Harvest Season
I painted this bunch of peppers that I made and hung out to dry.
Peppers, squash, pumpkins!! It's starting to feel like autumn around here. We've had a busy week procuring and preserving food over here. I really appreciate the ability to expose my children to food from it's source, the farm. Picking pumpkins off the vine probably tops their favorite list of things to do at the farm and I'm glad of the experience for them. Especially since the pumpkins we started from seeds this spring have only one fruit today that is literally three inches in diameter. And, it's the biggest we've ever grown! I like to joke that we live on the north side of a pile of rock dust.
Even so, this year we managed to grow a couple Red Kuri Squash, summer squash, tomatoes, herbs and greens. I began to feel this pull back toward my own family's roots, farming, when I was pregnant. Living in the food desert of Crested Butte at the time, I worked with a few community members to bring food from over-the-hill to our little mountain community. It was a well received endeavor that still continues to this day. When I moved to the front range I started volunteering with the Colorado Farmer's Market Association, a state wide initiative to support Farmer's Markets.
My volunteer gig turned into running the organization for a few years. In that time I gave back to my farming roots and realized a lot about the state of agriculture in Colorado. Mainly, that we're off course. If we're going to be able to sustain ourselves and thrive; we don't need more farmer's markets, we need more farmers. I also realized that for my family to thrive, I needed to step away from the Colorado Farmer's Markets Association and toward kids: our future.
I took my kids outside. We called on other families. We played hard & ate good food. We sought out local food and nearly went broke trying to afford it at our local farmer's market! We tried our hand at Homesteading and got chickens, then built the coop in that order ~ Whoops! After we cleaned all of the chicken dust off of the garage shelves we harvested eggs. Now we grow dirt from chicken poop and compost. We plant seeds and harvest lettuce, kale, herbs, zucchini & tomato. This year we got our first cucumbers! A decade in on the homesteading front and we are not sustaining ourselves. We are not farmers ~yet.
Thankfully, because of Miller Farms and their vision to "educate children and adults about agriculture while giving them a fun and memorable experience", we are able to thrive. They are a big part of creating more farmers in Colorado and putting real food on our table! I love collaborating with other families to visit this family farm. Together we harvested potatoes, eggplants, peppers, squash, dill, cabbage, cantaloup & pumpkins. We all enjoyed playing with friends and filling bags of produce picked from the vine or pulled out of the dirt.
After the fun we feasted <3
Once home, in a race against time, we preserved! Curing potatoes in the garage. Curing squash on the front porch, hoping deer and elk don't eat them at night. Canning pickled beets. Roasting peppers; sweating off, then peeling the skin & preserving it in oil with roasted garlic. Roasting eggplant and storing it in freezer bags, preserving it in oil with garlic and making loads of Baba Ganoush. Eating beet greens! Making coleslaw! Roasting curried squash! Yum!!!
I absolutely love that my children can relate what is on their plate to the field where it was grown and the experience we had harvesting it. It's this connection to land that will bring about a more sustainable future.
In other news, We celebrated Zenna's 9th Birthday, Zane got the drone for his online Drone Videography class and I enjoyed not only eating peppers, but also painting them with my friend.
It's been a very full week!
