>Summer Week 20: End of Summer

>THIS WEEK’S SUBSCRIBER MENU:
• Sugar Pie Pumpkin (which can be carved and eaten after Halloween)
• Potatoes
• Sweet Corn or Tomatoes
• Broccoli
• Arugula
• Lettuce
• Collard Greens

FRUIT SHARES:
Fruit Shares are finished for the year

COMING SOON:
Winter Shares start next week!
This is the end of our summer season. Thank you for being with us through the last five months!

There are no eggs. Our days are getting shorter, and the chicken egg-laying cycle is dictated by the amount of daylight they see. They gear down in the fall, stop making eggs so they can exchange their feathers for a new suit, and rest up for spring, when the daylength and food supply is increasing, and the conditions are better for raising children. There’s a reason why Easter is about eggs. Right now the hens are looking terrible. They look like they’ve been through a plucking machine, and there are feathers everywhere. They really need their new plumage soon. It takes a lot of protein to grow new feathers AND make an egg every day. Add that to the loss of so many hens to the coyotes this year and you can see the problem. We’re lucky if we get 1/2 dozen eggs a day, and we eat about 8 a day. If you have an egg card, you can keep it until next year and start using it again in the spring, even if it says it expires in December.

This has been a trying year for farms and farmers all around us. The cold, wet weather that persisted into June made it difficult, if not impossible to plant anything on time. The fruit growers were hurt by the lack of pollination in the spring because the temperatures were too cold for bees and flowers to set fruit. It has been somewhat reassuring to find that ALL farmers have been in the same predicament this season, but still, we are hoping for longer season next year.

We are thankful that the sweet corn finally found its’ sugar, even if it was the end of October. Most of the winter squashes finally ripened, fully a month later than usual, but better than staying green. We have tomatoes and it’s nearly the first week of November. At least the weather had straightened out by the winter-planting cutoff date, so we have plenty of crops to take us through the cold months.

But, we feel like we did a good job providing food for you. Even if the flower garden never grew taller than 6″ before blooming (we now have a beautiful patch of sunflowers though) and most of our pumpkins are still green, we managed to find plenty to harvest every week, through the strange weather patterns, and there will be plenty more to come in the next few months. We feel so fortunate to be able to provide for all of you, and nourish your families with these delicious, healthy vegetables. And we are fortunate to have all of you supporting us throughout the year(s).

Thank you so much.
Shelley, Mike, Della, Cosmo, and Ethan