Heritage Pastured Pork for Sale

Delicious pastured pork for is now for sale, just in time for your holiday feast!

This meat comes from heritage Large Black hogs, an old English breed that is famous for producing succulent, flavourful roasts and chops.

We offer pork only once a year and quantities are limited, so order now to ensure you don’t miss your chance to enjoy this special product.

To see the price list, click on the PORK PRICE LIST tab above.

To make your order, contact Bob at whitscust@gmail.com .

About the pigs

The pigs were raised in the great outdoors of Lanark Highlands, with plenty of room to exercise and root in the soil. They were fed certified organic vegetarian feed. In the fall, the pigs regularly enjoyed apples and walnuts from the trees on our farm.

To learn more about Devon Black pigs, visit these websites:

https://largeblackhogassociation.org/

https://livestockconservancy.org/index.php/heritage/internal/largeblack

Hello Everyone:

Here are the responses from the apple taste testers.

If these sound like something you want to try, let me know and I will include them in your next delivery.

We have cut up the mid grade fruits and cooked them in a low cooker with a small amount of cinnamon.  Applesauce for the winter when apples go up to 7.99 a Lb.   These generated more compost from parings, but otherwise were what I expected.  

Libby and Tory absolutely loved the apple cores and eagerly await their evening snack of more.  

Customer taste test:

 - Crunchy and tart! My favourite! We loved them/would take more/would recommend

 - Apples have good texture and pleasantly tart taste. We ate them raw, but probably could cook with them too. One had a scar that we cut open and there was browning down into the apple suggesting something small might have eaten its way into one side, but the other half of that apple was fine.  Would be interested in some more for sure.

 - I liked the crispiness of the apple. But it was a bit tart for our taste.

 - I'm no food critic as I like most food so here goes my best Lanark apple review...

I enjoyed eating the apples raw probably more than cooked. I did notice how fast the apples browned as i cut them up to cook but that was expected for me. I like apples that are crisp and tart but didn't find these especially crisp or tart.

 - Its taste is OK. However, we like different kinds of apples, e.g., crisp apples.



I assume the discrepancy between the different assessments may be that two fruits were not good enough for a sample to draw consistent conclusions from.




There is much more to write about from the past season, I may have some time to finish a very lengthy post if the weather is too wet to do other work around here.

Highlights of the summer include catching bee swarms and raising a hundred square foot shed onto a temporary foundation.

Plenty we have learned, including mushroom cultivation, chicken first aid, how to clean a carburetor, and building a staircase.

Less fun news include the cat and mouse game between us and the local bear.

 


One other note - I am trying to figure out how to crack black walnut shells.  Another farmer said placing them between two boards and driving a tractor over them might work, but then that would leave me with the onerous task of separating the broken shell from the nuts - which might also be broken up.  Alas, I do not have a tractor....

Hello Everyone:

It's been so long since I have written that everything is bigger, bushier, and bolder than it once was.

The chicks were small enough to hold as many as three at a time, covered in down, and uttering the quietest of peeps.













About two weeks ago, they started to show an awareness of the world outside their nursery.  Some tried jumping up onto the edge of their pen, others pecked at the plastic walls and peered out at us while we cleaned their water and feed containers.  Feathers started to appear on their tails and then their wings.

Their peeping got a little louder, and they played a curious game with one another - choosing a particular wood shaving and then chasing whoever had it around the pen until it was dropped or grabbed.














Now their peeping is louder and only the smallest buckeye chicks play the wood chip tag.

The (black) Dominiques - all female - now spend much of their time up on the roost.  They grow a little quicker and have likely become a little less frivolous.

In a few days the entire flock will be transferred to their new home - the A-frame shed out in the field.








This building housed chickens at some point in the past.   Over the past week, I have sterilized the interior, moved in some of the equipment purchased and or cleaned back in the spring, and run a water line up to the shed.

A few small details still need to be seen to before it is ready.  According to some of the literature left by the previous owners, chickens like to have multiple roosts to choose from.

Over the summer, I hope to re shingle the roof, install a sink, and insulate the shed for the winter.








By the time I get around to this, the chicks will be grown up and moved once again to a hutch to roost and brood in and a six hundred square foot outdoor enclosure.

Our plan is to overwinter the Dominique hens and one of the Buckeye males in the A-frame.

As for the rest of the Buckeyes?  This breed is known for it's large thighs...

