Pickings, November 14th

The fields are silent now, resting for the winter, with a healthy cover crop growing to maintain and enrich the soil. We spent a bit of time this week cleaning up after the storm, burning some brush to add potash back into the soil, taking down a beautiful elm which fell victim to the damned Dutch Elm Disease, planting a handful of extra garlic, mulching here and there, and installing a new water line to the barn. Although the To-Do list is still endless, it  is much shorter now, coinciding with the shorter days of fall and the quieter pace is a welcome relief to the non-stop work of long summer days. Still, we spent several evenings reading by headlamp during the blackout  - seed catalogs, a great little book - The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball, a Harvard-educated, NY professional turned farmer (sound familiar?)  who writes about her life on a CSA in the Adirondacks, and Rachel Carson's first book, Under the Sea Wind which has nothing to do with farming, but is a great read anyway.

On the livestock front, we processed our fall batch of broilers last week. These free-range birds were here a bit longer than we hoped but they're exquisitely tender, utterly delicious and BIG. We have a few dozen still available, ranging from 4 to just about 7 pounds. We roasted  one of the largest on Saturday and it fed us for three nights (with a few chicken sandwich lunches to boot). They are USDA certified, processed right here in New Milford, and available for $5.00 per pound frozen; please email to reserve them as they are selling fast and we won't have more until spring.

Best,
Nick, Linda and the girls.