Harvest and Harvest Celebration; group tours and tot visits; winter squash; Flashlight Nights; birds, scarecrows, and photographers; farm visits in the rain.
Another several weeks have flashed by. There is definitely a fall feeling in the air. The fall rains have been holding off, but have finally started up. As usual in October, we have been very busy. We have lots of school groups this time of year. With the corn maze and pumpkin patch, this is the busiest time of year for the farmstand. We are finishing up on the last harvests and starting to get ready for winter. I’m also starting to think about next year’s plans.
Sept 27 to Oct 1
This week the crew continued to harvest and move Jack O’ Lantern pumpkins to the main pumpkin patch. We set up our first harvest of winter squash at the farmstand.
The first four of our winter squash displayed at the farmstand. From left to right they are Red Kuri, Carnival, Blue Ballet, Sweet Dumpling, and Sunshine. Our table of gourds is in the background.
This week we prepared the Ranch for the fall Pumpkin Farm group tours. We cut the sugar pumpkins from the vines, put up a straw bale pyramid for climbing, built a small cornstalk maze with cut cornstalks, and general tidied up. Cindi put up the scarecrows and brought some of the more decorative squash and pumpkins from the farm. While we were moving haybales, we put up another pyramid near the farmstand.
This week we reached another high for attendance at our Farm Tots program. The number of folks at Farm Tots continues to amaze us. We have quite a few regular visitors that come nearly every week. Many parents have brought along their friends. The program is basic and unstructured: a show & tell of what we are harvesting that week, a song or two, a craft, a visit with the farm animals, a chance to pick a child-sized portion of that week’s crop, and a wagon ride. The kids can each go at his or her own pace and there is time for the parents to meet and chat with each other.
Cindi leading a song at Farm Tots.
In the next weeks we will be thinking over and discussing adaptations and additions to our education program at the farm. The demand for the Farm Tots program is gratifying, but too large a crowd means more waiting and a less enjoyable visit. We need to keep working on finding a way to create a good experience for everyone who comes to the program. I suppose that setting a limit to the number of children admitted might serve to motivate more folks to show up on time. We have talked about adding afternoon programs, but I’m less confident that would work for many of our visitors – many of them seem to be headed for lunch and a nap after the farm visit. We have had a lot of requests for a pass or punch card type discount for multiple visits to Farm Tots. We’ll be thinking on how that might work. We have also been getting more school group visits to the corn maze. Next year we will be moving the Pumpkin Farm group tours from the Ranch to the South 47 Farm. Parking at the Ranch and the Root Connection Farm has always been extremely difficult. Moving the group tours will reduce some problems, but will create new issues. It is also a good time to reflect on adding new programs. We have had requests for organic gardening classes for older grade school / junior high ages. There are many more ideas.
Oct 2 to 8
The crew worked two extra days this week. Most of our winter squash and distinctive pumpkins were ready to harvest, so we devoted Monday and Tuesday to the harvest. We also harvest the first of the Winter Luxury Pie pumpkins, moved more Jack O’ Lanterns to the pumpkin patch, and cut corn stalks for porch displays. On Sunday we harvested the last of the winter squash and distinctive pumpkins.
Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck - an ancestral type butternut squash. How can you resist the shape? Even better, the long neck is solid flesh. The seed cavity is a small hollow in the bulge at the flower end of the squash. You can cut the neck into slabs and cook them up quickly.
Sugar Loaf is a delicate type winter squash. This is one of our most popular winter squashes. It is sweet and delicious, and its small size means quicker preparation and no leftovers.
Our famous winter squash lineup display. From left to right: Stripetti, Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck, Carnival, Sunshine, Small Wonder, Sugar Loaf, Red Kuri, Black Futsu, Sugar Loaf, Guatemalan Blue Banana. We harvested the Sweet Meat squash after this photo was taken.
Piling up the Red Warty Things. Luis is in the trailer tossing the Red Warty Things to Juan (you see his back). Chef Brian tells me the flesh of this pumpkin is savory – great for soups.
