Root crops and débutantes

The CSA newsletter for this week is posted online here. It features a recipe suggestion from one of our CSA members for eggplant enchiladas, a good way to use the surplus of eggplant we have this week. Thanks for sharing this Cyndee, it looks tasty.

The best part of the day was harvesting carrots during a brief little spit of rain. Not even enough to call rain really. But it was something.

And here are some other miscellaneous scenes from the farm today. I plotted out the beehives, visually, because it’s nearing cold weather tuck-in time and we want to make sure the bees have reserves enough to overwinter, and I’m a nerd. Each hive has plenty of full honeycomb, and we won’t harvest from them this year. Anna Karenina and Lara have 9+ honeycombs (not including brood nest), Lolita (our most dissident hive) has 11+ honeycombs. The trees are doing their spectacular showy thing. The black walnuts are raining down something fierce. I’m collecting and hulling as fast as I can. The birds are out and about these days, debs that they are. We’re still keeping them in the tractor at night and every morning we move the tractor through the grape vines – but now, during the day, we keep the tractor pop-door open. So they are in the spruce trees, and parading through the grapevines, chomping on the grape leaves, eating bugs. Very merry. As long as we keep them safe from weasels, neighbor dogs, and bigger birds..