Hurricane Farm

The frost has hit and the squash is done.  Sadness creeps into the picture as one looks around at the dying plants.  The sqash was commanding the garden mere days ago, but its leaves are now turning a sickly dark color.  The frost sneaks in and kills quickly, just as quickly as the early morning sun whisks it away.

While we are short some squash patches, we have gained some pig areas.  The hogs have been moved into the garden and will be rotated throughout in order to clean, till, and manure the spaces that will hold next Spring and Summer's crops. 

Even though the entire garden is fenced in, we set up some movable hog panels (16 foot long rigid fence sections) to encourage the pigs to keep to a specific area as they work.  We have many crops remaining that do not need the help of the pigs at this time.  They might like the strawberry patch or the kale rows, but we do too!  Pigs keep out, please...

We'll let them work their wonders in the squash patch, then move them through the corn and other crop areas in the coming weeks.

Did I mention that they work for free?

Here are a few shots of some veggies fresh from the garden.  The frost is still only threatening, so we're sure to have a few more meals on the table right from the garden.

A little veg.  A little dip.  Yummy.

Once the frost comes, there will still be plenty of colder crops left, like the kale below.  We have three kale patches, though we recently turned out the new piglets into one of them.  They like fresh veggies just as much as we do!

There are still plenty of squash to bring in.  We have some heirloom varieties of winter squash that are weighing in at over 30 pounds!  They are much too large for the basket below...My favorite, though, is butternut.

And of course, let's not forget the homemade stuffed pizza!

This is the largest ear of corn that I have ever seen!

There is indeed something to be said for heirloom seeds...

And oh the taste!

Yummy.