Hello Fall!

A lot has been happening at the farm since I last posted…

The goats have been milked almost daily for a few weeks and we have been making soft cheese from the milk. It is really delicious!

Becca and John milking one of our goats!

We have also been saving lots of different seeds from our produce and flowers so we can use them next year. The process of preparing seed for saving is usually just making sure the seeds have fully dried out so they don’t get moldy when they are stored.  For tomatoes the process is a little different. The seeds need to be fermented and get moldy for a week or so to break down the outer, gel-like coating on the seeds and to kill some of the diseases that could be on the seed. Then they get rised off and dried out and stored in a paper envelope like all the other seeds.  If you’ve ever sliced into a tomato you know how many seeds it contains and with a germination rate of around 50% hopefully we won’t have to buy tomato seeds next year!

Finally, it’s the last week of CSA pickup and we created a survey for our members to collect some feedback on how they think the season has gone. We would also like our readers feedback if you would like to share it. The survey can be found HERE,  we appreciate it!

Here is last week’s newsletter.

This week’s newsletter can be found here.

Volunteer Day

This past week, we had the help of some great students from the Vermont Commons School. They came by in the afternoon and helped harvest pounds and pounds of tomatoes. They also helped weed the asparagus field so we can get it ready for winter. Some of the students with allergies got to learn more about our seed saving project and asked some really smart questions about farming and its importance in our lives. It probably doesn’t need to be mentioned that they loved checking out the goats or that we greatly appreciated all their help! We hope to have them back soon!

A few of our student volunteers from the VT Commons School with the fruits of their labor!

For anyone interested in the CSA next season, check out the interest form and get on our waiting list!

Also, here is the newsletter for this week. Thanks for your support this season!

Fall is just around the corner

If the temperatures this past week are any indication, summer is not over yet! Unfortunately, days in the 90s are not good for the cool weather crops like cabbage, broccoli and some of the greens. Still, we planted some seeds for a few different fall crops like kohlrabi, kale, cauliflower, and romaine. Some of these will have enough time to grow before winter and others will be stored over the winter to continue growing in the spring.

Other than that, clean-up continues and planning for next year has begun.

View the newletter from last week Here.