Harvest Newsletter

Greetings from the Garden!  This week’s CSA box has tomatoes, potatoes, onions, garlic, cucumber, zucchini, kohlrabi, lettuce, basil and parsley.   Field Notes.  People often wonder what I mean when I say nearly every week that planting continues.  Well this week I have a photo of several of the fall greens.  Ken finds that in August it is often easier to start greens indoors where he can regulate temperature and moisture.  Another advantage of transplanting …

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Steam Juicing Culled Apples

When growing food, one always has some less than perfect fruit or vegetables.  With apples some drop, some have flaws, some have insect damage or bruised portions.  Once an apple has hit the ground, I steam juice it.  Cooking apples in a steam juicer will pasteurize them.  Of course we also make fresh apple juice from other culled apples.   Processing apples in the steam juicer takes one and a half hours of cooking time.  …

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A Bit of Nostalgia as Blackberry Season and Summer Wane

Each year when I start picking blackberries I think of my maternal grandmother, Flora E. Patch.  When I knew her she was a farm wife.  She and my grandfather had a dairy farm in Vermont.  She grew up in a farm family and as a young single woman she taught school.  My grandfather was the older brother of one of her students.  After they married they lived in a small town and had a coal …

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