SELLMEYER FARM NEWSLETTER

Wow the weather yesterday and today is unbelievable! Up in the 70's yesterday and again today! But it is supposed to get cold tomorrow!

We've been catching up on things around here that get put off because we're too busy. We've got the old strawberry patch mowed off and the electric fence around it cleaned off. We are going to keep this patch another year. We normally plow it under every year, but this year out of the 3,000 plugs we ordered for our new patch, several hundred were dead, so we will keep the old one another year.

Greg finally got a water valve dug up and cleaned out. It had filled in with dirt and we couldn't get it turned off. We had an old hog waterer that we weren't using that had leaked all summer and now have it turned off! While he did that I put the windows back in the chicken house. I've taken cuttings off my rosemary, oregano and french tarragon and have them in my "rooting" boxes!

We've also planted swiss chard, mizuna, arugula, spinach, lettuce, kale and radishes in our little hoop house. We are trying an experiment this winter to see what we can grow in there during the winter.

We are doing a winter market this year over in Columbia. It's every Sat. from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Right now we have winter squash, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, dried apples, tomatoes, jams and jellies, baked goods, and eggs to sell. So it will be interesting to see how that goes. There are two problems as I see it with this; one the produce selection and two the customers don't come out in the winter, even though this market is indoors. But we'll see, it's a learning time for everyone. Hopefully it will be worth our time. There are also meat vendors there, and other veggies that the greenhouse growers are growing.

Greg has been ordering and making plans to put up some short tunnels that are movable in our new field by the house. That will enable us to plant more things earlier and then once they get going and it warms up we can move off the tunnels. More experiments and learning opportunities!

I have been making more jams, and cooking up winter squash and putting it in freezer to use in pies and breads. Need to get some more sweet potatoes done also. The seed catalogs are coming in, I've been going through them and marking things of interest for next year!