Hillsdale Farmers Market starts at 10:00 AM, and is located in the parking lot of Wilson High School.

As we have noted many times, we are field farmers and have no greenhouses. We grow en plein air because we believe the environment in a plastic tunnel is simply inadequate to grow excellent vegetables. There is little enough light in the Pacific northwest winter, so it seems crazy to further attenuate the sun’s rays under a layer of polyethylene. In addition, we like the idea of vegetables grown in a bath of rain and fog. On the other hand, growing in the open entails certain risks, especially if the goal is to provide fresh, field grown vegetables all through the winter. Last week’s cold spell certainly tested our idea, and many of the mustard greens, collards and kales will need a few weeks to recover. Like many farms, we lost a lot of vegetables that in other years survive well through the winter. Nonetheless, we will have the variegated chicories, sometimes called fiori d’inverno, the flowers of winter, at this week’s market. Even temperatures in the single digits did not quell the beauty of these wonderful greens.

Freshly Dug and Harvested

Mixed heading type chicories

These are the beautiful Lusia and Chioggia chicories. We will have bags of loose leaves and whole heads.

Rutabagas

Gobo

Parsnips & Hamburg Parsley

Potatoes

Kerr’s Pink

Storage vegetables:

Sweet Potatoes

Winter Squash


Dry Goods:

Gift Boxes

Once again, we have put together some gift boxes of preserves for the holidays. Each box contains four jars of preserves (loganberry, raspberry, black currant and Italian prune), and costs $20.

Dried peppers

Aci Sivri and Joe’s Long Cayenne.

Dry Beans

Corn

Roy’s Calais Flint and Amish Butter meal

Popcorn

To ease the burden upon our answering machine, we tested the popcorn earlier this week and it popped well. We have bagged up some Amish Butter popcorn for this week’s market. The crop yielded well this year, so we will have plenty on hand at future markets.

Complementary Gimcracks:

Calendars: We will have copies of the Ayers Creek Farm 2010 Calendar at the market this weekend. Please take one. It is our way saying thank you for a good year. Our fiend Jefferson Graham provided the inspiration for the 2005 edition when, after visiting the farm with his family, he sent a calendar with photos of Ruth, Sam, us and the farm. We put together our first calendar that year and distributed 30 copies to restaurants and stores who purchased from us. As Thanksgiving rolled around, people started asking about the 2006 calendar, and now it has a life of its own and a couple hundred copies find their way to friends, family and customers. In addition to expressing our gratitude, the calendar give us an opportunity to expose the character of the place where the fruits and vegetables are harvested. The theme of this year’s calendar is the valuable but non-monetized life that live in background of Ayers Creek Farm. We hope you enjoy it.

If we miss you all at the market, please have a good holiday season and we wish you all well in the new year.

Carol and Anthony Boutard
Ayers Creek Farm