First Frost and Heavy Downpours

Farm News

First frosts and heavy downpours all in one week − welcome to late fall! We had a kiss of frost last week as our fields dipped down to 34 degrees, and it was ideal for wilting the big leaves on the winter squash, allowing for bright, visible, and easy-to-harvest pieces to pop out. We harvested 5 beautiful bins of Carnival, Acorn, Delicata and Kabocha varieties.

Late this week, we had heavy downpours, and this will continue into the weeks ahead as daylight shrinks and hours for harvest are much harder. We will wander to the creek behind the barn and begin looking in earnest now for the salmon returning to Griffin Creek. It is a remarkable journey to witness.

We are happy to report all of our potatoes are out, roughly 50,000 pounds of spuds!  What a feat and remarkably so in what may have been our last dry spell for a while.
Our focus will continue to be on harvest of hearty greens and root crops as we said goodbye to spinach and bok choy with the frosty mornings.

As we fall back an hour in the coming week, we will lavish in that extra hour of sleep on Sunday, and one hour of earlier daylight will be an immense gift for our shortening days. A little more daylight can afford us great opportunity for harvest as long as frost doesn’t paralyze our fingers and the earlier arrival of dark in the late afternoon will hopefully afford us more time to spend in our kitchens, slow cooking pot roasts, veggies, and making simple French apple desserts as our candles flicker to the sun setting on the horizon.

As our good friend and farm foodie Debra would write about in her many lessons to us for the kitchen, fresh ingredients, butter and maybe a little booze are almost sure to be a good combination for these darker, wetter periods when comfort food is a must!

Don’t forget to find us on Instagram (@fullcirclefarms).
– Wendy