New digs.  The chicks were placed in boxes and moved, and ordeal that resulted in a lot of alarmed chirping and peeping.  Within a minute or two of arriving, the chicks quieted down and started exploring their new surroundings.

By breakfast time the next day, most have figured out that their is even more to the world outside of their enclosure and try leaving as we enter the pen to refill water and feed troughs.

One of the most difficult challenges this season is the number of tasks that need to be finished at the same time.  Many of these tasks need to be completed in stages, so every day I am faced with numerous half done jobs while I work on the routine work of the day.

This past week, I completed several of these  tasks.  It feels great to hammer the final nail, click on the last line of electric fence, sow the second of two seed potato successions.

One of these pressing tasks has been completing  fencing.

I am employing a pair of Large Black breed pigs to start tearing up and fertilizing the field where I hope to grow crops in the next three to four years.  

They arrived last week and were contained in a two hundred fifty square foot enclosure while they were electric fence trained - a process which usually takes about two or three days.  

Here they had almost everything pigs require for a healthy and happy life...plenty of forage, shade, water, a straw filled shelter, and a big bowl of mash every morning.

What they lacked was more space to roam.  Whilst they set about exploring their new surroundings and getting used to the new routine, I put the finishing touches on the rest of their field.  This electric system is larger and a little more complex than what I have used in the past, so it naturally took longer and required more trouble shooting.

The new fence charger demands a little more respect from me as well.




Finally, I was able to get the last section of line working satisfactorily and the extra layer of training fencing came down.  I spent about half an hour trying to coax the two gilts to cross into the newly opened up pasture, but they were still too spooked by where the fence used to be to cross into an area of rich grass and herbaceous plants.

When I checked on them in the evening (with their snack of treats), I saw they had made their first forays into the new pasture.

More new arrivals...our first bee hives.  Julia brought home the two "nucs"  - bee keeping jargon for the boxes containing the nucleus of a new colony - last night as I raced to put the finishing touches on the bee yard electric fence.

The yard of the house is now fenced (though a gate and a few other details still need to be built or installed).  An additional line has been run around the hives as a second line of defense.

The page fencing and electric lines are augmented with some metallic rattles to further dissuade bears.  

The nucs contain several frames of honeycomb.  The frames are gently placed into the new hives and left open for the rest of the bees to find their way into their new hive.

After the first flush of spring flowers and blooming trees, a period of time follows with relatively little flowering -  a period of time known to beekeepers as the "dearth".

The previous owners (also bee keepers) have planted some perennials that have a delayed bloom time, such as poppies and comfrey.





The nearby pasture and meadows have plenty of late bloomers as well:  devil's paintbrush, daisy's, and buttercups.

Each hive is supplied with a jar of sugar water.  This allows the bees to get a quick supply of food while they map out the area.

Within an hour, Julia reported that the bees were circling the hives (their mapping forays) and both colonies had guards standing hind out at the entrances.  One of only two species I can think of that takes this particular defensive posture.

The other arrival at the farm within the past two weeks were the mushroom "spawn" plugs.  This is a time sensitive project, the spawn must be inserted into the nursery logs within days of arrival.  The nursery is located deep in the woodlot near a shallow stream.  Mosquito territory...

While all this is going on in Lanark, the farm in Stittsville is growing the produce.

 Astro arugula, the variety we have been growing since 2011.

There are two other types I will be planting this season.  I trialed Surrey variety last year and found it better tasting though a little slower growing.  Out of curiosity, I am trialing Esmee variety arugula this year.

Best looking and yielding spinach since early 2016.  Five days ago, this looked like a write off, I assumed I had not thinned it out in time.  I am curious as to why the two middle rows of spinach are larger than the two outermost rows.  

Last fall, weeks before we found the new farm, I was considering not doing a very much vegetable production.  We concentrated on finding land and only a small portion of the field was prepared for spring.  

As plans changed this spring, less land was immediately available for the the first seeding and transplanting.  I had to be inventive as to how to fit all of the produce into the field.

 Better late than never...the squashes are in the process of being transplanted.  To ease the transition, I place row covers over the seedlings for the first week or two to provide protection from the sun, wind, and pummeling rains.

There are two schools of thought as to how to treat young seedlings.  One is to protect as much as possible, to allow the plants a head start before being exposed to all of the stresses they will encounter from weather and insects.






The other approach is to expose the plants to everything they will experience right away, on the assumption that this will make the plants stronger - kind of like teaching to swim by tossing into the deep end.