On Tuesday we had our first group Pumpkin Farm tour at the Ranch. We offer the tour the four weeks of October, but most groups want to come in the third or fourth week. We try to tell people the weather is better and the farm is less crowded earlier in the month, but we haven’t swayed many folks to book earlier. This year the third and fourth weeks are essentially fully booked.
One of the recurring features of fall is the vast numbers of birds that come to the farm. I mostly notice the bigger birds and the ones damaging our crops. We have flocks of crows, starlings, and robins all year. In October the red-wing blackbirds show up in huge numbers. The flocks of Canada geese start arriving a couple of weeks later. I haven’t mentioned our resident blue heron recently, but I did see the heron several times last week.
Birds eating all of our sunflower seeds.
We’ve had the same scarecrow at the corn maze since 2002. He has no apparent effect on our bird population, but has been featured in many photographs. This year I added a little girl scarecrow along side
Scarecrows at the corn maze. No deterrent to the birds, but they do attract photographers.
Friday night was our first flashlight night of the year. We keep the farmstand and corn maze open till 9. We don’t do the scary or haunted stuff at our farm, so we attract those folks looking for the pure nighttime in the cornfield experience. I’ve been surprised by the number of people who also choose their pumpkins by flashlight.
The first Saturday in October is always the Harvest Celebration Farm Tour day. Many of the Puget Sound area counties, including King County, organize a day for farm visits. The South 47 Farm has participated every year. There were 24 other farms participating in King County this year. We had live music, storytelling, information from the county and from the Master Recycler Composter program, and a chef demo this year.
Chef Kathy Casey drew a crowd to her chef demo.
Evert finishing up a hayride tour of the farm.
On Sunday we harvested the last of the winter squash and distinctive pumpkins.
Oct 9-15
Rob has been working on replacing the engine on the BCS tiller I purchased recently. The old Acme engine worked for a while but finally gave up. We got a deal on a new Honda engine. Rob says it is now purring like a kitten.
We are still harvesting a variety of vegetables as well as apples. The tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are holding up well, considering the time of year.
Ring of Fire cayenne peppers.
On Friday we dug our first crop of sweet potatoes. Some of the sweet potatoes are enormous. We’ll be digging the rest later, so I don’t yet have an idea if the whole project will make sense to repeat next year.
Friday was a beautiful sunny day, and also a day off from school for at least two local school districts. We started out the day crowded with our biggest turnout ever for Farm Tots plus a birthday party. The people just kept on coming all day long.
Earlier in the week the crew removed the weed-barrier plastic from two large fields. On Saturday Enrique started tilling fields in preparation for planting the winter cover crop.
On Saturday the skies were overcast, but we still had a very busy day at the farmstand. Sunday started out rainy, although the rain was over by early afternoon. The crowd was quite a bit smaller, but those who did come were prepared for rain and had a good time. I had two of the crew spread straw on the corn maze path to improve the footing.
Why let the rain get in the way of choosing the best winter squash?
Gourds in the mist.
I was eating lunch in the shelter and noticed that a dozen or so birds were hopping around on the roof above me. The shelter has a clear plastic roof covered over by a black mesh shade cloth. We enjoyed watching the birds skittering around above us for about five minutes before they all flew away at once.
Oct 16 to 18
I spent Monday and Tuesday working on updating financial and other records and sorting through recent photos. I wrote most of this entry yesterday. Today the rain is back. Enrique spent the day tilling, preparing for winter cover crop. The rest of the crew took down the pole bean bamboo poles and started taking down the cucumber trellises in the two cucumber hoophouses. Today we harvested the first Brussels sprouts. We are having a lot of kids at the Ranch this week for the Pumpkin Farm group tours.
The weather forecast is for rain tomorrow followed by a clearing trend with a sunny weekend.
In the next weeks we will be continuing to prepare for winter. I expect two more big weekends at the farmstand. We also plan to open Halloween (Tuesday Oct. 31) till 9 for those who want an alternative outing.
What’s playing today in the Jeep CD player? Ottmar Liebert + Luna Negra XL - Little Wing