Emily is in Ann Arbor today with loads of food for your tables. We have you covered for the last minute potato or for the whole meal sans meat. We would be honored if you would add our vegetables to your spread. Then, starting tomorrow, we will be turning inwards to give ourselves some peace and to appreciate the bountiful year we have experienced. We gained a lot of friends and allies, the earth was good to us, and we hope we were good to it. We will be back at markets December 1st with all the same wonderful delicious vegetables!

I have some thoughts on Thanksgiving the history and food filled holiday. I don't want to soapbox it, so I will only say it is a loaded holiday. I am never really sure how to talk about my misgivings surrounding the event or discuss the context of the celebration or whether to even bring it up. Mentioning my divided thoughts on the subject at all is likely bad marketing. But this year, I decided to mention it. So here is a more realistic tale of Thanksgiving, from a brief internet search this morning. It leads with a frank history and follows with a gentler version. I didn't know that Thanksgivings after the "first" one in Plymouth were direct celebrations of massacres of Indigenous Americans.

The parts of this Thanksgiving write-up that I appreciated the most were these two perspectives:
 
"there always has been a Thanksgiving story of some kind or other for as long as there have been human beings. There was also a "First" Thanksgiving in America, but it was celebrated thirty thousand years ago.(11) At some time during the New Stone Age (beginning about ten thousand years ago) Thanksgiving became associated with giving thanks to God for the harvests of the land. Thanksgiving has always been a time of people coming together, so thanks has also been offered for that gift of fellowship between us all.  Every last Thursday in November we now partake in one of the OLDEST and most UNIVERSAL of human celebrations, and THERE ARE MANY THANKSGIVING STORIES TO TELL."

And the following 
 
Today the town of Plymouth Rock has a Thanksgiving ceremony each year in remembrance of the first Thanksgiving. There are still Wampanoag people living in Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of them to speak at the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival. Here is part of what was said:
"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people.
Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important."

Both of these sentiments incorporate my main heart, we are alive along with the land and its creatures. It is through our relationship to this beautiful world, with its ornery weather, diverse ecosystems, and all the unique, individual organisms, that we are able to survive and thrive. We must value this relationship and strive to cultivate and engage with it.

Okay, I guess I did get a little soap-boxy. Truth be told, the history of Thanksgiving has never played into my practice of the gathering. For me it is a fully secular experience. My family treats Thanksgiving as a time to be with family and eat really well. I try to incorporate gratitude into my daily life. I don't remember much of what I learned as a child on the holiday. I have vague memories of a maypole and bringing various foods to potluck style events. And maybe I remember making some construction paper pilgrims. I think I was lucky enough to be surrounded by adults that represented an at least partially historically sensitive reckoning. Moving forward, I plan to more actively acknowledge the holidays whole history in the context of the United States and in the context of humankind. I am grateful for the opportunity to continue growing and try to do better. 

Eat up and enjoy each others company! I plan to.
 
Vegetables!
Beets by the pound
Brussels sprouts by the stalk and by the pint
Cabbage: pointy sweet, big green classic, savoy, red
Carrot by the pound
Kohlrabi: Beastly beauties!
Garlic
Greens: Arugula, mustard, tatsoi, Tokyo bekana (bok choi lettuce), spinach (limited) 
Kale!
Swiss Chard: main veins damaged by the cold but that leaf lamina is sugary sweet.
Collards: Even sweeter now!
Potatoes: Cal white versatile, Dark Red Norland: versatile, elfe- waxy buttery
Fingerling Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes- the tiny ones are my favorite roasted whole or tossed in stew
Radishes- Daikon, green meat (sweet), black, watermelon, and pink
Rutabaga: The turnips mild cousin. Creamy and sweet. Excellent roasted.
Winter squash: Delicata, Spaghetti, Festival dumpling & Long Pie!
Turnips - purple top and golden globe
​

First things first: plan to stock up for Thanksgiving! We have finally decided when our first time "off" will be. From Thanksgiving Day through to the Thursday after, we will take it easy, building our hoop house at a lazy pace, sleeping late, reading books, wearing civilian clothes, gallivanting about, and being squeaky clean. This means no markets on Saturday the 25th or Wednesday the 29th. Lucky for the Ann Arbor crew, you can just come to market on Wednesday to scoop your Thanksgiving day goods. For Chelsea customers and Ann Arbor customers that cannot make the Wednesday market, stock up on Saturday. Or vegetables are known for the freshness and will keep until Thursday no problem. Stockbridge and Howell customers (and Chelsea customers that simply can't stock up Saturday) have the option of ordering vegetables online to pick up at Positively Chiropractic Monday between 3:30 and 6:00 pm (normal pick-up day will return to Tuesday after this). Order using this form.

