This Week on the Farm…October 6

We’ve missed a whole bunch of weeks here. With the outdoor gardening season coming to a close, we have been swamped beginning clean ups and tackling some winterizing chores that have been put off for too long. This week we have started stripping and sanding one of our small porches. The steps have a bit more work to be done – mainly because they have chunks that are completely rotted and will need to be replaced in the spring. Our mini-refresh will get us through the winter.

Inside we’ve had some sad news about our kitchen fireplace which we adore. It will need to be entirely refurbished inside for future use. We had the chimneys all repointed and capped and are weighing the options of installing a very small wood stove (much like our favorite British kitchens have) vs. doing the work to continue to burn wood directly in it. We don’t want to alter the integrity of the room but we want to be realistic about the future use of it as well. We’ll keep you posted. If you are local we highly recommend Four Winds Chimney (what a coincidence, right?!) – they have been amazing to work with. They capped our wood stove so hopefully we have seen the last of the bird visitors! We even got to have our first fire of the season which was so nice.

Outside we have had our first light frost and have gathered all the squash, beans, tomatoes and fennel. Our green tomatoes are ripening in the warm window sill.  Everything else seems to be cold friendly. We have been loving the brulee squash from Fruition Seeds and are super excited to mention we will be carrying their amazing seeds in our shop soon! If you are from this area and love gardening as much as we do check them out. You’ll quickly be addicted to the lovely tutorials and masses of gardening knowledge shared on their website.

We have been picking apples, making apple cake, apple butter, apple pie….we really need an apple press so we can start making some cider! Soon our major clean up will begin. We’ve been patiently waiting for some flowers to dry up on the stems so we can try our hand at seed collecting. I’ll admit it is making the garden a little messy, but hopefully it will be worth it.