I take the middle route.  When I have the time to do it, I protect the plants as much as possible.  When I am pressed for time, the plants get the harder treatment.

One way to interplant...in the bed on the right, zinnias are placed between squash plants.  The zinnias grow up while the squash grows outward.  This is an experiment I have tried for the first time this season.

To the left of the squash and zinnias are a bed of romano beans and amaranth.  When the Amaranth is finished, the next succession of romano beans will be planted.  As the first succession of romanos finish, another round of amaranth or some other leaf will be planted.

So many seedlings were lost this spring in the nursery due to damping off.  I suspect I ran the temperature too low.  The first lettuces were some of the casualties.

The next successions of lettuces are on the way...greenleafs, mini red romaines, and reen romaines.

First potato to emerge...Linzer Delicatesse...a variety of fingerling sourced from Ellenberger farm.   This picture makes my mouth water.

The garlic is growing very well despite the damp weather at the start of the season.

The leaves with yellowed tips are the oldest leaves on the plants.

At the start of the season, I try to encourage the bulbs to sprout their first leaves by pulling the straw off during the day and putting it back on at night.  The third or fourth time I did this, the first leaves had already started to emerge.

If they had emerged by growing through the straw, the leaves would have had time to adapt to the increasing amount of sunlight.



Instead, the first pale leaves were abruptly exposed to the full sunlight and received a sunburn.  Those leaves carry the memory of that experience, indicated by the yellowed tips.

First garlic scape developing.  This is a good gauge as to how the production season dates have differed from previous years.

Usually, the scapes are a few inches longer by now, and ready for scape harvest by the first week of July.  Based on what I am observing here, I am anticipating another week or so later than usual.

 Amaranth seedlings.  These will require a couple more weeks to grow.

Spinach and chard.  With such a late start to the season, path mowing has been set aside to get beds prepared, seedlings transplanted, and seeds sown.

The drawback is more shade for the plants at the edge of the bed, which I suspect is why the two outermost rows are producing smaller spinach plants.

The first day I had time to mow, the draw cord on the mower snapped.  Despite being the first time I have replaced a broken draw cord, this was easy enough to fix until I got to re-installing the spring...

 Even Cayley knows that there is no time to sit still!

















The next post will be in the mushroom nursery...beyond the boundary of our farm...beyond where the little cars can drive...

Another update as of this afternoon...they're here...


The black ones are Dominiques, the light ones are Buckeyes.

The red tint is from the heat lamp















A quick update:

The garlic is growing well.  The earliest plants to emerge have some tip burn, possibly from water stress or perhaps a little sunburn from when the straw was removed from the first shoots.














Welcome to the team!

Minnie is helping out this season.  She is hoping to take on the farm as Whitsend transitions out.

Surface cultivating is a technique that suppresses weeds quite effectively.  More efficient than weeding full grown plants.















Pictured faintly are the spinach plants germinating.  It appears that the germination rate has been fairly successful.



















We transplanted about one third of the tomatoes today.  For this bed, we have undersown the first succession of celtuce.

.

The seedlings are still quite young, so a little added protection is provided by the row covers for the first week or so.  It helps break the wind, reduces the fll strength of the sunlight, and hods in the heat for the cool nights.

The peas initially germinated quite unevenly, possibly due to the cool weather.

The rows have filled out over the past week, though there are a couple of small gaps.

 With progress comes setbacks.  This is how a two hour task becomes a four hour chore and a two day delay on work that needs finishing last week...

Halfway through some light tilling, the tire goes flat.  A quick examination reveals a little more happening than a leak.  Cover the engine with a tarp and head for you tube.

Hello Everyone:

Finally the weather is improving enough to start more sowing and planting.  Everything is late and the time pressure is building. 

The best news is that the garlic is growing well, though I may have to harvest early.

So far this year, the weather seems to be following a pattern similar to 2017.  That year, the amount of rain damaged a lot of the garlic and caused a considerable amount of it to go bad before harvest.  When I compared notes with other growers, most said that in such seasons the bulbs should be harvested about two weeks sooner.  The bulbs are smaller with such an early harvest but at least they are still sound.

This photo and the following one taken by Minnie.

It is said that one failure teaches more than a hundred successes.  With this in mind, I should be able to produce a great crop of spinach this year.  Keep the row cover off the bed to allow for maximum sunlight as spinach needs a lot of light to germinate.  Keep the beds moist but not soaked to prevent the seeds from rotting.  Thin the seedlings sooner rather than later.  Don’t sow too early (not enough leaf production) or too late (before the weather turns too hot for good quality leaf).  I’ve made all these mistakes over the years and assuming I hit a good planting date, we should finally have some decent spinach.

