You know you made it when you got a pile of cats

Doesn't it feel like a year since the last kitty photo on stonecipherfarm.blogspot.com.  It has been!  They've grown so much.  They've loved up so much.

This is how desperate they look every morning, to get out.

We used to let them come and go, out in, night day, whatever.  We never knew how many were home.  They're barn cats... that we let in the house.  Till we came back from the fair last fall, and 3 of them were gone!  It was 5 days till they all came back! We were sure they were gone.  That was the day they became house cats.... we love them too much.  Now they gotta all be in every night.  They still dismember a rat with the best of em.

This is the first photo of farm product I have posted all year I think.  This is ginger.  We grew ginger for the first time this year.  Man!.....  harrowing right till the first day I dug it!   Expensive seed, long long long germination period, of high heat and even moisture,  by the time we planted them out (taking up the whole greenhouse), they were pathetic looking, and we just hoped for the best.  Next thing we knew, they came boomin out of the ground.  I didn't have the courage to paw around below the plants, or pull one up....  I couldn't handle being any more discouraged if they were small or sad looking.  Come mid September I realized if I didn't start selling them, I'd be sitting on them still when the freeze up came.: so I started digging.  I couldn't have been more pleased.  we got about 600 pounds of amazing ginger from a 16 by 96 foot unheated greenhouse.

Here it is all cleaned up and shiny.  The flavor is superb!  Hot sweet, full, juicy!  No skin and no fiber at all.  You can cook and eat it like a vegetable.  The season is way over now as of the time I'm actually typing this... but summer's sweet and hot treat got frozen and put up by Duck Fat, and is featured as they're best selling soda, "The Ginger Farmer".  Go try it!

It's funny when you wake up one day (when the season is over) and realize "We don't have to work today. "  A farm is a place that will make as many demands on you as you'll let it.  You could work all waking hours day and night, and not run out of work.  So you have to take and seize free time.... especially once the dust has settled on the year, and you find you have the where with all to stop and breath a bit.  We put in all the way up to Gardiner, and floated down with the ebbing tide through late October's splendor.  17 miles I think, and we did it in just 4 hours.  Got to our neighbor's dock right at late twilight.  It was a perfect day.

This is where I give a shout out to some of my homies.  I don't miss Farmers' market one bit, but I do see my farmer friends a lot less than i used to.  These photos were taken at the Common Ground Fair , AKA the great Maine family reunion.  Come see all your friends in one place over one great weekend!  This is Lauren Pignatello of Swallow Tail Farm.  If you don't already know, she makes the absolutely best yogurt money can buy this side of the Atlantic.  And if you don't already know, she's everybody's mom, not just to her own seven kids...

This is the last time I saw the legendary Daniel Price.  He ran the tightest game is Market Gardening Portland's ever known.  Daniel and fam ran Freedom Farm for 10 years or so, before pullin up stakes, and moving to North Carolina to try over again in milder climes.  Daniel is missed here north side, especially his wry dry humor, and his ever bearing willingness to share advice with the rest of us amateurs.  Good luck Danny boy!

Simon Frost ladies and gentleman, winning the impromptu kraut taste test at the fair.  Besides being an OG OG grower at the market, he makes the best kraut and ferments this state has ever seen.  Thirty Acre Farm....  also featuring ingredients from Stonecipher Farm.  Simon had a pretty killer 40th birthday last week.... despite his reticence to jump through the flaming zero  in the giant "40" burned in his honor.





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