Happy Halloween

Well Happy Halloween. Nothing really to add just figured I should say happy Halloween.

Rick

Snow

We have our first snow of the year. We still have chard and kale but otherwise we are now almost completely finished with the garden. We did manage to put up quite a bit of squash soup yesterday. I also dug up a rosemary and will attempt to keep it alive inside this winter.

Fall is for cooking.

Jess and I made a great dinner tonight. The first course was the squash soup pictured above. The recipe is from the latest Jamie Oliver book. It is flavored with sage and rosemary from the garden. It also has a little spice from our last jalapeno. It was served with some crusty bread and Parmesan cheese. Jess also made a pot roast from the Alton Brown recipe which we had as our main course. An excellent dinner.

Rick

Earthen Ovens

Not a lot to report in way of the farm, winter is closing in. We had our first frost two nights ago and most of the leaves have fallen. Like any good mammal my thoughts have turned to food and sleep.
In the food direction I have been thinking about building and earthen oven. I am told they are great for baking breads and pizzas. We have dabbling a bit in pizza as of late summer so this might be a nice addition to the farm stead. Appropedia has 2 examples, here and here. I also love the picture and metal hat on this one. This part of the state has lots of clay so I will really have to look into this some more next spring.

Drinking New Belgium's Mothership Wit with dinner, nice belgian funk with good spice flavor.

Ferndale Market

Jess and I stopped by the grand opening of the Ferndale Market in Cannon Falls this evening on the way home from of work. The have a nice selection of local and organic foods including many that are produced locally. We picked up a few items including a Lorentz potato sausage we had with dinner along with some roast home grown potatoes and pan fried volunteer tomato. Not a bad dinner.

Rick

Garlic

Last year was the first year that I planted garlic. I had good success with it. I planted a few different varieties that I purchased from SSE. I originally planted them all in separate rows. However I decided that keeping them all separate during drying and then planting them seprately again was more work thatn it was worth. So instead I mearly planted those that did the best and I figure that over time my garlic will trend twords the species that does best here. So far it looks like mostly purple varieties. All in all I planted 90 cloves so I am hoping to have plenty of garlic next year. Will have to get a garlic roaster I guess.

Rick

I have been watching the happenings of the financial world lately with the detached fascination usually reserved for horrible bus crashes. Unfortunately I am currently seated on the bus, Seated too far from the drivers to truly prevent the disaster if I was even capable of such a thing. Instead I find I have no choice but to watch it all unfold and hope chance and preparation will save me. I feel like I should be telling everyone I know what little I know about growing tomatoes and beans. I know that is fairly ridiculous. I know it is a combination of fear and a certain desire I have to test my own limits that makes me think about disaster as much as I do. I hope.

Good luck
Rick

PS lost 20 % of my retirement money in the last 2 weeks, how about you guys??

Personal food sovereignty. That is the term I have recently encountered that best describes what we are about here on our little plot. With the shape of the world economy today and the impending contraction of energy world wide it just seems prudent to be able to feed oneself regardless of happenings in far off places. I have recently been looking for what exactly my motivations are with regards to efforts here at the farm. Cost is a hard issue to argue, I could probably earn enough money at a second job to pay for the food we eat rather than attempting to grow it. Also I could probably specialize in one crop and sell the surplus to earn enough to feed us. But either of these approaches require that I rely on conditions that are not sufficiently under my control. Growing food also has conditions that I can not control, Frost, hail, insects, disease, ect. But I can control for those conditions and if I am smart I can mitigate there effect on us. Howeve conditions off the farm I can not control or mitigate so I choose to control what I can and grow my own food.

Current happenings

So lots going on here at the farm. Not as much as during the height of the summer but the days are getting shorter. So I guess there is still the same density of work after all. I have been getting things ready for fall mostly. I am thinking we should have some form of harvest party soon.

Rick