Cedarmore Farm CSA: A Little Critter Help

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

A Little Critter Help

I really don't see how the weather could be any more beautiful. The leaves at Cedarmore Farm are turning colors and the scenery is beautiful. The fall gardens are a mixture of contrasting colors from light to dark green to more purplish and even some yellow and red mixed in. The reds and yellows of the Swiss chard are really nice. The chard should be ready to harvest in a week or two.

There was a good frost on the 9th and it pretty much killed the tomatoes, zucchini, beans, egg plant, and the like. the sweet potato plants took a big hit also. Which means that it is time to dig the rest. Andy will keep the sweet potatoes in storage and fill our boxes as he see fit.

The only bad thing about storing them is ...the field mice like them too. They ate into a good many of them. At first Andy was going to cull them all out, but after seeing the amount in the cull pile, he decided that we should get them anyway. "No, this is not a grocery store, this is a farm and these really are our sweet potatoes, even though the mice got into them. He decided to go ahead and add them to our shares, so hopefully all us city slickers will learn something from our experience here. He wants us to realized that the things that we see in the grocery store might not be how the vegetables left the farm. The Hershbergers, and probably more farmers, eat the vegetable just as they are. If fact there is a story that Andy tells about when he was younger. The kids were always told that these mice would eat off the best sweet potatoes. The mice were simply letting us know which sweet potatoes were the best ones. The mice were simply letting them know which ones they prefered and these would probably turn out to be the ones that were the best ones. He really doesn't know if all of that is true or not but it is what he was told and it is what we stands by today. So enjoy!

Love the carrots with the greens. We share the green tops with our rabbits and they get so excited. A real treat for them. I have never made a spaghetti squash but I think it might just be on the menu this weekend.

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In The Beginning

Andy and Lizzie have known each other since they were very small. Growing up in an Amish community there are plenty of opportunities to play and work together. They grew up in the same church but went to different schools. Several years ago they moved from Wayne County, OH to right outside Hillsboro, OH and established Cedarmore Farm. The farm got it's name very simply...in Wayne County there were very few cedar or sycamore trees . When Andy and Lizzie got here, they noticed an abundance of cedar and sycamore trees on the land. So they just merged the two names and Cedarmore Farm was born. They have worked very hard in the few years that they have been farming the land. Andy and Lizzie are in the process of building their house and hopefully they will be able to move into the upstairs this spring. We can only see good things in their future farming experiences. And we wish them well.

Not only is Cedarmore growing fruits and vegetables. The Andy's have a growing family. They have four of the most precious children! Anna, who is excited about going to school this fall. Dennis who follows Andy around like his shadow. Moses who is doing well after a little run-in with the pigs. And Lovina who is the youngest at 9 months.

Then there is a new season on the farm. In the winter (Jan 2015), the Andy's packed up and moved to MO leaving the CSA in the most capable hands of John and Anna (Anna is Andy's twin sister) Zook and there 7 children. They changed the name of their farm to Cedarmore Farm so we English wouldn't be too confused. So the work has begun to provide lush healthy vegetables for the CSA season 2015 which begins in May.