October Gleanings

Greetings Folks,

For many of us, fall is a time to get things done before the hard North Country weather settles in.
This is especially true in the garden. Even with 2-3 times more land in production over last year,
we find ourselves in much better shape going into winter.  Funny how things go.
Last years flooding threw a major wrench into our cover cropping plan.
Looking around the garden today, barely any open ground can be found, except for where we are harvesting the latest root crops.
Cover crops are an important tool in our soil management scheme.

On Saturday, a dozen or so of you helped in planting over 2,500 garlic and 1,250 shallots
all in a couple of hours. A tremendous effort, many thanks.

planting next to fall cabbage, which is undersown with a living mulch of clover

a few of the jubilant planting crew

Today, we were part of the National Youth Food Summit Day. Locally, GardenShare organized a day of workshops and events at SUNY Potsdam for over 230 high school students from across northern NY.
We gave two workshops on "farming by the foot, not the acre" to future producers and consumers from as far as Westport and Crown Point. My favorite comment from the day was "I wish we had a hands-on opportunity like this near us". Thanks to GS for organizing this event and for inviting us to share the philosophy behind our project.

That's it for now.
Thanks and stay in touch,
bob