A Note from Layton | Preparing for Winter CSA

After a long summer full of fieldwork– seeding, planting, weeding, picking– your Quail Hill Farmers have recently enjoyed some nice change-ups to the habitual drone of high season. For four-plus weeks now, we’ve made good use of the kitchen at Nick and Toni’s in order to process hundreds (!!!) of pounds of cherry tomatoes, sauce tomatoes and juliets, as well as bullhorn sweet peppers for to our Winter CSA distributions. In recent weeks, we’ve held a couple of workshops on topics such tractor mechanics and maintenance and carpentry 101, lending an air of skill-building during this time of seasonal transition.

We had more than 50 folks try and guess the weight of our largest (!) watermelon of the 2024 season. Nicknamed Walt (nee Walt R. Melon), this big boy was the talk of the town up on Birch Hill last Saturday. And we’ve got a winner! Walt’s weight was 25.5 pounds, and our winning guess came in right at 25.25 pounds. The winner will receive a pie from our neighbors up the road at the Balsam Farm Stand, sponsored by one of our very own all-star CSA members. Thanks everyone for playing!

Up on Birch Hill and around the farm, we’ve been wrestling with a somewhat tricky set of growing conditions: as we approach the Equinox, germination slows and we ready our fields for the final vegetable crops of the year. Pushing close to four weeks without rain, and facing dusty conditions (preceded by a borderline catastrophic 4.5” rain last month) we’re experiencing some crop gaps and less-than-desirable crop quality across the farm. While we catch up on seeding, weeding and watering, please offer a moment of grace to your farmers as we all navigate the neverending vicissitudes of growing great food in uncertain climatic conditions. Thank you!

Take care, and see you in the fields,

Layton