Can we take a moment to celebrate the awesomeness of October? October has the greatest potential for abundance and diversity in the garden because farmers can have both warm season and cool season crops. The full complement of summer 
crops can be found at the farmers market including southern peas, tomatoes, pepper, eggplant, cucumbers, squash and okra. It wont be long now before frost knocks all that out until next summer. We are watching the weather forecast closely, having learned that a projected low of 40 degrees means it’s likely we will get at least a light frost. Cool weather goodies we haven’t seen since spring are back, including lettuce, broccoli, kale, turnips and radishes and soon, very soon…CARROTS! Yet, despite the wide variety of vegetables coming out of the garden in October, we have seen both our farmers markets slow down, as is typical at this time of the year. So spread the word to all your friends and family; don’t miss the last tomatoes (and peppers, and eggplant, squash and okra) of the year! Tell them that there is more NEW stuff every week as cool weather crops come in. Can you believe that Yang Farm had homegrown rice at the market Saturday?!?!
Planting our winter cover cropThere are a couple of other reasons October is amazing. The weather is fantastically and finally cooling off. And the end of the season is in sight. Just a few more pressing field work to-dos until we get to coast into November. Time to start making the list of winter projects!
We at Tubby Creek Farm have another reason to celebrate! We have been named a 2014 Demonstration Farm by the Mississippi Sustainable Agriculture Network as part of their Rooted in Mississippi program. Apparently we managed to convince MSAN that we know enough about what we are doing to be able to teach something valuable to others interested or engaged in local sustainable agriculture. Or maybe we were selected to demonstrate how not to do things? Joking aside, we are honored to be named along with other farmers around the state whom we greatly admire. As a demo farm, we will be hosting a field day/farm tour sometime in 2014 as part of a series hosted by MSAN, as well as participating in their speaker series and hosting a one month summer internship. The award comes with some perks – a small operation grant, internship funding assistance, and professional consultation – but we are really looking forward to learning from other farmers.
Raising a good meat bird is a real challenge. We found the typical cornish cross birds to be slothful to the extreme. While they produce a nice “super market” type bird that is tasty we wanted something better. So now we are trying Freedom Rangers. These chickens take 10 to 12 weeks to raise vs. 7-8 but that extra time should mean even more flavor. They may not be as big breasted as the “super market” bird but tastier. Plus they are not at all as fat, dumb and lazy as the other meat chickens we have raised.