The past two weeks I have been cultivating the beds as much as possible to suppress this year’s crop of weeds before they get started.  The beds are ready for the early crops to go into this week.  Chard, kale, kohlrabi and hopefully some lettuce should be making its way out of the nursery.  Carrot and radish seeds are likely going in soon.

On Monday we are taking our annual trip up to Coe Hill to pick up the seed potatoes from Ellenberger Farm.  Our usual two day “holiday” will have to be a day trip this year.  Each season I go there, I learn more about potato growing in twenty minutes of discussion with Henry and Janet than I do for the rest of the season.  One of the benefits of moving to Lanark is that the drive to Coe Hill is about an hour shorter.

A ten minute conversation with Henry on the phone the other day has already expanded my knowledge of seed potatoes.  These ones were saved last year and stored in the dark over the winter. 

When I pulled them out last week, I found that they all had very long eye stalks already growing; so long as to make sowing very difficult.  Previously, I had thought that breaking off the stalks would render the plant incapable of producing plants, but Henry's wealth of experience put my fears to rest.  

At his direction, I have removed the long stalks and placed the tubers in a bit of sunlight to encourage a new set of stalks to start.  This should take a week or two, and then the potatoes are ready to plant.  The process of removing the eyes of potatoes is called “chitting”.

The melted snow here in Lanark has revealed a greater mess than I anticipated.

These were beds that I was hoping to prepare for production next year.  It's possible that they can be cleaned up by fall, though timing will be everything.  The amount of quack grass rules out even the lightest use of a tiller here; I'll have to bring my curve tine wheel cultivator home and find time to cultivate to make this area productive.

 

Julia cleaned up an area that was plastic mulched over the winter (at the top of the photo) and sowed flowers for the forthcoming bee hives.

There are some pleasant surprises too.  This is one of many flower beds of bulbs and herbs that has a lot of potential to expand once they are cleaned up, aerated, and the soil amended with  compost.

The rhubarb is coming up but as you can see from the photo its bed is quite choked with at least a season’s worth of grass.  I doubt the stalks of all these otherwise healthy plants will produce the quantity this many plants would otherwise be capable of.  I’ll harvest it over the course of the next month or so but it will take a lot of time cutting and cleaning this many small stalks.  Those of you who receive some will have less chopping to do...

I’ll be contacting everyone soon about final payment and getting our email list together.  There are still a couple of shares left to sell, so if you know of anyone who is interested, please let them know as soon as possible.

Talk to you soon,

Bob

Hello Everyone:

Time goes by too quickly.  There is so much to write about I don’t know where to start.

 

The nursery seems to have stabilised.  I lost most celeriac, onions and leeks in the early spring to damping off, probably from running the nursery a little too cool.  The first celery, parsley, and lettuces did not do well either but their replacements are on the way and starting to harden off. 

The other crops – tomatoes, peppers, chard, kale, and kohlrabi are growing well. 

Out in the field of the Stittsville farm, the garlic is back to my usual emergence rate of 98 to 99 per cent.  The snow peas were a sown a week later than I wanted to due to the field being too wet.  The sorrel is very patchy and does not seem to have self seeded very well. 

I’m very glad that I took the time to aerate the new portion of field last fall as I assume that has allowed the water percolate deep into the soil and allow the beds to dry uniformly.  This time last year, this same location had standing water on the surface.

The main portion of the growing field is cultivated and soon ready for the seeds and transplants. 

The Lanark farm is where most of my efforts are focussed right now.

The melting snow revealed a great mess of winter debris – a season’s worth of work has thawed out.  The herbs look like they have plenty of potential, but it seems that some fall preparation was missed; none of the plants were mulched. 

The brush along the electric fence needed a lot of trimming back, the tool shed a complete re-organising, and livestock hutches a though cleaning out.

Old equipment from the previous farm here, inventoried back in the winter, is now being set out and examined closely.  There is hundreds of feet of hose – some useful, some requiring repair, and some not meeting our needs.  All the buckets and containers are getting a sterilising.  Fencing for the livestock is going up and plots of ground are being surveyed.

June is going to be busier, with the arrival of chicks, pigs, mushrooms and seed potatoes. 

