Lots of newsy news this week. We have a healthy new Jersey heifer, born to Fanny. This was Fanny’s first calf, so she’s on the milking line for the first time now. Jenny found the baby in the pasture and claims the naming rights. We name our calves with the same first initial as their mother, so we can keep cow families straight. This calf is a granddaughter to Fern, and we hope she’ll inherit that line’s good udder, longevity, and milkiness.
I don’t think Jenny has picked the calf’s name yet, but I heard that Fenneke –Dutch for little one – is in the running. Members can visit the new arrival in the calf nursery in the east barn’s eastern shed, but please don’t climb in with her. She’s a newborn and needs some peace.
Vegetable Star of the Week: Broccolli
Mark, Lindsay, Liam, and Luke brought in the Delicata squash this week. Delicata is the zeppelin-shaped winter squash with green stripes. It has sweet flesh and thin skin that you can eat if you want too. It’s a nice convenient size and shape for stuffing. Squash is all well and good, but the vegetable star of the week is the absolutely gorgeous broccoli. This is the beginning of a bumper crop, and we expect to have it for another four weeks at least.
What about Fruits?
A rasberry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Melons, however, are making their final appearance today. It has been a good run, hasn’t it? There are still some raspberries in the field, so take advantage, members, and pick them before frost! I made raspberry jam this week, the last taste of summer sun in jars.
To Build a Walk-in Freezer or Not?
We’re looking at lots of numbers right now to decide if we are going to build a walk-in freezer…” (Continue reading Kristin Kimball’s Essex Farm Note)
In 2004 Mark and Kristin Kimball founded Essex Farm in Essex, NY. It was the first full-diet CSA farm formed (as far as they know)! Kristin wrote her memoir, The Dirty Life, chronicling her transition from city girl to farm wife and the first year of life at Essex Farm. Since then Kristin continues to chronicle life on the farm on her blog, which we give you snippets of here on the Essex on Lake Champlain Blog.
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