We're going to be doing a slideshow of all our Thanksgiving Dinner Basket items for the Tilth Harvest Fair on Saturday, so I figured I would share some thoughts on each of the items while I had the pictures handy.
Heritage Turkeys Grazing
I've written a lot about the turkeys, and will write more soon detailing how we're managing to move them with minimal effort now that they're enclosed by the electronet fencing. At last count, we still had 64 turkeys in the paddock. We'll probably keep the best tom and 2 or 3 of the best hens to overwinter and hope we have better success with incubating eggs next year.
Pie Pumpkins
The pumpkins are looking great. Squash seems to be an easy thing to grow in our climate. We're going to leave them all on the vine until we get close to the first frost, then store them in our root cellar till Thanksgiving.
Butternut Squash
Acorn Squash
The other squashes are doing equally well. We should have a surplus come Thanksgiving.
Dry Beans
All the other pictures on here were taken last Sunday, but his is from three weeks prior because we forgot to take a picture of the beans. Suffice to say, the pods are much drier now. We've harvested a few pounds for display at the Harvest Fair. Overall, the beans have been a success, and I'm happy to include a good source of plant-based protein in the baskets. They are very labor intensive, though, and like all grains, can be much more efficiently harvested with a combine than by hand.
Potatoes in Bloom
After a false start with bad seed stock and cold, wet soil, our potatoes have grown like gangbusters. We're going to wait as long as possible to harvest these, then put them in the root cellar as well.
Beets
The beets have been a struggle at times this year. Our initial row failed completely due to slugs. Our next block grew like crazy, and then our August planting had spotty germination. We're going to have a huge number of huge beets, but some might have a bit of a woody exterior. Your basket will likely contain a few of the mondo May planted beets and a few of the smaller August beets. These store better with the leaves removed, so we'll be cutting off the tops. They won't go to waste, though, as the rabbits love them.
Garlic
Garlic is always feels like a bit of a gamble because it's planted in the fall of the year previous to harvest. While we had some issues with slugs and difficulty weeding (next year we'll put the rows more than 12 inches apart to make it easier to weed with a wheel hoe), the garlic was a success. It's dried, cleaned, and in the cellar ready to go into your basket.
Onions
I'll admit that this year was my first year growing onions, and I experienced some definite growing pains. My direct seeded onions barely germinated, and the ones that did were hard to weed because they looked so much like grass. The slugs also loved dining on the seedlings, the juvenile leaves, and the adult leaves. Luckily, I planted a row of onions from sets, which means we'll have some harvest, but probably only one onion per basket. Next year I'll be starting onion seeds in a big tray indoors and then plucking out and transplanting the young plants to get a jump on the weather and to help control the slug/germination issue.
Kale
Ahh, old dependable kale. Gotta love it. The first planting was obliterated by slugs, but luckily my August planting has grown at an amazing rate and will be ready with excess for Thanksgiving.
Brussel Sprouts
Collard Greens
A tale of two brassicas: I planted the Brussel sprouts early because I knew they needed a full season to produce. Of my two rows and nearly 200 plants, only about 23 survived the great slug attack of 2012. I planted a row of collard greens in August and they have essentially raced the kale to see who could grow the fastest. Everyone will get a big bunch of collards in their basket and a smaller number of Brussel sprouts. Oh--and the kale, collards, and Brussel sprouts will all be harvested as close to the Thanksgiving Basket pick-up day as possible. They get better in cold weather!
Carrot
To my surprise, the carrots were one of the more difficult things to grow this year. They fell prey to the aforementioned slug attack, and I also think they've been getting nibbled on by some wild rabbits. I also made the mistake of planting a row adjacent to the paddock where the young pigs were born, who have no problem going under the electric fence to root around and wallow in the carrot row! I've planted carrots in four different plantings, and should have plenty for the baskets. Like the beets, there will likely be some world record carrots and some smaller, more tender buggers.
Sage
Chives
Thyme
Oregano
The herbs have been a challenge, but they've come on strong in the last few months. The wet spring made getting the seedlings established difficult, and we lost a lot of plants (especially sage) to slugs. I was worried we'd have a rather puny harvest, but I'm much more optimistic now. You can expect a healthy sized bundle of fresh herbs.
Honey Bucket
Frozen Blackberries
Honey production has had some ups and downs this year--but more downs than ups. We purchased five packages of bees in the spring, and lost all but one colony by August. Fate did take pity on us though, with the arrival of a wild swarm in July. While we did get some excess honey from our one strong colony, it's not going to be enough for everyone to get honey in their basket. As a result, we're removing honey from the core basket, dropping the price by $5, and adding a pound of frozen blackberries foraged from the farm. You will at least have some sweetness for your meal. The little surplus honey we have will be available for sale when you pick up your basket.
Pocorn
Sunflowers
Our experimental plots have been a lot of fun, but we're still not sure if we're going to get much to put in the baskets. I planted several rows of popcorn, Green Oaxacan field corn (not pictured), and soybeans (not pictured). These plants are notoriously difficult to grow in our mild summers. They are healthy and robust, but they still have a ways to go to get their grains dried down for harvest. It will be a race. If we do get a harvest, we'll probably give you a choice of a few items for your basket when you come to pick it up. The sunflowers I planted for fun because I had so much extra space this year. I bought a bag of black oil sunflowers for bird as seed. My original thought was to harvest the seeds and make sunflower oil. Now that I have experience with hand harvesting and threshing barley, I'm not so keen on that anymore. A multi-crop combine would be a wonderful thing. Alas, the sunflowers might just get thrown whole to the turkeys, which isn't a bad thing either. Speaking of the barley, that is the biggest experiment of all. I won't be including anything from that massive project in the baskets this year, but we still hope to have a shindig celebrating our homegrown beer. I'll be doing some more posts on our barley experiment in the future.
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