Fall is decidedly here, a bit earlier than we would have liked. Last night was our first frost advisory of the fall, and there was a rush to protect and grab out of the garden what we could. Fall is one of the busiest times for any farm of any size. It's harvest season, so it's time to grab everything out of the fields or gardens and get it put up for the year. Our mini urban farm is no exception. Since late summer, we've been drying and freezing and canning everything we possibly can from the garden, and now, most of it is in (still getting some green beans). Apples are in, and I'm in the midst of putting up enough to last us through the year. My son and I went to Schultz's Fruitridge Farm in Mattawan, and we got a half bushel of honeycrisps, a half bushel of galas, a peck of mutsus, and a peck of jonagolds. This blend of apples has made for great apple pie jam, apple pie filling, and apple butter. The dried apples have survived the kids so far, but I won't bet on that staying true for long. I have hidden some deep in the deep freezer in hopes of being able to line my apple pies with them or cut them up into homemade granola. We are overrun with squash, so I have been making dried pureed squash and squash butter, and as good as the squash butter was, I have to make more of that. One pint of that plus one cup of cream and two eggs make a pumpkin pie, supposedly, which I haven't tried yet but want to. Too bad I can't can it and have to freeze it instead. Either way, we have more than enough squash to make more of that as well as pressure can some for various recipes this winter. The ducks have been very happy with the cooler weather, and Petunia is still laying an egg a day while the two Rouen ladies just haven't been laying at all. Petunia is quite the vacuum, eating constantly if she's awake, which makes sense considering how many eggs a week she's putting out. She's been skipping the pool some days, but the other day, it was cool, and I was out there long enough that she decided to take a quick dip and get cleaned up in between voraciously eating everything in sight. The rains have started really hitting, though, in a way we like to call the Michigan Monsoon Season: Fall Edition, and frosts are around the corner. The temperatures are slowly trending down, and it's already hunting season. It's time for comfort foods, more canning, and putting the gardens to bed. That's coming up this weekend, the beginning of the serious effort to put the gardens to bed for the year while building soil.
We utilize a blend of no-dig methods, and this fall, we are trying the Bokashi style of composting (in an effort to control the smell and make it easier for me to do). My husband will be creating more wood chips this fall as well as running our piles and piles of leaves through the chipper to break them down a bit before putting them on the many garden beds. Ultimately, we use a variation of the lasagna gardening method and put layers of different soil builders down, which really cuts down on weeds and gets us seriously amazing yields. The Chesnok garlic I ordered is coming in tomorrow, and that's getting planted in a new bed this weekend. It's time to get that in before the real frosts hit, and we are planting much more garlic this year so that we truly have all of our own garlic for a whole year. While we have fallen short of having a year's worth of food for the whole family this year, we have far more in storage than we did a year ago, and the kids are already happy with a lot of what we've put up. Here's hoping we at least survive the winter with two teenage boys!
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CarinaI'm a 40s something disabled mom living the life on our small urban farm. Archives
April 2022
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