and here we are!

All is busy, busy here, but everything here is going really well. I have an extraordinary farmer's tan and much more knowledge about growing food than I did three months ago.

We harvest food three days a week, the more of distributions, so when folks get their food its as fresh as possible. Harvesting usually takes the whole morning and we spend the rest of the day tending to the fields: a lot of weeding, transplanting and maintenance of the projects we did in the spring.

I have spent the weekend on the farm and had some time today for my first food preservation activities. Our stipend may be small, but we have access to an abundance of food, so it is my plan to save some for the winter. Today I blanched some greens for freezing and pickled radish. Mmmm......

going and going

I am hotter, dirtier, smellier and more tired than I have been for this entire adventure thus far. We have been pushing this past couple of weeks to get as much as we can done before we start harvesting food. Because once we start harvesting, there won't be as much time to get plants in the ground, weed, hoe, fertilize and water...

This week's focus has been on tomatoes (and not getting heat rash in weird places)...we have planted at least 500. For each plant we dig a hole (shovel-deep), plant, then cover with straw mulch (it keeps the heat and water in and weeds out. that and tomatoes are susceptible to soil-born funk and the mulch protects them from that), add stakes in the ground and then trellis them.

We seeded all the winter squash and pumpkins today...and are busy trying to keep weeds out of everywhere. Our first distribution is next week! I am quite ready to begin feeding people and seeing results from all of our work...