Delicious to the end (and beyond)
Mary inspects winter transplants for hones in on a drip tape repair.
Dear Farm Friends,
We are gearing up for a stunningly beautiful market day tomorrow. Despite the late-October date, the trailer will be overflowing with some of the last summer crops like sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and tomatillos. There will be plenty of onions, garlic, and cilantro too. All the greens, including the return of the “mild winter” salad mix, frost-sweetened spinach, lots of kale, chard, cabbage, head lettuces, bok choi, salad mix, spicy mix, arugula, carrots, beets, radishes, salad turnips, potatoes of all colors, more varieties of winter squash, plus cabbage, napa cabbage, cauliflower, and more. The local-farm eating options promise to be delicious right up to the end of market season, and beyond.
And when exactly is the end? We understand if that has been confusing, especially this year. The plan is that the Hamilton Farmers Market runs every Saturday, May through October from here on out, so it should be easy to remember! We pledge to be there rain or shine, even snow….with the one exception that if temperatures will not rise above freezing during the market hours we will have everything at the farmstore instead and try to provide some good incentive for people to come out. Stay tuned to next week’s newsletter for updates, and hope that the forecast moves towards a little gentler by then.
The last of the hot peppers — and some of the sweet peppers (most of which are ripening in one of the farm’s walk-in coolers)— are on todays’ bulk harvest list.
When granted these deliciously beautiful October days of sunshine, we often find ourselves split: on one hand, we delight in the strong light for final growth of everything from winter greens to soil feeding cover crops, the warmth for final ripening of tomatoes and peppers, the general urge to just roll around in all that pleasant golden-ness like Zukes the farm-cat flopping down in one of his many secret stashes of volunteer catnip. It’s intoxicatingly beautiful and we love a gorgeous fall day. We can feel a strong urge to just run away to the hills and find the sunshine in the larches up a canyon. But at the same time we have an eye on the 8-day forecast, a sense of the big change coming soon, and sometimes a hard edge of knowing that we we did not make it out to enjoy our wild surroundings this whole market season and may miss the chance to make the most of the last fall day ourselves, because of the long list of farm urgencies. It’s really bittersweet, and we couldn't continue to farm without your support.
The weather is indeed changing soon, and we are grateful for the team that has been steadily hauling in the storage crops with us: beets, carrots, radishes, potatoes….so much stored solar energy is already tucked away into our walk-in coolers to fuel you through the deep fall and winter, and there are twelve (yikes!) carrot beds yet to come in. As usual, we have prioritized getting that food secured over marketing our winter farm memberships, but rest assured, the winter farm is still on, with signups targeted to open next week.
Mary and courtney haul a tote of bulk beets to a tractor pallet.
If you are new to the farm, or just need a reminder, winter is the “beyond” in delicious to the end of market season and beyond. We believe in providing local food to our community for as much of the year as possible, and over the last several years of stretching the spring and fall edges will they pretty much meet on the back side of the seasons, we’ve been amazed at just what is possible to eat here, from the farm, year round. So even after market ends (whichever week that ends up being), the farmstore stays open, stocked with potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, cabbages, and a surprising number of greens we have found we can keep alive here well into the deep of winter: kale, chard, spinach, mustards, boc choi/ tatsoi stir-fry greens, and chicories. To pick up just what you need, anyone can stop in to purchase at the farmstore. We also offer a winter membership with a weekly pickup (again, stay tuned for signups coming next week, probably after the snow starts and we’ve gotten through the critical items on the freeze-prep list.
The SRF laying hens, with some additional lighting assisted by solar panels in the early morning, are producing more eggs than they have all summer. The farmstore should not be short on eggs for these last weeks of October and the winter to come. You’ll start to see some double yolks in eggs over the next couple of weeks as well since a new flock, has just started laying, right on time.
What to eat on the last best days of fall? Our favorite improvisation this week was satueeing a huge pile of imperfect sweet peppers with loads of garlic and onion in a lot of butter, adding a chopped bunch of kale after they softened, then stirring in the flesh of a leftover roasted Delicata squash and a large dollop of soft cheese and an extra-ripe chopped tomato until it became saucey-ish, and mixing it onto a lentil pasta (think we used a goat cheese but anything that will melt in and get gooey will work great, as would a dollop of tomato sauce instead of the tomato and whatever your favorite pasta is). And of course it’s potato soup season, fajita season with those ripe-red Anaheim peppers, and simple baked-squash-with-butter-and-salt season. Add a side salad of spinach, and you’re all set.
Malaya rests by the barn against a fresh stack of slab wood. She’s been on the bench for about 10 weeks now, recovering from some knee surgery, but in the coming weeks you’ll start to see her wandering the farm again, or at least not on house arrest. It took the tractor bucket to fill in some of her holes around the farm to make sure she didn’t dig during her recovery, but we are pretty confident that she’ll be back to her greeting duties in short order.
We hope to see you at the market this Saturday or at the farmstore anytime this week! Members, remember you have this week and next still to fill your feedbags, and there’s still so much good stuff!
With gratitude,
Mary and Noah, and all of SweetRoot Farm
p.s. As this season transitions, we are also marking this week the end of the life of my (Mary’s) paternal grandmother, the inimitable Norma Jean Robart, who passed away this week after 100 years and three months lived to the fullest. Her August birthday seemed especially appropriate this summer as I harvested flowers while thinking of her….she was as bright and sassy as a “wow zowie sunrise” zinnia, a spark of light and joy. Though she never got to see the farm, she was proud of what we all did here, and she will be missed. Give a bit of love to whoever your living spark is right now.