It is a little surreal that in a mere 10 days we will be closing on our new farm and moving our operation for here to there.  As we've started to pack up, we realize how much STUFF we have even for living in a little apartment and running a very small farm.  A testament to how much it takes to run a farm, even a small market garden!  The benefit is we have an endless supply of produce boxes to use for packing.  So as we're living the countdown to the move, we are also counting down our CSA boxes and market.  We will attend one more farmers market, after having the best season there yet.  Sales and traffic were up, boding well for us next season when we have more land and (hopefully) more product to bring.  I have to say that the quality of customers at our farmers market is truly incredible.  It is extremely rewarding to connect to people who appreciate what we are doing, and to provide them with good food too!  If you shop at Mill City, thanks, because you are awesome.

We just got our first nip of frost on Thursday night, and then a little more on Friday night.  Tops of tomatoes are black, basil is done, but peppers are ok I think.  Rye and oat cover crops are growing on unused portions of our field, and we're just about done cleaning and sorting through all our garlic for planting.  We have the best crop yet.  Did I tell you about our root digger?  We got a root digger this year from a farmer friend, and used it for digging our garlic.  Previously we were digging garlic by hand with a pitchfork and it would take us almost a month to get it all out.  Quality suffered.  Our backs cried out.  Curse words flowed out of our mouths... The root digger attaches to the tractor and undercuts the soil on the bed, loosening all in one run so that we can just pull out bulbs, bunch in field, and hang up immediately to cure.  We will try it on parsnips this week, which may prove more of a challenge since the parsnips can be a foot long and I'm not sure if the digger will be able to undercut without damaging the roots.  We'll see.  However, it is still worth it just for the garlic harvest.  Two photos below are of the root digger.  Nothin' fancy.  But will give you farmers and gearheads an idea.  And then some other farmers market photos too (with rugs from our neighbor, hand-woven in Peru).