The Anthill Farm – CSA, Garlic, Farmers Markets, Catering, Mushrooms

Weekly CSA Bundle

Preserving the Harvest!

September 20th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

Oh.. my, what a sweet couple days we’ve had this week. Walking the paths to the fields the air is fragrant with the aroma of honey being made, busy bees fly by gathering the golden rod’s heady nectar ensuring its pollination along the way. Its worth the sneezes! Out here in Honesdale its peak of the season for peppers turning color and eggplants getting ripe. Tomatoes are still rocking but splitting a bit from last weeks abundance of rain. A new round of green beans are coming on strong and finally a healthy crop of carrots, our root crops have been hard won this season with wet soil its tough to get long and grow. Now that we have a few dry September days under our belts w…

Bountiful Harvest

September 14th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

Oh my, what a sweet couple days we've had this week. Walking the paths to the fields the air is fragrant with the aroma of honey being made, busy bees fly by gathering the golden rod's heady nectar ensuring its pollination along the way. Its worth the sneezes! Out here in Honesdale its peak of the season for peppers turning color and eggplants getting ripe. Tomatoes are still rocking but splitting a bit from last weeks abundance of rain. A new round of green beans are coming on strong and finally a healthy crop of carrots, our root crops have been hard won this season with wet soil its tough to get long and grow. Now that we have a few dry September days under our belts we are …

A Cold Handed Harvest Day

September 7th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

Rain rain go away! We have really had our share this year, haven't we? You could probably catch a trout in our driveway these days. Not really ready for a cold handed harvest day yet, washing vegetables in icy water when your already soaked to the bone. Ceceilia, our baby girl, keeps me from participating in such a harvest but there are always joys of Garlic peeling especially when we have a big order of seed garlic to send out this week. It's not clear yet exactly what impact this weather will have on the fall crops, but it is making planting tricky. With weather like this you really want to think about brighter days and stay positive lest you slip into the rains melancholy rhythm. …

Back to the Stone Age

August 31st, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

We are still without Electricity here at the farm, like some lost tribe we ants march to the beat of an ancient drum. Candles and fires for us! Luckily Irene passed over the Anthill without delivering too much pain, but certainly a good dose of rain. The pepper plants were a little lopsided, an easy fix. Tragically many other farmers didn't get fare so well, some folks in Vermont and NY lost whole fields to swollen rivers and creeks. Our hearts really go out to those who lost more than just their power in the storm, whole farms are under water! Tomatoes are in their prime and You'll be receiving plenty of them this week, they are some real honeys . If you pick up in Milford be sur…

The Earth Has Spoken!

August 24th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

shaken or stirred? the verdict was 50/50 at the farm Tuesday, some of the farmers felt the quake others just got stirred up by the excitement of such an event. Either way the east coast earthquake was a reminder that anything can happen, the earth below or feet is not a solid unfeeling thing, it is alive and dynamic. This week Sky made up a batch of his famous compost tea with some bio-dynamic preps, "Rudolph Steiner believed that these preparations transferred supernatural terrestrial and cosmic "forces" into the soil, have influence on soil structure and micro-organisms enhancing soil fertility and increasing biodiversity." Could have been those cosmic "forces" we were stirring up …

Purple Summer Haze

August 17th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

Summer haze where has the time gone, already mid August and where are we ? The cool nights lately have me thinking about fall... no, no, not yet its still summer OK! Just in time to safe the season, finally summer's all star roster is here to play, that's right the TPE, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants. Long awaited, especially this year, but these babies are looking great and plentiful in the patch. In fact we picked a peck of purple peppers today. I couldn't help noticing just how lovely our peppers are this year, the bells are a little ways from being fully ripe but there are big green bells and Hungarian hot wax peppers, decidedly spicy with such a fresh crisp taste. Salsa, curry, chutney…

Mid season feedback

August 10th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

Its been a real marathon lately keeping up with the garlic harvest but its all out of the ground now and there we big high fives all around. But there's no real rest for the ants, its been a challenging season so far, with more than plentiful rain, and a late start which has made timing and planting tricky, some vegetables have done great while other favorites have struggled to produce. We know our members have been right there along with us through this process and tasted our successes and short comings. We would like to hear your feedback on the CSA season so far. How have the weekly shares lived up to your expectations and are there vegetables you are missing or would like to see …

Garlic Party

August 3rd, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

The Garlic harvest is upon us and we are up to our ears in the spicy stuff...garlic in the field to be pulled, garlic in the barn to be sorted, bundled and hung up on the rafters, garlic in every dish; even some ambitious desserts lately, garlic ice cream and chocolate covered garlic(supposedly Eleanor Roosevelt ate 9 cloves a day for memory). Here at the farm we grow a little over an acre of garlic for seed and for our CSAs and markets. When you handle that much garlic in a day you start to get an appreciation for what goes into those ubiquitous bulbs that seem to be spicing every recipe, but a different kind of appreciation one felt in the shoulders, fingers, knees, the mind( an acre's…

…It’s a double Rainbow!

July 27th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

There's nothing like the sight of a rainbow to make you embrace the present, to feel as if your in the right place. Their indisputable beauty and cheerfulness always seems like a blessing to me. After a passing shower yesterday we saw a brilliant rainbow, arcing triumphantly over the farm, one leg up top by the new greenhouse the other planted in the main field, no doubt bathing the vegetable beds in a multi-color shower. The truth is the farm is already a wash in color these days. I keep noticing just how rainbow colored my plate becomes when I make dinner, purple kolhrabi, blood red beets, yellow squash, lime green basil leaves. The flavor combinations... (I am really running …

Farm sweet Farm

July 20th, 2011 Weekly CSA Bundle monique

This past week Ceceilia and I went down south to visit my family in Virginia we spent time at the beach and she had her first dip into the ocean, first sand between her toes. Taking a vacation is a wonderful respite, but when you get back home its like you skipped a chapter and feel surprised that something could be happening so soon, it takes you a minute to figure out where you are in the plot. And so alas I must put away my trashy beach novel and get back to the important non-fiction work at hand. Its amazing how much things grow in a week natures virility ever captivating, we've got cabbage heads to harvest, the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants once a distant fantasy now a palpab…