Emily, Brandon, and I spent last Thursday tucking our plants in with extra blankets, hoping it would help. Heading through the week the lows for Thursday and Friday kept dropping until eventually, they stuck at 16 and 17 respectively. To keep all of us fed, our plants required protection. We lugged succulent kohlrabi out of the field. We hoped for cold hardiness from our turnips and rutabaga (I have a good feeling). We battled the wind, lugged sand bags around, bent hoops, and pulled covers as tightly as we could with the wind trying to make us aeronautically mobile. We would have like to do more bulk harvesting of some roots and have left less to be revealed but surreptitious checking of the weather revealed an unkind fact. It was while snacking on peanut butter and apples at our late lunch that I realized the temperatures Friday, our main harvest day, were not even going come close to rising above freezing, meaning all our harvest had to be completed before the freeze. And then, around that time, an order came in. Yes, let us add more work to less time! We did what we could, which ended with Emily, Jim, and I clipping kohlrabi in the dark and then me spinning greens dry and trying to keep them from freezing between the rinse and the walk-in. 

All in all, survival rates were high. We are still waiting for word on a couple crops but what we know? Most of the greens did their thing and are even more delicious than before, begging the question, that was a possibility?! We are waiting for word back on the chard- it seems its central leaves survived and the outers sacrificed themselves for the cause- as well as the radishes. The collard, cabbage, and beets did what they are known for and hung out in the bitter weather beaming vegetably goodness. The crop I am most relieved about are the pounds and pounds of potatoes that weathered the weather from below deck. Only a few from the uppermost layers of soil froze and thawed, creating spongy potato balls which are great for throwing for dogs on sunny Tuesday potato harvests.

The order that came in last Thursday afternoon, despite its terrible timing, was one we were not in the least expecting, but hoping for-- Argus Farmstop! For those of you that haven't heard of Argus in Ann Arbor, here is a link to their website. Although they say it best, it is essentially a farmer sourced grocery store, allowing for easier access to local products with all the health, economical, and environmental benefits that come along with that for our community. Starting now, you can find our greens at their Packard street location.

And even though our plates are still full, winter time duties are piling into this clown car. Kicking off one project, Ethan, a carpenter-craftsman-collector we met though the farmers' market scene came out to look at our dilapidated barns yesterday.  We are hoping to restore two of them and salvage one of them. He thinks we can. We just have to figure out how much work and time and money it will be and see if we can do it. That is what winter is for.

Another exciting winter task: acquisition! We have started ordering next years crops, kicking it off with ginger. Next up potatoes and reupping our seed CSA from High Mowing seeds (our favorite seed company as of now). We are checking local auctions and craigslist and farm trader sections of papers. We are looking for cultivation equipment, a market vehicle, and ideas for intern housing, along with variable odds and end.  There is an auction coming up close by. When long standing family farms have auctions, it is always bittersweet. It is sad to see another "small", family owned and operated farm get dismantled. I fear for the land and for the community. But they always have the best equipment. Machines that are idea of cultivation, that I can learn how to work on. And pallets of hand tools. Hopefully we will rise to carry on the legacy.  

More in the works as we keep working! See you for some warmer markets this week.

Farm love!

PS: Sorry, no pictures this week. Our mail merge apps tortured me for the last hour...
 
Vegetables!
Beets by the pound
Brussels sprouts
Cabbage
Carrot by the pound
Kohlrabi: Beastly beauties!
Garlic
Greens: Arugula, mustard, tatsoi, Tokyo bekana (bok choi lettuce), Salad Mix (maybe), spinach (limited) 
Kale!
Swiss Chard (?) Maybe Saturday
Collards: Even sweeter now!
Hot Peppers- cayenne! Great dried for a bright colorful summer reminder in the doldrums of winter
Potatoes: German butterball, chieftan, elfe
Fingerling Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes- the tiny ones are my favorite roasted whole or tossed in stew
Radishes- Daikon, green meat (sweet), black, watermelon, and pink
Winter squash: Delicata, Spaghetti, Red Kuri & Long Pie!
Turnips - purple top and golden globe


*We post thisbefore harvest, and although we do our very best to make accurate predictions, crops and quantities found at market may vary. 

New first, then my ramblings:
Stockbridge and Howell CSA Members and customers: Where can you get your produce now? CSA members can order for pick-up in Stockbridge on Wednesdays. We will be sending out an email this Friday with more details. Additionally, all customers and CSA members are welcome to visit us at our Wednesday and Saturday Ann Arbor market and our Saturday Chelsea Market.
 
Chelsea customers: We missed last Saturday due to a medical issue. Everyone is okay and we will be there this coming Saturday to fill your vegetable needs. 

Ann Arbor Wednesday customers: Come see Emily O. at market today! She works on the farm and has a wealth of knowledge about food. She is going to be heading up the Wednesday market until the end of its season in December. 

