Looks like the forecast is calling for around 40 degrees nights this week. Enjoy the tender basil now, before it’s only a memory. Ditto for the lemon verbena, it’s excellent steeped in hot water. Drink as a tea with a stir of honey or chill to enjoy.

Come bury a seed vessel with us! littleGrasse Foodworks will join the Seed Bank Project of shareholder and ceramicist, Rachael Jones. As Rachael explains, “Each bank is meant to ignite a dialogue about the intimacy of place, our emotional connection to it, and evoke a curiosity of the interconnectedness between us, and the ecology of the place we call home, or places we inhabit through a common burial ritual that transcends most cultures”. This burial is part of the final Grow and Tell event of the season at the farm on Saturday October 9th, 10am-noon.  Find full details at the TAUNY events calendar here, along with the link to pre-register. Learn more about the Seed Bank Project, with map, photos and details of the clay vessels at her site here.

Just a note for those who enjoy visiting the chickens. We’ve been glad to tend them this summer, watch their antics and feed them garden culls. They will be around for about two more weeks, and then they will be processed for our freezer. If you have kids that look forward to seeing them, you have a bit of time to let them know what’s happening and why they won’t see them in the last half of October.

The tomato season was a great success and now it’s time to move into the fall crops. In addition to the 6 weeks of full access tomatoes for our free-choice shares, the Homestead households put up bushels in many forms, from canned, frozen, juiced and dried. Tomato season, as with many crops in the north, is a brief, fantastic time to savor.

The ever popular delicata squash is available in the washstand. We pre-roasted a batch and filled them with creamy seasoned black beans and topped with cheese for a final bake.

Tips for Success

• The right tool makes a job easier such as the digging fork provided to loosen the soil before pulling the carrots. There’s also a red handled trowel by the scallions to ease the harvest of that crop.
• The handwashing water gets chillier as the temperatures dip, but it’s still essential to wash or sanitize your hands at the start of every farm visit.

The purple carrots are best-suit to roasting, the raw flavor is much less sweet than its orange cousins. There’s many colors and varieties to come throughout October.

Crops Available

• Arugula
• Beets, golden and candy striped
• Carrots, Deep Purple*
• Celery stalks
• Cutting flowers
• Hot peppers, multiple varieties
• Kale, curly or dinosaur
• Leeks
• Lettuce greens, buttercrunch only
• Mixed lettuce greens
• Mixed salad greens
• Onions
• Potatoes (starting Tuesday)*
• Rainbow chard
• Red radishes
• Scallions
• Tomatillos
• Tomatoes, cherry and paste
• Turnips
• Winter squash: multiple varieties

• Cilantro
• Dill
• Fennel seeds
• Lemon balm
• Lemon verbena
• Lime basil
• Mint
• Oregano
• Rosemary
• Sage
• Thyme
• Tulsi holy basil
• Winter savory

The husk of an immature tomatillo on the first day of autumn

Campfire weather,
-Bob & Flip