Friday, January 1, 2010

To a new year...

I see that I stopped writing in August...in my head it was September, when the semester picked up and I realized I'd bitten off more than I could chew!

But that's ok. You can always go back.

The summer was a sad one, by farming standards. Worst season in 40 years for veggie farmers, with tomato blight and just cold wet everywhere. Terrible time for squash and, really, anything that needed to grow and ripen. Greens coming out of our ears. Healthy, yes. But we get sick of greens by the end of June, and there wasn't a lot to take over this season!

My brother and I went out to Chestnut Farms a few months back, on a perfect day as usual. The meat farm did quite well with the wet weather...never had the cows had such a lush, green season. The grass just kept a'coming and the pigs were in hog heaven in the mud. We had some goat meat this year, and the goat meat curry tasted delicious!

This year I'm going to do something different. The veggie farm share includes a tremendous amount of food, and it requires a couple of good cooks and a few helpful others to eat it. I'm going to scale back a bit and start a plot at Codman Community Farms this summer, I hope. There will be limited lettuce! And a lot more of the bok choy and greens I like. It's cold, cold January and I'm dreaming of stinky manure and little green things popping out of the ground. On to the seed catalogs!

I'm hoping to learn a bit more about heirloom seeds and possibly seed saving. Been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle very slowly (we're in tomato season now), and really loved the information about seed saving and rare breeds. If you don't grow a breed, it will die out in a few years. Seems a huge loss. And the loss is usually just because something isn't shelf stable, not because it's not delicious. Let us preserve the delicious.

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