Payoffs of the urban farm

The harvest continues but is winding down quickly. My last boxes of veggies have been delivered to my land partners and I'm starting to take down fences and compost plants as they start to die back. With fall comes amazing food, though, and I wanted to take a few minutes today to realize some of the tangible values of urban farming other than beauty, enjoyment, the great outdoors, butterflies, and a feeling of living closer to the land. Fall is a time of thanksgiving, of reflection of the growing season, of preparing for winter... and it's lovely weather, too!

I know it's fall when the popcorn is ready to harvest. (Must also be time to store the summer clothes and dig out the mittens and wool socks!) Popcorn is so cheap to buy that people sometimes wonder why I bother. I grow it because I love to harvest it and it saves well all winter. Nothing beats a big bowl of fresh, hot, homegrown, heirloom popcorn in the middle of a snowstorm!

Carmen peppers are my absolute favorite variety! They are super sweet and a beautiful red! We've harvested a lot of them this year, so at $4.99 a pound we've come out ahead. They also freeze well, so we'll be eating them for months to come.

Tomatoes are ripening more slowly now, but we're still enjoying them daily (a money saver, but more importantly, nothing beats a ripe, garden tomato--and as you can see in this grocery store photo, home-grown, vine-ripened, heirloom tomatoes have superior quality--transportation issues are the main reason why modern, commercial varieties are pretty but tasteless!). Since we have so many, I'm canning again this year (see below).

This was almost a perfect year for tomatoes in the southern half of Wisconsin. I only irrigated one time and disease pressure at the urban farm was minimal. 

There were so many tomatoes this year, even the yellow, heirloom slicers got to go into the spaghetti sauce!

I'm still a novice canner and always looking to perfect my technique and recipes, but my sauce is pretty tasty!

Until our maple tree decides to turn red, I'm enjoying the leaves on my walks. Happy fall, y'all!

**Side note about composting from my walk last evening:

Greens and browns, people, greens and browns...not sticks. Just sayin'.

It's ok to make mistakes

I have to admit that fall snuck/sneaked* up on me this year. It's been a long summer, full of new things: trying out the farmer's market, growing in 3 locations, and succession planting on a scale I've never done before. But with the beautiful growing season (the tomatoes are still going crazy!) I totally forgot that autumn was right around the corner. Is this a big deal? Thankfully no, but I did miss planting fall radish, a few fall root crops, and most of the fall lettuce.

So this leads me to my point: as an urban farmer, it is ok to make mistakes. Although there is nothing as sweet as home-grown food, we are in the fortunate position of being able to buy food from local farmers' markets and around the world. So I am going to cut myself some slack and move on.

Don't let fear of screwing up keep you from starting a garden or growing a few patio plants. If you need  encouragement, here are a few common urban farm errors that I have made just this year:

• Go on vacation and don't set up irrigation (this is especially an issue with potted tomato plants).

• Go inside for lunch and forget that your chickens are still running around the yard. Find them later that evening (close to fox dinner time) wandering around the neighbor's yard.

• Forget to harvest zucchini until it's the size of a 6 month old Labrador puppy (this mistake can be forgiven by making zucchini bread out of the giant squash).

• Plant 30 (or some other large, unreasonable number) of eggplants, having forgotten that you are the only member of your family that remotely enjoys eggplant (this error leads to giving away vegetables to neighbors and friends, so things can turn out well in the end).

This week at the urban farm:

The lower home plots last week. I have really enjoyed the sunflowers, but they are so large this is probably their one cameo appearance at the urban farm.

Next year-- more plum tomatoes! I forgot over the winter how much I love to can. 

I've been really pleased with these "Glow" sweet peppers. They are thick-walled and very prolific in our Wisconsin cool summers, and they will turn a beautiful orange if I leave them alone long enough. 

A nice shot of one of our flower beds.

Have a great week and enjoy the fall weather!

*I prefer "snuck" as the past tense of "sneak," but I'm sure my English teacher and writer friends will appreciate that I acknowledge the more correct "sneaked." English teacher and writer friends, please comment on this and any other grammar issues I have if you have the time. 

After only one week away...

As the days of summer get shorter but warmer, after only a week away from the urban farm I came home to a jungle of tomato plants, huge and heavy with long-awaited ripening fruits. The sunflowers had shot up well over my head, and even with daily inspections from my family, a couple of zucchini squash got away and became sizable clubs, perfect for shredding up and baking into chocolate chip zucchini muffins. It's also time to start canning. This year, Italian peppers are the first to go into the boiling water. I look forward to mixing them with olive oil and scooping it all up with a local baguette this winter.

There should be a walkway in the middle!

The mess is worth it for the great veggies this time of year.

Peppers and carrots + garlic and spices + vinegar and olive oil = love!

Knowing I will eat food in the winter that I put away myself helps me look forward to the cold months ahead.