With a fire going in the fireplace and our winter socks on, we can finally say: it's winter. Fall vanished suddenly before our eyes last Wednesday with a unexpected 12-hour blizzard that left us with almost a foot of heavy, wet, sloppy snow.
But, to back up. In the long weeks since our last update we've finished our market season, closed our farm stand for the winter, survived a hurricane, and adopted a flock of chickens. We knew to expect the end of our market season. The hurricane and the chickens, however, were surprises.
Darling Farm escaped the October superstorm relatively unscathed. Our fence has required major rebuilding and some of our brussles sprouts and broccoli got toppled in the wind, but most of the smaller crops were just fine thanks to hardy row cover. Thankfully there were no major trees down around our historic house, though there were many down in the area, and we only lost power for short and irregularly-timed periods throughout the four-day ordeal.
We've also excitedly become the adoptive parents to a small flock of 13 hens and 2 roosters, who came to us from a friend who needed to find them a new home. They fit seamlessly into our little ecosystem and are happy to see us each day as we bring them food scraps and say good morning.
And now, the snow. Again thanks to the hardy row cover, many of our crops are still growing happily and we'll continue to eat well from the fields for the next few weeks or months, temperature permitting. But with our fridges stocked full with canned and frozen evidence of warmer weather, and the days getting shorter and shorter, we're happy to say that it's time to rest.
We're so thankful for our extraordinary first season here at Darling Farm - thankful to a tireless crew of friends and family, a enthusiastic market crowd, and a mostly-cheerful meteorology. We can't wait until it's seed catalogue time in January or February, but until then, signing off.
