November

It's November and the weather is beautiful. This last week we had our killing frost. Bye Bye Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant. It's been good to know ya'll and I'll see you again in March when I starts planting your little seeds in preparation for the months to come. In the planting world we're almost done. Half the Onions are in the ground with the other half to be finished this week. Ten rows of 1300 makes 13,000 onion plants, with all the Garlic added, we have more than 20,000 Alliums in the ground. Alliums are a wonderful test of a Farmers patience. Plant them, wait 8 months of tending to them, weeding, watering, watching them grow then swell their bulbs and in a short quick 3 week period they all come out of the ground for sale thru the summer.

This week at Market it was really good; busy and sales going very well, coming home with only a bit of Broccoli. The Orange Cauliflower sold really well along with the Romanesco. These days we don't get as many" how did the Cauliflower get that color" inquiry's. People thinking that we had been up to hijinks or something. My favorite yarn to spin is to tell them that you go out on a full moon night with a can of cheese whizz and inject it into them and voila'! It used to get downright annoying how many times we had to answer that question, and the vendors next to us were probably so tired of hearing the story that they wished I'd stop growing it. On some days I would be tired of answering the question and just point over to my neighbor and they'd tell the yarn.

Carrots? yes we are now on the hook to provide Chico with the World's Sweetest Carrots. This week we told all that asked we'd have Carrots next week, so we got some diggin to do. But it shouldn't be a problem as we have a full crew still on hand and next years apprentices just came on farm and will be here to help as well. Which is a good thing, as I'm really busy with projects such as rebuilding Greenhouse #1 which is now a relic as it's been up since '00. I must say that I did a pretty cattywhompus job putting it up. It functioned well but looked as if somebody was out of wack when they put it up, which I might rightly have been, having just aquired this place and was putting it all together with little help and less experience. Then I 'm putting a cover over the Hog pen as I hate it turning to a mud bog when it rains. They don't seem to mind ( cept' of course standing in cold mud musn't be fun) but I 'm putting up a simple hopefully windproof tunnel cover. Self designed and engineered but many of the principles are well developed from experience. One semi new one so it all could turn out to be a mess. So I've got a very busy week then next I get to take off for my solo getaway. 10 more days and I'll be diving in Cozumel. Yes I know not very "Green" of me jetting off, but if I don't I'll go stark raving bonkers.