Well, it’s happened.  My potatoes have been struck all to hell by late blight.

I’ve been watching them with consternation for a few weeks now…hoping hoping hoping that those little brown spots I was seeing weren’t blight.  Silly me.  I should have chopped them all down right then.

I went out of town last weekend, so almost a week went by without a stop to the garden.  On Thursday I sped by after work (note to self:  keep some better shoes in your car…traipsing up a hill that is a foot deep in thick weeds in your heels is a terrible, terrible idea) and saw that my potatoes were wrecked.  Oddly enough, it seemed to be creeping up the patch.  I have two long rows, and the vines at one end were rotted and blackened while the ones at the other ends were still green and strong, just showing lots of spots. I figured it would hit them all at once…guess not.

I’ve read a couple of sources online that say if you cut down your vines, not leaving any green, and let the potatoes sit for at least two weeks in the ground, you can dig up the tubers and it will lessen the chance that the blight actually gets on the potatoes. So today I went by the farm and cut them all down, leaving only little nubs sticking up so I know where the plants were growing.  I stuffed all the vines in a old feed bag and gave it to the farm managers.  They are going to see that they get incinerated.

Shockingly, none of the tomatoes at the farm seem to have even a touch of it (they don’t grow any potatoes, so that isn’t an issue).  Almost every farm around us is reporting that they are getting hit hard- many of them have lost their entire crops.  But today we picked a few handfuls of early cherry and plum tomatoes off of perfectly green, healthy plants.  My little plot is on an isolated hillside with a forest between it and any other plants of the nightshade family.  Keep your fingers crossed.  I could personally care less about the whole tomato crop being wiped out, but it would break the hearts of most of the people who belong to the CSA, so I’ll hope for the best.

Forgive my very long absence!  (Well, at least from this blog.  Readers of my personal blog will know this is rather par for the course.)  Two weeks ago, I got a promotion, and I have been working like a crazy person.  I worked 57 hours one week and 52 the next!   I’ve been exhausted to say the least.  But, the benefit of working so much is that I am off until January 5th!  Woo Hoo!  Two weeks!

I’ve got lots of cooking plans over the vacation, and I’ve already successfully completed several of them, including roasting one of our new farm-raised chickens that we got from our CSA.  I wanted to truly taste it, so I only seasoned it with salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of parsley.  I am not exaggerating when I say it was the best chicken I have ever eaten in my life.  I do love chicken very much…but this is just spectacular.  Not only was the meat delicious, lean, and plentiful, but it also produced 5 quarts of the best chicken stock I have ever made.

I’m so glad that there are 5 more in my freezer right now.  They were a little pricey for us at $5/lb, but I’m telling you that it is so worth it.  Especially since we never buy or eat chicken anymore (not after Omnivore’s Dilemma!) so it was OK for us to splurge.  I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat conventional chicken again!

I’m terribly sorry that I didn’t post at all over the last few weeks, because we had a HUGE snowstorm that was quite impressive.  We got easily 2 feet of snow over a 36 hour period.  In fact, in that time, it didn’t stop snowing a single moment.  It was the most snow I’ve ever seen and it buried everything around here.  It would have been a good weather post!  Ah well, you’ll just have to take my word for it!   I can’t even show you later pictures, since it all melted on Christmas Eve.  All that and still no white Christmas!  Bah!

My seed catalogs have started coming in, so keep an eye out for a planning post soon!

We had a very rainy weekend (plus Thursday and Friday).  From the very non-scientific measure on my back porch, which is actually a rubbermaid container that holds any veggie scraps we take to the farm, we got about 5+ inches this weekend.   It never rained terribly hard, but it was constant. 

Something about fall rain makes me miserable.  I already dislike this time of year, because I fear cold weather, but crisp Autumn days are actually quite enjoyable.  Wet, dreary, grey Autumn days are awful.  The rain was less welcome because my parents were in town this weekend for my birthday.  It was their first visit to Massachusetts since I came here last year, so I had a lot of activities planned.  Mostly we just stayed indoors and made cheese, canned green beans, and played with the cat.  It was terribly fun, but I’m afraid they didn’t get a very authentic New England experience. 

I was hoping to get some stuff done in the garden this weekend.  I wanted to plant my Walking Onions (y’all call them Egyptian Onions up here, I believe) and do a lot of work in my flower garden.  It’s starting to look very, very sad and I was commenting to Pete the other day that I’ve developed a bit of disdain for it.  In a way I feel like since it isn’t doing anything useful, like feed us, I just don’t have the energy for it.  I know it’s temporary, though.  In early spring, nothing in the world makes me happier than flowers blooming.  So I need to put in some good work now or else I’ll regret it come April. 

This Saturday was our last farm-box pickup at our CSA.  We got winter squash, gourds, apples, a few tomatoes, green beans, and a big bunch of watercress.  I’m sad it’s all over- it’s been a fun experiment to have a CSA share this year and we’ll certainly be a part of it next season.  Pete and I have become very involved in the farm, and we’ve already got our plan with the owners for helping out during the winter and early spring months.  Strangely, considering my earlier statement about flowers, they’ve asked me to develop a flower share for the CSA which is something they have always wanted to do but never had the time to do it.  I told them how much I loved flowers so they asked if I’d like to take point next year developing the program.  Hopefully I won’t drive them in to financial ruin. 

I’ll have an update about green beans coming up soon!

I live quite close to Plymouth (as in Plymouth Rock and the Mayflower), which is a lovely if not kitschy kind of place. Ever since I moved here last year I have had this crush (if you can call it such) on a little piece of land that was somewhat of a mystery to me. At the one point on the main road, amid multi-million dollar homes and a winding view of the lovely Plymouth harbor, there is a rather large open field. It has an ocean view. An open field with an ocean view in the middle of some of the most prime real estate in the area…perplexing, no? How was nothing done with this?

Well, I just love it because I found it refreshing to have a break in the mansions and have a nice rolling field but I was always curious of the purpose. Surely it was there for something, right? I kept expecting to see it turned into a park this spring or play host to some sort of festival in the summer, but nothing ever seemed to happen there. Every time I drove by the only difference was that the grass seemed taller.

Then yesterday I drove by and I had my answer:

A hayfield!

Isn’t it beautiful?  And what a wonderful use for a beautiful piece of land.  Thank goodness it isn’t covered with McMansions or condos or a damn wal-mart.  It just charmed me to pieces.