Enjoy Quail Hill Farm's Bounty This Winter
October 10, 2019
By Layton Guenther
Happy Autumn! During these early days of fall, we acknowledge the shift towards the lengthening shadows of fall.
The Autumnal Equinox occurs unanimously across the Northern Hemisphere, and marks a season of senescence: around the fields at Quail Hill Farm, milkweed pods are releasing their seeds; porcelain berry glows in purples and blues; bittersweet vines ripen to yellow, soon to reveal their vermillion berries throughout our fencelines. Our Autumn brassicas thrive in these cooler, shorter days, blooming in waxy, glorious blue-greens as we enter into the last month of the Summer Share and prepare for the legendary Winter Share to begin.
This year, the Winter Share is shaping up to be one for the books: in addition to the late autumn brassicas like succulent broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts, we’ll offer sweet roots and tubers like sweet potatoes, carrots, beets, watermelon radish, fingerling potatoes and more. In addition, we will have ample fresh greens available: mesclun, claytonia (or miner’s lettuce), arugula, chervil, mustard greens, swiss chard and more will be planted throughout the smaller greenhouses, and open for harvesting throughout the winter.
Your membership to the Quail Hill Farm Winter Share buys more than just vegetables, it is an investment in innovative, regenerative, climate-resilient agriculture. At this moment, in late September, we are sowing in-situ cover crops into our late-season fields. These crops provide ample coverage to protect our precious topsoil from winter storms. Using cover crops as a living mulch, we are investing in the long-term health of our farmland.
In the early years of this Community Farm, Scott and the farm members identified the need to provide local produce to the membership year-round -- to truly stretch what a seasonally-oriented diet could entail. Our winter share includes 30+ items – from the root cellar and the greenhouses -- for your family beginning the week before Thanksgiving, and for as long as our supplies last. In addition to the fresh crops, we also prepare roasted tomatoes and sweet peppers, roasted poblano peppers, smoked and dried chipotle peppers, dry beans, soft white wheat, hard red wheat, pickled garlic scapes, and more.
After 30 years of Community Farming here in Amagansett, we’re thrilled to make available this unique offering to you, our East End community. We hope you join us!
Thank you! And see you in the fields,
Layton
Layton Guenther
Director, Quail Hill Farm
LGuenther@PeconicLandTrust.org