I haven’t seen much activity in the asparagus bed, but the rhubarb is growing very well.  The number of plants that have come up are much more than I recall being told about.  There will be no shortage of this crop.

There will be more news and photos to follow...

Bob

Hello Everyone:

A little later a post than I had anticipated...plenty to do and though I enjoy writing about the farm, it is easy to get outside and stay there once the weather starts hinting of all the work needing to be done.   April and May is the busiest part of my season.

Our search for interns is just about wound up, and down to the most probable candidates.  From what I have seen so far, the final cut will be a difficult choice.

We have another six shares left to sell.  If you know of anyone who might be interested this season, please let me know and or forward my contact info to them.  

This season is a tough sell due to the reduction in deliveries, a lot of short term pain for long term gain.  This phrase keeps going through my mind as I struggle to pull together the threads that consist of this season’s efforts. 

The new farm is improving incrementally, slower than I would prefer but at a steady pace.  I’ve built a set of stairs (replacing a ladder) for the ‘hexagon’ – the two storey shed that will house the future nursery and production office.  It’s providing space to store tools until the tool shed at the old farm is dismantled and brought here. 

The A-frame shed is getting its collection of junk cleaned out to make space for the chicks due to arrive in May. Overgrowth around the electric fence is getting g cut back and the fence itself being re-configured to meet our needs.

Just about every tire that came with the farm needs patching...

The Stittsville farm is quickly losing its snow cover, and nursery work is going mostly ok there.

Mostly as in everything is ok except the bulb onions, which have succumbed to a considerable amount of damping off, probably due to running the nursery a little too cool – in an effort to keep the seedlings from drying out.

The other crops parsley, celery, celeriac, cutting celery, green and extremely hot peppers are growing alright.  The moderately hot peppers failed to germinate.  I can start these again after ordering more seed though their first delivery will be a little late as a result.

The biggest challenges are limited income (smaller customer base this season) and keeping my spirits up. 

There are certainly moments when the task ahead is frighteningly daunting.  I constantly remind myself to ignore the big picture much of the time and focus on the priority task before me.  As I move about the farm, the details are in plain view and difficult to ignore.  The receding snow adds to the sense of time ruining short...chickens arriving in May, repairs to see to on the fence, preparing for the bee-keeping, getting the new interns up to speed, signage for the farm gate store, dismantling sheds at the old farm and having them trucked up here...all this in addition to the usual work.  

Despite the lower income this season, I am glad we are only serving about a third of the customer base from previous seasons.

I spoke during the previous post about investments for the future of the farm. My activities of earlier this week are a good example.   I was preparing the shitake mushroom nursery...

Shitake mushrooms have long been a favourite of mine since discovering them in my early twenties.  My favourite means of preparation are sautéed in a sauce of honey, garlic, and ginger, though I have been treated on more than one birthday with “mushroom stroganoff” that includes shitakes and as many other varieties as Julia can find in the store.  Shitake is pronounced Shay-Tawk-Eh, translated from Japanese as “Oak Mushroom”.

During my internship, our CRAFT farm group gathered at Desert Lake Farm for a half day workshop on shitake growing.  The spores of inspiration were inoculated in my mind that morning. 

During our property search , one desired criteria was access to a woodlot with hardwood trees.  We were elated when we found that the sellers were willing to share the resources of their adjacent woodlot.

These mushrooms grow on hardwood.  Fruiting trees such as apple or cherry are notoriously poor.  The seller of our property offered us the opportunity to harvest ironwood trees from their woodlot, so this is the type we are using. 

The traditional method for growing shitakes involves inoculating logs and leaving them in a forest for a season. 

The trees need to be cut during the winter, after leaf fall and before the trees start budding.  This ensures that most carbohydrates remain in the wood for the mycelium to consume. 

The trees are cut into four to five foot logs, ranging in diameter of about five to eight inches.  The remaining portion of the trees can be cut into logs for firewood, as ironwood makes great fuel – it burns slowly with a fairly hot flame.

Off to the woodlot to start harvesting trees.  Tools of the trade:

Not your average gardening tool.  Chainsaws require some specialized training and safety gear.  As I am using one on someone else’s land for commercial gain, I am obliged to have certified training and top of the line safety gear, what’s known as “class A” chainsaw pants, and CSA approved boots and helmet. 

The most important piece of safety equipment is stored between the ear protectors...

After selecting suitable trees, they are felled. 