CSA customers: Your updates balances are not included in the email. Never fear, they will  be for next week! If you need to know, please shoot us an email. 
Any and all: Impromptu, weather-pending, interest-pending, team potato dig this Sunday from 12 pm to 5 pm. Come help us haul these succulent morsels into safe keeping. If you are interested respond to this email.  I will send an email Saturday afternoon to let you know if there is enough interest and the weather is agreeable enough to make it happen. Thanks for considering.
Now that that's out of the way, let me tell you what we have been up to. 

We are still scrambling to prepare for the impending winter. I feel like a broken record (side note: how many of you have actually experienced a broken record repeating itself!?) How many times have I said we are getting the potatoes out, garlic planted, roots dug, hoop house built, cover crop in, and ready for the cold? And maybe that is true, I keep saying these things. But we are still doing them!  Wash station upgraded to wind protected status. Little cooler shut down, big cooler cooled down. Endwalls on the little hoophouses and both of them seeded. Row covers over sensitive crops. The storage haul in progress. Open acreage seeded and reseeded with winter cover. More than half of the potatoes dug. Endless indeed! 

Things that in my mind would take days are extending to weeks. This is partly weather related. The warmth kept us busy with crops that were supposed to be waning. Our first round of cover crop struggled to germinate in our parched soil and we had to reseed a massive area. When we finally had a moment to dig the potatoes, it rained endlessly. This extended progression is also partly because we are pushing many boulders up this hill simultaneously. And it must be said, it is also partly due to lack of hands and weary backs. And on top of that, decreasing daylight hours. But with all this darkness, with first light just before seven in the morning and darkness settling in just before six in the evening, we are resting better, eating better, and sleeping more. And this is ramping me up again. (A broken record of a broken record: tired, getting rest, will be less tired...)

After all that rain for the last few weeks, it was really refreshing to have sun on Monday and Tuesday. And more sunshine is on the way! But along with the sunshine, the temperatures are sinking to new lows. (Could it be related to the loss of our insulating cloud cover?) When I glanced at the forecast last week lows for this week were in the mid to upper twenties. Oh how quickly that can change. Thursday's new low is 19 degrees! Yikes! There are a lot of plants out there that are not going to like that. We are going to do our very best to protect them, doubling up on row cover and hauling in what may not survive. And we will take good notes so that the effects of dropping fall temperatures and daylight hours don't feel so enigmatic in coming years.

In that way, this coming winter season has reminded me of my first year farming on my own. There is a sense of anxious mystery. What will survive? What will store well? Will we have enough? Too much? What will the markets be like? Will there be down time? All the things that can't be known until they have been done. There is much meticulous record keeping involved in farming, what was planted where and how it fared, etc etc. But all the experience accumulates into a sense in your being of when things are okay and when they are not. This winter, I don't have a good sense about how things are going to be. Maybe because there are so many firsts about it. Among them, it is our first winter growing in Michigan and at this scale and for this many markets. But it must also be because every winter is different, and even the mild differences can be life and death for our plants. Winter is the wilderness of weather. Every event is high stakes and plant survival is single chance and careful planning in order to survive. In the summer, a difference of ten degrees will reduce production but is unlikely to halt it altogether. But in the winter the difference between mid-twenties and low twenties? Well, I am still learning what that means. 

The frosty cold is beautiful though. This morning as I trudged down the hill to pack the truck for market, the moon glinted off our field encased in silver ice. Despite my anticipation regarding the health of our crops, a smile stole across my face. The world is brighter at night in the winter. The air is refreshing. I can see the stars in the morning. The moon was low and yellow at night and high and white this morning. After Emily got on the road to market, I heated up some coffee and took it out to enjoy the early morning night from the seat of the farmall.

Here are some frosty fall photos. See y'all Saturday! Lots of love. ​

Fresh from the field

Beets by the pound
Cabbage
Carrot by the pound
Celery: Flavorful and crunchy
Kohlrabi: Beastly beauties!
Garlic
Baby Ginger- a Saturday possibility!
Greens: Arugula, mustard, tatsoi, Tokyo bekana (bok choi lettuce), Salad Mix (limited), spinach, 
Kale!
Swiss Chard
Collards
Hot Peppers- cayenne! Great dried for a bright colorful summer reminder in the doldrums of winter
Potatoes: German butterball, chieftan, elfe
Fingerling Potatoes
Sweet Potatoes
Radishes- Daikon, green meat (sweet), black, watermelon, and pink
Winter squash: Acorn, Delicata, Spaghetti, Red Kuri & Long Pie!
Turnips - purple top and golden globe


*We send this email out before harvest, and although we do our very best to make accurate predictions, crops and quantities found at market may vary. ​