F24 (W4): Welcoming Change
Dear Farm Community -
I hope y’all had a wonderful autumn equinox yesterday, one of two magical days of the year when day and night are in perfect balance. It’s a tipping point that beckons more change into the air - soon the trees will turn, it’ll be dark at 6pm, and we’ll all shift into our cooler-weather habits as we leave 90-degree days behind. It’s a time of shifting into a different gear, and we’ve been doing a lot of that on the farm recently. We’ve got our hands full taking our old summer plantings and flipping them into beds that will bear our autumn harvests. Last week we spent some sweaty days removing our early tomato plantings from two greenhouses. While we haven’t planted anything in them quite yet (but will this week), we have to say the transformation was pretty satisfying and definitely hard-earned. Check it out:
What a beautiful blank canvas!
In other news, thanks to diligent weeding pretty much all of our autumn crops are looking great. We’re already seeing awesome harvests of much-missed root veggies like salad radish, french breakfast radish, daikon, watermelon radish, hakurei turnips, and BEETS! Sweet potatoes continue to see beautiful harvests and we just dug up our first ever planting of purple sweet potato. Beans made their return to the markets this week, too!
Even more on the horizon:
✿ Big MELON harvests in sight! Our late planting of watermelons and cantaloupes are looking just about ready.
✿ POTATOES are starting to come up, and we predict we’ll have them available by November
✿ Our last planting of SUMMER SQUASH (zucchini, zephyr, yellow, & patty pan) is looking very healthy and will start fruiting soon, giving us these yummy squashes into the fall.
✿ The WINTER SQUASH plants are also looking beautiful and we’re predicting early November for harvests of butternut, acorn, kabocha, and spaghetti squashes.
✿ SUGAR SNAP PEAS are small but healthy! We’ve trellised them and look forward to seeing their upward growth for harvests in the autumn.
✿ LOOFAH TUNNEL 2024 is healthy and lush ~ check out the pic at the bottom of the email! We’ll let these die on the vine and eventually strip off the skin leaving just the loofah sponge - handy for washing dishes in the sink or yourself in the shower (we recommend separate loofahs for each task!!). This tunnel’s loofahs will go to market next year.
✿ SHIRTS & TOTE BAGS will be back at market this week or next. Shoutout to Old Guard Graphics here in Athens for their screenprinting expertise!
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A note to our Atlanta customers about markets this coming weekend: Freedom Farmers market will be closed on 9/28 for Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday celebration. We hope you’ll join us down the street at the Morningside Farmers Market (1411 N Morningside Dr NE)! Our setup looks a bit different there but look for our banner and you’ll know you’re in the right place. We’ll be bringing the same veggies and flowers you love, and how fun to check out a different market! The Morningside Farmers Market runs from 8am-11:30am. We’ll be back in full swing at Freedom the following Saturday, October 5th.
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And one more little note before we get to your CSA shares… we added 5 more spots to our October 19th wreath workshop (and 1 flower farmer to make sure y’all have all the help you need!) Please join Farmer Alex AND Farmer Morgan for a wonderfully floral time crafting your own seasonal wreaths from flowers dried on our farm this year. It’s a perfect little 2-hour activity to get you in the mood for the autumn, and you’ll leave with a beautiful decoration that will last for years to come. A cute couples activity, kiddo friendly, and a great place to spend time with folks who also loooove “thinking globally and acting locally” - and deepening their connection to our Athens community! We hope you’ll join!
Alright let’s get down to business! With green beans back on the menu this week it’s the perfect opportunity to bust out another Alison Roman recipe - Frizzled Green Beans, Mushrooms, and Onions! We highly recommend getting your ‘shrooms from Classic City Mushrooms, a local mushroom farmer who’s usually at the Wednesday night Athens Farmers Market at CCBC and Saturday Athens Farmers Market at Bishop Park. They're the best! Now that it’s fall, pasta is officially on the menu…. with that arugula how about cooking up a yummy dish like this Cacio e Pepe with Arugula and Lemon?
To those readers who are part of our CSA program, we hope you’re enjoying the diverse array of produce this time of year has to offer. And to those not yet on board, we hope you’ll join us soon :)
May your bellies be full,
Diamond Hill Farmers
for a perfectly balanced equinox (& dinner):
$25 share: cucumbers, arugula, beets OR turnips, green beans, bok choy, sweet peppers OR shishito peppers
$35 share: cucumbers, arugula, beets OR turnips, green beans, bok choy, sweet peppers OR shishito peppers, cantaloupe, summer squash, jalapeños