a potato harvester which will dig up the potatoes and lay them on the surface of the soil.  We have been dreaming about owning one this week as we crawled through the potatoes, yet the time was well spent. As we pulled back the soil and placed the potatoes on the surface we began to discuss plans for the future, what kind of farm we want to have, what we have done well this season, what we would like to change.  As we crawl along in the soil, watching the leaves slowly change colors and seeing the first geese make their way south, I found that while we would have spent less time with a fancy machine to do all the work, it is nice to have a good space for dreaming and it seems the potatoes are our dreaming space.