The wood shed posts are set!

This past week we set the posts for the wood shed, which means plumbing and concreting them, meanwhile measuring to be sure they are spaced according to our wood shed plans so their alignment can be adjusted appropriately. NOTICE THE BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAINS IN THE BACKGROUND SPLATERED WITH FALL COLORS! Our valley is gorgeous and we are blessed to be farming this land.   I am enjoying this project because it seems to be going faster than other building projects such as greenhouses. (Mainly because we have less holes to dig in our rocky soil than with greenhouses and a little smaller than the barn with no walls and top floor.) We had borrowed Jacks 8 foot ladder for our other building projects and we are certainly missing it right now. We are using the front-end loader and our truck for nailing up the headers since we don’t have another ladder. We could set up the scaffolds but that seems like an overkill until we are ready for sheeting and tin roofing.

Last week we had our first “Killing Frost” and lost all of our warm loving crops such as peppers and eggplants. Normally we would also loose our last succession of summer squash but it never grew! During last winter’s crop planning, we had hoped to extend the CSA season up until Thanksgiving. However, due to extensive loss of storage crops such as green cabbage, winter squash and potatoes, we are discontinuing our CSA in Waynesville. We just didn’t want the stress of putting together a box of veggies for all 35 members in Waynesville (and their boxes would be exceptionally small) so we would rather sell what little produce we have at our Asheville tailgate market. Our plans are to continue delivering to the CSA members in Asheville and the locals here in Spring Creek until the week before Thanksgiving. We have fruit set on our late tomato crop, the swiss chard is happy in the greenhouse, and the kale in the greenhouse is beginning to grow. The greenhouse with arugula and spinach are growing as well, slowly because of our lower day lengths, which was the plan because our hope is to harvest those crops the second week of November. (The greenhouse with arugula and spinach was originally planted in green beans and peas; however, the critters ate the seedlings, so we re-planted. We think rabbits were indulging in the baby sprouts so Carl has been searching the web for the great rabbit recipes.)
Production Note to self: I think that on our second to last succession of lettuce which is around 8/5, we should be able to seed an extra 6 flats of our red leaf which, if the weather is similar to this next year, we would be able to hold an entire bed of lettuce in the field during the cooler weather without it bolting. Our green leaf varieties still want to bolt this time of year but the red leaf isn’t growing very fast thus it is holding in the field. We need to seed an entire 600 row feet of spring cauliflower so that we will harvest enough for the CSA because the cauliflower didn’t mature at once. In addition, I would like to try cauliflower in the fall. We need to start Celeriac early Spring with onions, and since we hope to have more heated greenhouse space with the wood boiler, we will have more space designated for propagation of field transplants. Our issue in previous seasons is running out of propagation space during the spring. More about our “portable” propagation benches in future posts. EAT SOME RABBITS THIS WINTER.