Last Farmer's Market

We finally made it back to the Mukilteo Farmer's Market last week for the last market day of the year. It was beautiful weather and we were able to spread out in the sun without the canopy. (Should we admit we forgot it?) Theresa is our display expert and came armed with African fabric and piles of baskets. We were not sure what the customer numbers would be without the summer beach-goers, but it turned out that there were many people excited about fall produce and we sold plenty of carrots, parsnips, pumpkins, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, beets, garlic and bell peppers. It was a good way to end the market season.

Work Party

Winter is fast approaching and neither the garden nor the house are prepared. So we called in the reinforcements and they came, gloves and boots on, ready to work. What a work party! It was so helpful and really neat to look out over the farm and see activity all over. It certainly made working so hard much more fun! Here is a photo-journal of just some of what was accomplished. Photo credits go to Sarah and Vesta, who took their photo job very seriously.

Alan and Chris disassembling the tall chicken coopSusan freeing the asparagus from weeds

Jesse appeared in dress clothes to supervise and give Susan and Theresa a break from weeding. Theresa is our master-weeder. The garden would be lost without her.

Mom took babysitting duty seriously and sat for hours on the front porch cleaning potatoes for storage.

Bill getting a lesson on rototilling with the tractor.

Bob rototilling

Christopher and Vesta bringing up melons from the field

Shu-ha's parents didn't have bean-picking on their list of things to do on their visit from Taiwan, but they sure picked a lot of beans

Vesta picking strawberries

Joanie weeding the beets

Sara cleaning up the flower beds

Karen and Tim the pumpkin tossers. Leave it to them to come up with a creative way to get the pumpkins out of the field quickly and have fun at the same time.

We want to thank everyone who came to work. We appreciate it!

Pumpkin Pickin'

Perhaps our biggest enterprise this year has taken us by surprise. We harvested an abundance of pumpkins, expecting them to go to waste rotting on the ground. On a chance, we loaded some of them into the trailer during our work party and parked it on the side of the road. Vince fashioned our old mailbox into a pay-station and we painted make-shift signs. Every day this week the pumpkins are disappearing faster than we could have imagined and money is making it's way into the mailbox. It looks like all of those beautiful pumpkins won't go to waste at all. And we joke-now maybe Pieter can go to college after all!