Ahhh, fall

We just love fall around here for so many reasons. The farm starts to slow. The weather shifts. The trees change colors and our valley is full of oranges, yellows and reds. We are canning and putting away fruit and veggies for the winter. All of the storage crops are harvested for the year including potatoes, winter squash and onions. Farmers’ markets come to an end, which gives us a needed break from waking up at 4am twice a week for 8 months! Stew hens and meat chickens are butchered and thrown in the freezer. Firewood is delivered. Tea consumption goes up. And we are allowed more free time to reflect on the past season — our successes, challenges, goals for 2010 — and we are freed up to spend more time pursuing other interests, which is a nice respite from the mania of the growing season. We are continuing through the winter this year with our winter CSA program (already full — wow!) and we will continue to provide produce to stores and restaurants as availability allows. We are excited about the winter CSA program this year and hope this is something that can grow in the coming years. Once again, we offer all of you Barking Moon Farm faithful friends and customers our deepest gratitude and thanks for your support of our farm this year.

Pumpkins and various winter squash.

I love rutabaga -- a stalwart vegetable!

Red & yellow storage onions curing in the barn.

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Where did September go?

It has been awhile since I’ve posted. The busyness of life got a hold of me. So, what’s new at Barking Moon Farm?

Let’s recap:

1. We just ventured into the last 5 weeks of our CSA program for 2009.

2. Traveled to Springfield, Illinois to present at the national Small Farms conference (this is for my other job as an Extension agent). Interns successfully ran the farm and Josh telecommuted for the first time ever! Met a ton of southern US extension agents and farmers. Very cool.

3. Finished the last greenhouse seeding for 2009! Woohoo!

4. Harvested hundreds and hundreds of pounds of winter squash. Pumpkins are next.

5. Began harvesting the first of the fall crops — cauliflower, broccoli, kale, napa cabbage.

6. Prayed for rain a couple of times. It is way too dry here!

7. Started promoting our 2009- 2010 winter CSA program. A blog post to come on that.

8. Hit our highest ever monthly gross sales in August.

9. Talked to 114 folks about our farm at the 2009 Eat Local dinner at Roxy Ann Winery, while they ate our salad greens.

10. Josh gave a tour to 25 enthusiastic folks on the Ashland Food Cooperative farm tour.

11. Got really excited about winter!

12. Broilers are growing fast and doing well. They are grazing on old spring kale beds. Should be ready for slaughter in 2 weeks. No predator losses yet.

13. Survived the first power outage of 2009 on an extremely hot day. It was quick and the cooler and water started working promptly after about 2 hours.

14. Discovered that recordkeeping is key for success.

15. Finally, amazed at the amount of food we have produced on this farm in such a short period of time. Next year’s goal: weigh every single harvested crop for a total weight of food harvested and sold.

That’s about all I can remember from the last few weeks. Here are some pictures taken at our leased property the other day.

View of zinnias and fall cabbage.

Everett eating daikon straight from the field!

Tender fall kale and rutabaga.

Farmer Josh sampling daikon.

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New Pup

I’m at the computer while also looking out at an almost full moon half shrouded in clouds and a silhouette of pine trees. It is beautiful!

The season is winding down quite nicely for us. Josh actually has time now to be a normal person–a person that has leisure time. It takes some getting used to–we didn’t know what to do at first, but we are pretty happy about late mornings and slow living. We have one more farmers’ market and then we will just be down to a few more harvests for restaurants and grocery stores (although Josh has plans for an Ashland winter buying club).

As if we couldn’t rest for just a minute, we took home a three month old pup the other night–a purebred yellow lab we named Barley. Here’s a pic. He’s sweet, cute and mellow. We like him a lot. Everett seems to be taking a liking to him too, especially when they go outside and play together. Luna, our farm’s namesake, is being a good sport…slowly warming up to him. Right now, he is a nuisance to her, but she’s an old curmudgeon of a dog, so I think she’ll find a warm spot in her heart for him.

Here’s a nice pic of the spot behind the barn where Josh recently moved our laying hens (we’ve got 150 new laying hen chicks in the brooder right now, but that’s for another post! :))

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