Writing tonight, September 24th, I'm happy to report that every pre-order is out, and a good chunk of recent orders are headed to the post office tomorrow. In my farming life, my routine lately has been to head to the post office in the morning, every other day, and to pack from 10am to sundown for the past 10 days straight! It's been a blitz. I've enjoyed packing the orders and I've especially had fun this year with the variety packs, since it gives me creative freedom to introduce you folks to interesting varieties that you may not have added to your cart, but that will do well for you in kitchens and gardens. I like offering the themed packs and thinking about what will work, for who.
With the bulk of the packing work behind me, I now face heading to Saugerties for the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in 7 days! It just doesn't stop being interesting and busy around here. I'll be clipping and cleaning as much garlic as I can, but I've been behind all year and may bring some "Dirty Hairy" garlic, as I call it. Meanwhile, I am determined to get some corn harvested as soon as possible, so a couple friends of mine are coming tomorrow and we'll try to pull in the bulk of the 2021 Hopi Blue crop. The deer get quite browsy later in the fall and will hit it hard, so this is the best compromise window to get it in before it's just turned to venison- though I wish I could let it field dry a bit more. Part of tomorrow's work is to quickly design and build a drying system for the cobs that also keeps the vicious Rock Tigers (chipmunks) off of the corn as well. My goal is to do the best ambient-temp drydown I can on the cob, so I can shell it efficiently and get it to a friend's place, who grows small scale grains and has offered the use of his fancy drying setup, which will get it drier (and better-storing) than I've been able to do with my old setups.
The Iroquois Skunk Beans are still mid-maturation at this point- there are many dry, or almost-dry leathery pods I could grab, but also many green ones. Due to the week's general focus on Saugerties prep, the squad and I will focus on just the corn harvest tomorrow. Often during a Three Sisters harvest, I like to be ready to take anything worth taking, but I'll just have to ignore the temptation to grab the beans- in dry or partially dry stage, they are not that appetizing to deer.
In the meanwhile...this year's garlic location has been plowed, so it's ready for stakes and layout to make those perfect, tight 4 foot beds. Hopefully it'll go off without a hitch- I hope for a reasonably dry-ish early October.