Farm Friday, August 26th, 2022
Pizza party and back to school for teachers
There is a chill in the air tonight. For the last week, I have noticed that the nights are getting longer and cooler. The period of plants growing exponentially with unlimited heat and sun has come to a screeching halt. Often, August is our hottest month, with daytime temps in the 90s. This year June and July were very hot, but August has been almost cool. With daytime highs in the 70s or 80s and low humidity, it has been lovely to be outside.
The school year is right around the corner. On Sunday we had some of the staff of the urban campus out for pizza and beverages and games. It was a perfect night for them to come. No bugs. Great sunset. And wood-fired pizza until they couldn’t eat any more. Then on Monday the rest of the staff came to the farm for their first day back to work (we have been working all summer and mostly get our time off in the winter!). We had a great day and got a lot of projects done.
The rest of the week has gone by quickly. We had online training activities, endless meetings, and still had a bunch of farm work to do. This included mowing the lawn and finding a trove of puffballs and meadow mushrooms. Yum.
The farm work also included the last transplanting of the year, with napa cabbage and swiss chard.
The harvest is starting to come in and get stored and eaten. We made pickles this week; froze green beans, eggplant and zucchini; made some plum jam; made pesto; and ate a lot of fresh veggies from the gardens. Food highlights were apple pie and apple crisp, fried potatoes, wood-fired ratatouille and pizza, stir-fry green beans with garlic sauce, and lots of amazing heirloom tomatoes.
The stars have been amazing! Clear nights and low humidity mean the stars seem like they are right on top of us.
Animal news. The guinea hen with the keets has not been seen in nine days. We fear she and her babies were food for a raccoon or fox. Precious (our llama) stood up on her own twice in one day this week. She has a good appetite too.
In writing news, our first Medium readers and writers book club went live this week. We have three essays about Marlon James’ the Book of Night Women.
Here is Laura M. Quainoo’s essay.
Here is Aunty Jean’s essay.
Here is mine.
You can write one too. This is an ongoing Book Club. Read Night Women, write about it, and tag your essay #RaWBC. Or just respond to our essays. Et voila! You are in the club.
For September we are reading adrienne maree brown’s Grievers. Essays due on or after September 22nd. Please join us!
