Savour

It’s been a busy week at our little farmstead! We had first frost, hosted a family gathering for Thanksgiving, held an elderberry syrup making workshop, had a huge pile of firewood delivered, and had a new roof put on the house.

Savouring the last warm days: With first frost comes the bittersweet feeling of the garden season ending, while anticipating a much needed time of rest ahead. In these last warm days of autumn we are putting the garden beds to rest, mulching garlic that has been planted, cleaning up the hoop house and planting winter greens. We are collecting seeds for saving, drying herbs, and putting storage veggies like squash, carrots, beets, garlic and potatoes into our cold room. It is soup season, so we are warming our hands and bellies with squash soup, roasted tomato soup, creamy potato soup, feeling much appreciation for the abundance of our gardens this year and the many meals they have provided.

Savouring flavours: Is it a coincidence that savour rhymes with flavour? At our family gathering we decided to have a “tomato tasting” before the meal. We set out plates with ten varieties of our heirloom tomatoes, and enjoyed sharing these unique flavours, with plenty of tomatoes and seeds for our relatives to take home. We also harvested our heirloom popcorn this week - blue, black, pink and multi-coloured cobs. Growing popcorn is something we have been wanting to trial, and although we planted far too late we grew three varieties with some success. As we understand it, popcorn is closer in genetic make-up to flint corn, so does not cross with all the other corn being grown around us, so gives us the chance to grow it out to what it should look like. We look forward to enjoying our rainbow of homegrown popcorn this winter! If you drop by for a visit you just might get some.

Savouring community: Hosting workshops, such as our recent Elderberry Syrup making session, at Swallowtail has been important to us as it is a way to bring community together around shared interests and skills. We want to be more than just a farm business, but rather a social enterprise that helps create a resilient thriving community by sharing healthy food experiences and hands-on learning of practical skills. We attended a lovely Field-to-Fork anniversary dinner at a friend’s farm last night where our farm had contributed pumpkins and potatoes for the meal. As we sat around the beautiful dinner table we were surprised by how many people we knew in the crowd. In the course of this year, our projects at Swallowtail Farmstead have allowed us to start to build a nice network of friends and colleagues through mutual interests in good food, ecological farming, and grassroots community initiatives.

Savouring the cold season ahead: We are feeling grateful for a fully stocked woodshed, a cozy woodstove, and a solid new roof on our old farmhouse! Heading into the colder months we look forward to a time for evaluating this year, with visioning and dreaming for the new year ahead.

What are you savouring at this time of year?