SELLMEYER FARM NEWSLETTER

The CSA season may be over but we are still selling at the Columbia Farmers' Market. Today I need to see if any tomatoes in the hoop house are ripe. There are lots of green ones and we can keep them from freezing, but as cool as it's been it takes forever for them to ripen! Then I will have to uncover the peppers and see if there's anything ready to pick and cover them back up as it's supposed to be cold again tonight and tomorrow night. But then Sunday it's supposed to start warming up into the 60's so hopefully that will help ripen what's left a bit! We are still digging sweet potatoes, have several bucket fulls that need to be washed today. That's always fun to do in the cold and rain! We still have some apples to pick, and of course the winter squash and pumpkins. But as cold as it is supposed to be tomorrow (mid 40's) I don't know how many people will brave the weather to come out and shop. I'm already trying to plan on how to layer what to wear so I can stand out there for 5 1/2 hours and not turn into an ice cube!!!!!!

We have had plenty of rain. We don't have a rain gauge up, but the weather man has said we have had at least 6" if not more! We would like for it to dry up so we can get the potato beds made for next year. That way next Spring maybe we can get a jump on planting them, and not have to wait for it to dry out to make beds. Same thing for the lettuce beds. We plant most everything in raised beds as our ground is pretty flat and drainage can be a problem. We've found that planting on raised beds sure has helped that problem, but if it's too wet in the Spring we can't get the beds made, so if we can do a few the Fall before we are that much ahead.

Yesterday Greg's folks came down for a visit and as it was baking day I decided to put a pork loin roast in the crock pot. I took a jar of the onion jam I made last week and dumped that on top and added cubed up sweet potatoes and let that cook all day. Boy was that good! Even Greg thought it was pretty good and he made fun of my making onion jam!