Damaged poly-tunnel plastic destined for recycling on a smaller tunnel some day.
This is where I left you last post (above) and this is where our PT 'beast' is at now...
...so now she's got her new 'skin' on and farmer Tim has begun preparing the soil inside her for some autumn plantings, which we hope will help keep us going with some produce into early winter. I say 'hope' because no matter what us farmers do, we are always somewhat at the mercy of Mother Nature.
In the meanwhile, we have been very fortunate with later summer/autumn tomatoes, considering most everyone we speak with are struggling with theirs.
We have yellow ones, red ones, yellow-orange ones, Green Zebras, Purple & Black Russians (though not as many this year) & of course cherry, yellow pear & Pink egg varieties (see down page...)...here's just a few above.
We also are now enjoying the arrival of some new, tasty cool season root crops...
Beetroots making good progress in the paddock.
Baby beets at our Collingwood Children's Farm market stall last Saturday.
More baby carrots making excellent progress in the paddock.
See our lovely, healthy baby carrots in the background, beetroot leaves in the mid & various cherry-style toms. in the foreground.
Potato plants soon to be harvested.
The first of the season - Dutch Creams, Otway Reds & Royal Blues.
Potatoes taste so much different when just harvested, I never imagined they could have such depth of flavour or variation between the different kinds before we grew potatoes. It's most obvious when they're fresh dug but because types like ours are long time varieties and ours in particular are grown in perfect spud growing earth, organically and with TLC, they retain a certain special-ness even after they've been dug up for a while. So much for my lower-carb dietary efforts! Mind you potatoes grown properly, of tastier types and colourful skins do have much more going for them nutritionally and aren't as much an issue for those keeping check on their simple carbohydrate intake.
Beautiful herbs still on-hand...fresh coriander (with long healthy roots) next to the tub of mixed herb posies. Front left purple basil, zingy dill between cori and basil and oregano at front, among other herbs we have at the moment. The Opal purple basil has amazingly survived the frost a couple of weeks back, but it will finish soon and the woody herbs will start their winter die-back too. We may be able to keep some 'border-season' cori and dill on the go until winter. It's been a hopeless year for parsley and it seems we're not the only ones to find that - there's always next season 'as they say'.
A Bella Rossa heritage aubergine.
Bless the aubergine (AKA eggplants), as they continue on for now, slowly and not in vast amounts but surely they come in the small poly-tunnels.
A few zucchs. are battling on but a sure sign the season has turned that we no longer can supply zucchini flowers or abundant zucchinis. Lets face it, we DO get our fill of zucchs. during their season do we not?!
Oh yeah, in case you might have forgotten our main thang is GARLIC...we'll be planting our new stock soon! Yippee x 1000!
We are looking forward to a way better 2011 garlic crop, and pray the weather gods are on our side in this for this season (& many others!), so we can all enjoy a new and abundant harvest by December. We are so terribly sorry to all of you loyal garlic friends who have begged us and whom we have not been able to supply for some time now and of course those who missed out altogether - thanks for your ongoing support :-)
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