My twenty year old self might be a little horrified at the idea of felling live trees for mushroom growing.  After all, mushrooms can be grown in a “mushroom house” on sawdust – kind of like a greenhouse except dark, damp, and cool.  There are too many structures I need to build for other purposes and the quantity of mushrooms I hope to produce don’t warrant it.  Besides; my somewhat older self likes the traditional techniques when they are more practical.

As well, I have learned a few things about forestry over the years.

Managing a woodlot is like maintaining a self seeding perennial garden.  The idea is to maintain a steady production of desired crops, with a little pruning or culling to influence the character and productivity of the ‘garden’.

In this case, the landowner wants to promote more oak, cherry, walnut and maple in the woodlot.  To make more space for these species, the less desired ironwood is thinned out.  Some folks around here regard Ironwood as a weed.  It certainly is prolific.

Trees that are not quite big enough are left for future mushroom logs.

The logs will finish producing mushrooms in about four to five years, depending on size.  Full of mycelium, these will decay fairly quickly and return their nutrients and carbon to the forest floor and regenerate the soil.  In a rocky region such as this, more soil is especially beneficial. 

Another way I look at is that the forest contains a certain amount of nutrient mass.  Removing the fruiting bodies of the mycelium is all I am taking from the forest, the rest returns albeit in an altered state.  Less cellulose, cambium, and leaf matter, more mycelium.  Less sun life, more soil life.  Is there any death here, or just a change of state?  Mushrooms are profound creatures indeed...

After a day of cutting (thanks for spotting me Dean) we have a lot of down trees.  The logs are bucked and it’s getting late and starting to get chilly.  This is good, for the snow will be firm for the work ahead tomorrow...

As I walk back to the car, I pass the first trees that were felled earlier in the day.  I think of my grandfather.  He used to cut trees in the bush for a living.  His name was also Bob.

Next morning...

Now that the logs are cut, they need to be taken to the location I have chosen for the mushroom nursery.  As the logs require periodic soaking in cold water, I have chosen a spot where a year round creek runs from a springline a few hundred feet away.  As it is near to source and fast moving, this water should remain quite cold even on the hottest days of the year. 

Another criteria mushrooms require is shade.  Shitakes grow in forests, where the temperature is moderated throughout the season and direct sunlight reduced to a minimum. 

The lingering snow in the forest can be put to work, along with an old children’s sled I found stashed on one of the sheds here.   With a bit of twine and some clever knots, I start the process of getting these re-located. 

Why do most of the ironwoods grow on the opposite side of the woodlot from the nursery?  At least most of this trip is downhill. 

Now that the logs are gathered, they need to be propped up off the ground, to prevent contamination from other mycelia in the ground. 

At this point, I have reached the limit of what I can do for now.  The mycelium is being ordered, and should arrive in a few weeks.  At that time, I will add more to this post, detailing the inoculating process.

After inoculation, logs are left for a season while the mycelium colonizes the wood.  During the colonization period, the logs need to be soaked periodically so as to remain moist.  For this purpose, immersing the logs in the creek will suffice.  In our climate, the colonization process takes about a year.  

If all goes according to plan, the mycelium will fruit, producing the final product for harvest, for spring 2020. 

During the mushroom harvest, care needs to be taken to protect the fruits from predation – rodents of all types will eat these, as will slugs. 

Hardware cloth will keep out the rodents, and some ash and eggshells scattered around the base of the logs for the slugs.

Usually, logs will produce fruits twice each year, in the spring and fall.  However, a technique known as “shocking” the logs is said to encourage a more even growth. 

Traditionally, Japanese growers used mallets to strike the logs.  I presume this opens up minute cracks to encourage mycelium growth and fruiting, but that is just a guess.

A more recent shocking technique is to re-immerse the logs during the fruiting season in cold water.

Now that the logs are pre-positioned for their inoculating, I take a much needed break and think of the relatively easy work ahead of me.  The hardest part to do now will be the waiting to see (and taste) the fruits of my labours.

Waiting is worth it!

Here are the fruits of my labours from last season.

Months after harvest, the last of our butterscotch squashes are starting to look like their shelf life is nearing it’s best before date.

Even the ugly looking one is as rich and orange inside.

Roasted up...there is no time to make soup today, so we roast them, let them cool, and get them into the fridge.


Post script:  we did make the soup a few days later.  Now that I am watering your mouth, I suppose I'll have to get the recipe from Julia and get it posted here.  Just in case some of our last season customers are looking at their squashes and wondering what to do with them...