Fall Harvest Season In Full Swing
Grains, Roots, and Fruits: Fall Harvest Season Gorgeous amaranth hanging to dry in front of our antique tool wall.Big Harvests at Shagbark Farm and the Sharing GardensSummer quickly came to an end, and we are still hard at work harvesting and processing to prepare for the colder months. Over the past few years, we’ve seen large increases in our yields thanks to our soil building and infrastructure improvements, but with big yields come big responsibilities. This year we are prioritizing food processing and distribution so we can better share the fruits of our labor and avoid waste.Tristan has greatly expanded our food processing capabilities. We’ve prioritized fermenting, pickling, canning, and drying to preserve our harvest. We’ve also been cooking more meals from the land to feed the workers who are critical players in our nourishing food system.Additionally, we’ve been on top of succession planting in the garden. This allows us to get two (sometimes three) yields out of each garden bed, while continuing to return nutrients to the soil.  Alex helped harvest our first big crop of peaches from our young trees. We froze them to make smoothies and baked goods.  Tristan pressure canned lots of grape juice from our grape arbor that he helped build and plant four years ago.  The finished product. We didn’t need to sweeten the juice!  Our apple trees are too young to produce, but our neighbors and friends shared generously from their bumper crop. These were turned into tasty apple sauce, and soon, into cider.  Corn and bean harvest from just one bed.  We collected paste tomatoes from across our network of sharing gardens to make lots of canned and frozen tomato sauce to share with the Boys & Girls Club.  Paulie made corn bread from our corn flour and salsa from our tomatoes and peppers.  Huge pepper harvest. We enjoyed them fresh, pickled them, and turned them into hot sauce at club.  Collecting more cabbages from the sharing network to turn into sauerkraut.  Our neighbor Elizabeth left us a weekly pick up from her sharing garden.  Julia harvesting the first batch of amaranth. We will be building an amaranth thresher this fall to process the grain.  Manny and Julia posing with a potato harvest from one small bed. These yields per square foot put industrial agriculture to shame!  Paulie and Chase started beet and carrot seedlings for a second crop to replant the beds we harvested.Programs with the Boys & Girls ClubWe wrapped up the summer with exciting harvesting and food processing. During our garden program, we collaborate with the kids to imagine and bring to life a nourishing local food system. They really enjoyed helping us figure out how to use and store the food we grew together to make it last through the year. After a short break, we jumped right into our fall programming. There’s still plenty to harvest in the garden, and with that, more to process! As we clear the summer vegetables, we are beginning to put the garden beds to sleep. We are also excited to continue our work with our teen apprentices. We just launched our fall building apprenticeship, which will focus on the construction of an addition to our cordwood greenhouse.  Testing our new hand-powered flour mill.  Bread baked from our garden-grown wheat flour and vegetables picked from the club garden.  Jayana, one of our teen apprentices, helping the kids make garlic bread (with our bread and our garlic!).  During a field trip to the farm, we harvested lots of blackberries and raspberries.  We also harvested tons of peaches to bring back to club.  Returning with our haul of packaged peaches to distribute!  Talking about the importance of growing staple crops at the ReSeed garden.  We harvested two staple crops, amaranth and potatoes.  Manny and Julia cleaned up the weeds that grew over a rainy two week break! This mound of weeds will form the base of a new garden bed.  Making hot sauce from the spiciest peppers collected from across our many sharing gardens.  We cooked the hot sauce outside to avoid stinging everyone’s eyes at club. The sauce turned out amazing!  First session of our apprenticeship program. Lily and Delia practicing with the Japanese Ryoba saw.  Bryce getting more practice with the drill.  We built a compost bin, which is a great introduction to the basic carpentry skills we will need to build the addition to the greenhouse.Forestry and Building ProjectsWith the gardens winding down, we’ve been able to turn our attention back to our forestry and building projects. We were especially eager to get back to milling, because we’ve received many donations of beautiful lumber from a local tree company.Although major construction at the farm was on pause during the growing season, we still managed to squeeze in some smaller building projects.We also spent a lot of time removing the invasive stilt grass that has taken over large swaths of the land at Shagbark.  It took a whole team and some creative leveraging skills to move this 140 year old white oak log on to the mill.  Tristan moved this smaller maple log with the winch.  Manny posing with a 30 inch diameter oak log, which just fit on our mill.  Chase and Sharmar wrestled lots of metal pieces out of the logs that had accumulated over the lifespan of the tree.  Check out our beautiful slabs and cookies cut from the white oak. We can’t wait to make some furniture with these!  We finally covered up all of the insulation in the Maya House with some stunning maple window trim. We hope to get a resident farmer to live here next year.  A small flower box built from wood scraps.  Sharmar and Tristan turning an oak pallet into a beautiful table for the garden. |
