Until we get our irrigation issues sorted out and until we get a little rain, we’re staying pretty busy watering by hand.  Everyone do their best rain dance for us?

Fall is here!  We grow loads of different kind of cooking greens: collards, curly kale, Red Russian kale, mild turnip greens, spicy turnip greens, curly mustard greens — and that’s only the beginning of the fall veggies!  It’s a scrumptious time of year.  Join us!

We’ll post some of our favorite greens recipes over the next few days.  How do you like to cook your greens?

What a strange mistress is the weather!  While our friends in Georgia struggle with flood conditions, and our family in North Carolina say they haven’t seen the sun in over a week, things have been dry as a bone here at the farm.  You can see that from the dust the tractor is kicking up as Shannon mows our early summer squash and cucumber beds so that we can, in the coming weeks, pull up the plastic mulch and plant a cover crop to help nourish the soil over the winter.  The lack of rain is certainly a challenge, especially since we’re still working out lots of kinks with our new irrigation system.

As we do our best to manage a tough situation — hand watering our fall crops, for example — we reflect that this is a life we wouldn’t trade for anything.  We make our living growing vegetables that fill bellies and create moments of connection between family members and friends.  We are reminded every day of the land’s miraculous ability to provide for us.  We wake every morning blessed with work.

Our farm pooch is inspecting a bin of Cherokee Purple tomatoes — we’re in the last weeks of their season.  It’s always tough to say farewell to these jewels of summer.

But it means all the delicious autumn crops will soon be upon us!  Red Russian kale, sweet Hakurei salad turnips, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, broccoli … mmmm!  These are some of our favorite vegetables of the whole farm year.  They’re beginning to show up on market tables and in your CSA shares now, and you’ll see more of them in the coming weeks.  Keep checking in here for some of our favorite ways to prepare them.  Or leave a comment letting us know your favorite fall recipes!

This here is one gorgeous Small Wonder spaghetti squash.  Cut it in half, scoop out the seeds, and bake it cut side down in a casserole dish with a little water until it’s yielding and soft, about an hour.  Then take a fork and scrape through the flesh to get long spaghetti-like strands!  It’s good with olive oil, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper — and delicious with tomato-based sauces.

This here is also an invitation.  When the 2009 growing season began, we anticipated throwing a monthly potluck for CSA members, market customers and friends.  Well, somewhere between endless rows of tomatoes, hundreds of feet of irrigation pipe, thousands of pounds of potatoes, many miles of road driven to and from market and CSA pick-ups, and this whole fixin’-to-have-a-baby thing … that didn’t happen.

But we’d like to get at least one potluck in before season’s end!  This is late notice, but you are all very warmly invited to come on out on Sunday, September 27, at 1pm, for an informal potluck and farm tour.  Please bring a dish to share.  Little ones are of course very welcome!   No pets, please.  Please call or email to RSVP.  We’ll email directions toward the end of next week.

It’s a great weekend to explore the whole area, too!  Ride in the Heartland is an incredible event happening that Saturday and Sunday in Charlotte County, with bike tours for folks of all abilities, and lots of options for non-riders as well.  And on Saturday afternoon from 1-4, our friends Copeland and Christoph are holding an open house to share the incredible work they’ve done building an off-the-grid prefab house just down the way from Frog Bottom.  Consider making a weekend of it!

Quite amazing, really.  Something outlives its usefulness to you — but loads of little critters are ready to take over.

Oh, we may be busy getting ready for the autumn vegetables, repairing our irrigation system, and harvesting … but not these boys!  A few days ago we moved the broiler chicks to fresh pasture, where they currently spend most of their time relaxing in the shade and tangled branches of a gnarly old apple tree.  Not a bad way to pass the hours!

We’re still in short sleeves around here, and the tomatoes are still on the vine.  In fact, click here to see a video of St. Stephen’s market manager Erin Wright sharing loads of recipe ideas for these last weeks of the tomato season, on Virginia This Morning!

But the mornings are cool and the days are shorter and shorter, and we’re doing lots to gear up for the changing seasons.  Here you can see part of our winter squash harvest, curing in the greenhouse.  And Shannon is headed over to grab some flats of lettuce and mei qing choi — which she and Claire are diligently transplanting into the ground for y’all this very second!

Lest y’all thought we’d become an animal farm and given up on vegetables entirely — here’s proof that ain’t so!  We’ve been quite busy preparing the ground and getting all those good fall veggies into the soil.  Here’s Claire planting some lettuce.  This will be one of the first things to show up again on the market tables and in CSA shares as the weather cools even more.  Lettuce loves cool weather, and we love fall lettuce even more than the spring stuff: it’s sweet and tender without a hint of bitterness.

Also in the ground now, or germinating in the greenhouse: scallions, cooking greens like collards and kale, broccoli, cabbage, sweet potatoes, beets, carrots, lots of winter squash…

What?  These are some of your favorite vegetables?  Then join our Winter CSA!  There’s still a little space left in this 7-week mini-season that runs from early November to late December.  We’ve got four pick-up sites in Richmond, one in Lynchburg, and one at the farm, all on Wednesdays.  Lots more info here — or go directly to the printable registration form.

Now that we’ve got some good fencing up, Luanne the Goat doesn’t have to be on her tether anymore.  She is celebrating her freedom … by holing up in the chicken coop with the broody hen.