This week’s harvest: apples, potatoes, buttercup winter squash, onions, parsley, fennel

It’s hard to believe that it’s early October and we’ve already replanted our tunnels and greenhouse into winter spinach. We are a month ahead of previous years because of the early end to the season. It has been hard for me to accept that it is time to wind down. My mind is already busy adjusting for next season. We are so new to growing and feel like each year we have come so far from the year before. There are still so many things we would like to improve upon. First, we need to increase salad greens production. This will include changing our variety selection for the heat of the summer, adding shade cloth, and fertilizing with soybean meal instead of coffee grounds (which slowed germination and growth). Secondly, we would like to grow bigger and more diverse beets (especially golden)! Roasting root vegetables became a nightly routine in our house and we heard from you that you enjoyed it too. Increasing the organic matter in the soil, planting early in low tunnels, and thinning should do the trick. We’d love to hear more from you if you have suggestions for what you would like us to grow next year.

We continue to grow through the winter mostly because we don’t buy vegetables at the store. I just can’t do it anymore. It’s funny because I never loved farming for the harvests, but rather for the act of growing. But now, after eating only our vegetables for three years, I just can’t go back. And it’s not that the grocery store vegetables taste bad. Rather, it’s because I now know too much. I know that grocery store vegetables are a part of big business, big tractors, big chemical use, big fossil fuel emissions, big soil compaction, big nitrogen run-off and big money for the owner (not the workers). Our vegetables are a part of the health of our community, our soils and waterways, our local food security, our economy, and our bodies.

In fact, while eating a tomato this season I was reminded of Plato’s Allegory of the cave. It was presented in The Republic (520 ad) “to compare the effect of education and the lack of it on our nature.” The story describes a group of people that are chained to the wall of a cave. The entrance to the cave is behind them so that anything that passes in front of the cave door casts a shadow onto the walls that they are facing. The shadows are all they have seen their entire lives, therefore, the shadows are their reality. I have been freed from the cave. I know now what a real tomato tastes like and that the ones in the grocery store are only “shadows” of the real tomato. It is real not only because of the taste, but because of the way it was grown and the gifts that it provided to our community. I have tasted a real tomato, cucumber, sweet onion, carrot, zucchini, spinach leaf and apple and I aint goin back!

I know, it isn’t fair because fresh vegetables are hard to come by in the winter here and not everyone has their own greenhouses! But this is the direction Adobe House Farm is heading. We want you to have access to local food, free of synthetic chemicals year-round. We want to grow enough during the summer so that we can preserve extra for the winter. The “rescued” hailed tomatoes opened our eyes to ways in which we can preserve the extra harvest. And, we want to increase greenhouse space so that you can eat fresh vegetables all winter long. In the next few weeks we will be putting in another high tunnel to add to our winter growing and we continue to explore ways to increase our food production in town.

We intend to make a lifetime out of providing the highest quality vegetables to Durango. Thank you for being part of this journey from the beginning!

Linley, Peter, Werner