It’s harvest time!! September is the start of the most intensive harvest time of the year, usually beginning with Potatoes. We’ve been working on harvesting our Potato crop for the last few weeks using a tractor-driven Potato digger, which unearths the tubers, shakes off most of the soil, and gently drops them back onto the ground to be packed into harvest crates by our farm crew. You can see it in action here. 

Once the Potato harvest is finished for the year, we’ll move into the Winter Squash field and the Sweet Potato field and start harvesting the bounty there, which will keep us busy for another few weeks. 

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In other good news, Friday was the annual hay pyramid construction day, which feels a little like playing Legos, but on a grownup scale. After construction, we tested it out and can confidently report that hay pyramids are fun for all ages.

Hay pyramid funtime is free for everyone, and you can play joyfully knowing that this play space is ecologically friendly—the hay bales get reused as pathway mulch once every last drop of fun has been squeezed out of them by the local youths.  

And in even better news, it’s also Apple Cider Donut season around here! Our farm-raised, free range Donuts, pastured only on the cinnamon sugar beaches of Langwater Pond, are available every weekend from now until Christmas.

And if you’re decorating for Fall, we have mums in every color of the rainbow, decorative grasses, ornamental peppers & kale that are super cool, asters, zinnias, sunflowers & more. 

Our next Farm Pizza Night will be Friday, August 26th from 4-8pm.

We’ll have Cheese, Pepperoni, and a TBA Seasonal Special featuring fresh-picked veggies straight from our fields. More info will be available in our weekly newsletter as we get closer to the date.

The farm fields are moving from summer production mode into fall & winter downtime mode, as we harvest the last bits of our favorite summer crops, and then harrow the spent plants into the soil so their nutrients can be recycled by next year’s crops.

We’re seeding cover crops as we go, too. Cover crops are like placeholder crops that we don’t harvest, but that help lock nutrients into the soil, and prevent erosion from fall rains and winter snowmelt. Cover cropping isn’t the most exciting part of farming (tillage radishes are one kind of cover crop we plant, and they are exactly as unsexy as they sound), but it is one of the most important parts of our soil care. And since healthy, vibrant soil underpins everything else we do, we’ll do whatever it takes to keep our soil happy & loving life.