Sunday, November 22, 2009

NOVEMBER ACTIVITIES AND FALL HARVEST




Windmill Farm recently participated in the Colusa Harvest Market Saturday, November 21st. Although the attendance was low, people seemed to enjoy the festive spirit of the market and I believe we had a good presentation of our fall harvest. My friend Tina, owner of Happy Chick Farm was there selling her wonderful farm fresh, free range chicken eggs too.
At our booth, we had available Hachiya and Fuju Persimmons, great for eating and baking; Wonderful Pomegranates; Meyer Lemons; Satsuma Mandarins; Rosemary springs made up in bundles and wrapped with raffia to help with the Thanksgiving turkey; cut and bundled lavender; and I had made up some wonderful gift baskets full of all these products from our farm. A great gift to take to family and friends house over the holidays. I will have these gift baskets available outside at our roadside stand if you need any last minute gift to take to someones home over Thanksgiving weekend. All the other fruits and herbs mentioned will be also available at our Farmer's Stand here in Gridley. We will not be participating in any future Farmer's Markets until next spring.

I have on my desk a file folder full of farm notes, recipes, seed and equipment catalogs and documents in process to work on during the next few months. My head is full of all new ideas for planting vegetables, flowers and herbs on our 4 acre field for 2010 keeping our new Community Supportive Agriculture (CSA) memberships in mind, that will be available in the late spring. Check out our site at www.localharvest.org and this blog; or call us at 530-846-3344 if you have a special fruit request or want to learn more about our CSA memberships.

In a few weeks, after the leaves have completely fallen off of the fruit trees, it will be time to prune the orchard and I also plan on bringing in several truck loads of organic compost to put at the base of the trees. One last raking up of leaves after that and then the orchard should be ready to rest for the winter.

I purchased 4 new Buff Orpington chickens this last week and added them to our flock of chickens. I had been reading about this Heritage breed in my farm books that they are the friendliest breed of chickens, lay extra, extra large eggs and are fairly large birds, weigh about 8 lbs each. Honestly, I bought them just because I loved their beautiful light brown color feathers and their plumpness of body. Our flock now includes Rhode Island Reds, one Leghorn; Black Stars; Plymouth Rocks and now the Buffies, as I call them. They all seem to be getting along well and hopefully the new Buffies will be laying these huge eggs by the end of the year. I have some regular weekly and bi-weekly customers and I know they will be very pleased when they open up their egg carton and see how huge these eggs will be!!

Frank and I at Windmill Farm wish you all a great and festive Thanksgiving Day and a very Merry Christmas.

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