A Genuine Harvest

I was able to carve out some time on Wednesday to prepare beds and plant next year's garlic crop before we get a batch of wet (and then cold) weather.  I only put in a little more than 350 garlic for the 2024 season, but that's 350 more than we planted last fall.  The only garlic we harvested were the heads that we failed to pull the year before.

It might seem odd to hear me see it, but I was surprised at how easy it was to plant the garlic this time around.  The soil was warm and not too wet (or too dry).  The beds we chose to use had been potatoes this year, which has been a normal rotation order for us for some time now.  That meant the soil was already loose and the bed was clean of weeds because of the potato digging process.

And once the garlic was in, I grabbed the last of the onion crop and pulled that in.

Planting the garlic is actually a milestone that reminds us to celebrate the season's harvest.  Traditionally, at the Genuine Faux Farm, we have a hard time finding the time to plant the garlic until we've pulled in the majority of the long-season crops.  Apples, squash and potatoes are usually on that list.

So, since I planted the garlic, we can now reflect on the year's harvest.  Of course, there are a few more things to bring in, but the bulk of the harvest work is now done.

We've already written about the bounty from our special Cortland apple tree.  We've been happily munching on those apples for a month now and we were able to get the rest to various interested people.  Meanwhile, our Fireside apple tree gave us a smaller harvest (in quantity) all while producing the largest apples we've ever seen.  And - of course - they are delicious!

Apples are symbolic of some of our long-term effort and planning at our farm.  There were no fruit trees at the farm when we first moved here.  Now, we get a fair amount of apples most seasons.  I call that a good result.

This season's melon crop was smaller, and bigger, than we've had in prior years - all at the same time.  This time around, we didn't plant with the intention of having excess to sell or donate.  Yes, we planted more than we needed.  But, we also experimented with the varieties in hopes that we could feed ourselves with melons for breakfast as long as possible this year.

Believe it or not, we had one of our favorite melons (Ha'Ogen) just last week.  They last pretty well in the refrigerator and we've had delicious melons for weeks this year.

While that's great, the real success is our rediscovery of some of the melons we liked in the past.  Along with that is the healthy reminder that we should both enjoy the growing and the eating of the food we raise on our farm.

Some of the enjoyment for us comes with the discovery and rediscovery of vegetable varieties that are open-pollinated.  Often they are heritage of heirloom varieties.  Our hot peppers this year were Joe's Long Cayenne and Ausilio Thin-Skinned Italian.  Joe has been on our grow list for a very long time, while Ausilio is a new, and pleasant, surprise for us this year.

We don't need all that many hot peppers ourselves, but we do still like having some of them and we enjoy growing them.  The biggest problem we had with them in the past is that only a subset of our CSA customers wanted them (and what they wanted typically wasn't very many of them).  Meanwhile, we were rarely able to find a bulk outlet for the excess at a price that made the effort worth our while.

Tammy's favorite sweet pepper has been Golden Treasure for quite some time now.  So, I was pleased to be able to put a few of them in Valhalla (our larger high tunnel).  After a couple of years where we did not do well with the few plants we grew, we had a great year with these plants.

Why was this year better?  I can point to a whole host of reasons, but the key is still the visit we received in June from our farming friends.  If they hadn't come when they did, there were be no blog today talking about our 2023 harvest.

It makes me feel good to know that Tammy is able to take one or two of these to school for a snack or for lunch each day when she wants.  And that's probably as good a reason as any for growing some of what we grew this year.

Many of the tomatoes in Valhalla did well this year too, despite a late start.  In particular, the Black Krim tomatoes really made us proud.  We still have some green tomatoes out there.  Maybe I'd better get out there soon?  But, even if I don't, we still should be pleased, and maybe even a bit proud, with the 2023 tomato harvest.

Like every season, this one was not perfect.  We had some crop failures and we had some personal failures.  I'll certainly process the lessons our failures put before us before the 2024 growing season is upon us.  But, we also had successes - and that's what I'm focusing on right now.