Now taking orders for pigs and chickens

This week we have some heat, so we hope the peppers, eggplant, and sweet potatoes take off! Maybe more of the green peppers will turn red. After 2″ of rain last Wednesday and Thursday, this week’s predicted rain missed us, and we were able to set out broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and kale for fall.

The high tunnel project continues to take shape! We have part of the east end wall up. We hope to get both framed up before the weekend.

We’re a little short on help this week, since our high school student workers are back in school. Our youngest daughter and Wednesday market person in Sioux City returns to Grand Rapids tomorrow to visit her oldest sister and return to college. The local college students will stick it out till Monday, and the college students who work for us during the school year arrive next Tuesday.

A few other odds and ends:

• We have two groups of pigs being processed this October. Please call if you are interested in some pork for your freezer for the winter. I hope to raise another group over the winter for Memorial day grilling!
• We are taking orders for chickens. We will have chickens available October 30. The chickens will be raised outdoors in portable pens, moved twice a day to fresh grass or buckwheat (buckwheat is a cover crop).
• One of our values is to improve the soil. We do that in part by cover cropping. We have seeded and tilled several patches of buckwheat this season. We like that buckwheat is good bee habitat, smothers weeds, and kills with the first frost so it is easy to incorporate in the spring. We also use winter rye but it does not winter kill. Both add organic matter to soil.
• Fall shares are closed for this season. Thank you to all who have signed up. We appreciate your participation.

Do you have any great recipes to share? We’ll be happy to send them along in the newsletter and/or on our Facebook page. Eat well!

–John Wesselius