Webmaster’s note: The format of this column includes all of the Quill’s Endians participating at various times and in various ways! Phil writes this month’s column.
The Farmstead Root Cellar in June
There are many things that we do on small farms that seem logical to us, but are not necessarily logical to commodity farmers. Alongside the enterprises that earn us money, we homestead. We keep a garden, fruit trees, and cane fruits for our own larder and to share with friends. We tap maple trees to boil sap and sweeten our mornings.
There are certain things that resonate with any food grower. The excitement of the first fresh greens, the sun-warmed first tomatoes, the crisp, tangy bite of an apple while you stand beneath the tree.
Since we eat seasonally, these are things we don’t enjoy all year round, but we can extend that excitement pretty far.
We have been eating a lot of potatoes recently. We do love potatoes, but there is also an urgency for consumption this time of the year. Our supply, while holding out in quantity, is slowly degrading in quality. Today, for our second meal with potatoes in it, I uncovered our last half-bushel. I’m fairly certain that these are not potatoes of unusual size, but after fishing through the dregs of the last container for every last usable spud, they seemed like whoppers to me. A two-bite home fry! The excitement of the last of the potatoes will soon give way to the longing for new potatoes with firm crisp flesh, but for now a gigantic, medium-sized potato will do very well.
As we were relishing our good fortune, Benjamin related a story about a farming friend of his eating apples in June. Wrinkly, soft fleshed June apples from your own farm! Nothing better, until…
Heather and Phil Retberg and their three children run Quill’s End Farm, a 105-acre property in Penobscot that they bought in 2004. They use rotational grazing on their fifteen open acres and are renovating thirty more acres from woods to pasture to increase grazing for their pigs, grass-fed cattle, lambs, laying hens, and goats. Heather is Vice President of Halcyon Grange #345 and writes a newsletter for their farm’s buying club of farmers in her area and has generously permitted us to share some of their columns with Grangers. Visit the Quill’s End Farm Facebook Page for more information.