My weather app tells me it got down to 17 Wednesday night – brrrrrr! We saw it coming though and harvested a bunch of roots ahead of time. We covered the greens and what we couldn’t fit in storage, even though everything outside had already survived 17 degrees (barely, and with a snow blanket). This time there was no threat of snow, and it felt very luxurious to be harvesting and covering ahead of a big freeze in the high 40s with a mild wind on Tuesday. The sun even came out halfway through, which I felt truly legitimized my shorts wearing. I stubbornly stuck with shorts the next two freezing days in my attempts to be a true New Englander, but fortunately didn’t need to do much outside.
Other than tend to the chickens that is, who I should mention have more than earned their New England stripes. Talk about hardy! Those ladies have a nice greenhouse coop they could spend their days in but they were out all day Wednesday pecking around in the stiff north wind on a day I don’t think reached above freezing. The greenhouse attached to our house gets up to 90 even on the cold days as long as the sun is out. With more ventilation in their coop, it’s probably 70s in there…which sounds pretty good to me and where I’d be hanging out if I were a chicken.
While the field greens have seen better days, the tunnel greens are flourishing. SO MUCH KALE! Don’t forget to add some green (a lot?) to your Thanksgiving table with our perfect kale. The lettuce is looking great too, and I’ve finally deemed it worthy of harvesting. I’d say they’re just under full-sized, but I need to start moving the 300 or so heads we have (almost) ready to go before the cold gets them. And we have quite the delicious lineup of roots and fruits to choose from A (apples) to W (watermelon radishes). So many in fact that they barely fit on our 20 foot long racks!
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.