Yikes! Was your house rocking like ours was Wednesday night? We ended up with 2 little ones in our bed. The wind was WILD. Fun fact: when Mass Save inspected our farmhouse (from 1770) that we rent, the guy was using his thermal gun to confirm how awful our insulation was (not good) and noticed that we had hurricane bracing in the house. In one of the histories I read about this farm, it mentioned the original farmhouse on the hill from 1745 blew down in the 1815 hurricane. Live and learn! The extra support doesn’t help with keeping the draft out, but at least the house is still standing after a bomb cyclone.
I went out to inspect the damage to the garden the next morning and was impressed that the tunnel was also still standing even though the power had been cut to it, presumably from water tripping the GFCI outlet. There is an inflater that constantly blows air in between two layers of plastic…except when it doesn’t have power! Being inflated makes the plastic nice and taut so it doesn’t catch in the wind – I went to great lengths this winter to ensure it kept power during the outages. Seems like maybe I didn’t have to, but better safe than sorry I guess.
Anyway, the tunnel was still standing, but all the cover crop work we had foolishly done (in hindsight) the day before was undone. The 2.95″ of rain (according to our neighbor’s rain gauge) we had in about 8 hours had completely uncovered the seed and washed some of it away. That and one of the tomato rows blew down. Again. We get a lot of wind up here. All things considered, I can live with a few less tomatoes in mid-October and a day of deja vu re-raking our beds to cover the cover crop seed!
Our house isn’t the only thing rocking up on the hill. The garden continues to pump out abundant deliciousness despite the few frosts we’ve had now. Even the tomatoes and peppers are still alive (as of Saturday evening, feeling like another cold one tonight). I know it won’t last forever, but it sure is fun while it lasts and the fun may last a little longer if I’m not too late planting these greens in the tunnel. With such a long list, it’s easy to overlook a few gems amongst the fall staples like butternut squash, potatoes, and all the frost sweetened greens. Specifically I’m talking about the fried green tomatoes and pea tendrils. Both of these items have a short window in which they’re available – don’t let that window close before getting some!
Veggie Ordering and Pickup Procedures: Put your veggie orders in online before 8pm Sunday. The website is a little buggy so if you don’t see a wide variety of items or you see items out of stock, try refreshing your browser. Also confirm on checkout that you have the correct number of each item in your cart. The two pickup windows are working well, so we’ll keep it going. Choose your pickup window while checking out online: 1230-2pm and 4-5pm Monday on the farm at 64 Potter Hill Rd in Grafton. Pickups are in the long white garage on the left across from the beat up tan and red barn at the crest of the hill.