Come to our annual CSA Potluck this Sunday October 4 from 12-2. Kick back and enjoy your neighbor’s cooking and some good conversation. The food at this event is pretty stellar every year and desserts tend to be well represented. We’ll supply a massive salad and the best apple cider you have ever tasted. This year we also have music by a great young local bluegrass band, Fen. We’ll have hay bales piled up for the kids to romp on, and some balls to kick around as well. Bring chairs, blankets, and plates, cups and flatware for yourselves. In the event of rain we will cancel. Look for an email Sunday am if the skies are looking questionable.
The potluck is a great time for some socializing, especially for me as I will not be around for the last couple weeks of October. I have been offered a ticket to Zimbabwe to aid an orphanage there in starting a two-acre garden.
Jack Frost came by again on Friday night and we had 31 degrees at the house. All the tender stuff had been harvested from the fields but the beans and the basil in the Upic were melted beyond recognition. Luckily the sheep don’t care and they have been enjoying the rotting bean plants since Sunday. I’m always amazed how efficient Mother Nature is at cleaning up the farm after a long summer. The chill on Friday eve was followed by an inch of rain on Sunday. The rain soaked all the frosted leaves, which in the next few days will rot away with the help from some opportunistic fungus that the rain has kick started. We will continue to see this process again and again over the next six or seven weeks until even the heartiest of crops will have succumbed and we will begin full-blast winter.
‘Silent Spring’ to Silent Night: Are Frogs Canaries? Tyrone Hayes PhD. Professor from UC Berkeley will speak this Friday October 2nd 6:30-7:30pm at the Morrell meeting room at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick. Hayes has done extensive research on the effects of pesticides on the rapid decline of amphibian populations around the world. Attempts have been made by large pesticide producers to silence his work. This lecture is part of the Cornerstones of Science series presented by Bowdoin College and Curtis Memorial Library.
Potato Alert Continues! Please refrigerate the spuds if you are not going to eat them in the first day or two. The late blight continues to cast its shadow upon us; to beat it we must eat. Please don’t compost these potatoes! They will grow next year and spread the disease.
CSA sign-up for 2010 underway. Help us get a strong start for the coming season. Your shares, promised now, help us pay for early seed orders and supplies that are always cheaper if paid for before the end of the current calendar year. Besides, just imagine how great those tomatoes will taste next August. Sign up now with a deposit and get on the easy winter payment plan. A $100 deposit will hold your share with payments not due until February, April and June of next year.
Organic/low spray apples, pears and cider for sale this week from our friends at Willow Pond Farm in Sabattus. More organic Red Free apples and low-spray Macs are available this week. Available for sale singly and in 5lb. bags. Cider is available in half gallon and gallon jugs and is so good I have sworn off water, or milk, or beer.
Crystal Spring whole and half lambs. We still have lamb available for a winter delivery date. Is your freezer full now? No problem you’ll have until January to make room for your lamb. See us at pick-up for all the details.
Crystal Spring Farm Honey from bees here at the farm now available in 1lb. and 2lb. sizes.