Natural Produce and Grass Fed Beef from

Blessing Falls Farm - November 2013

Michael, Emily, and Lily

In this season of thanksgiving, we are thankful for the many friends we've met this year at the market and elsewhere.  Thanks for supporting our garden and cattle efforts and for your encouraging words and friendly smiles.

Here at the farm we recently had the season's first freeze which ended the harvest for most of our summer vegetables.  We preserved a few rows (see the related article below) and are starting to enjoy the harvest of the first 'fall' crops.  Our plan for starting seeds in summer for early fall transplant did not work out well. We learned a lot and hope for better success next summer.  We've started several sequences of green leafy crops directly in the garden.  But the frequent fall rains, for which we are so grateful, kept washing the seeds under the weed barrier.  So while we continue to harvest regularly, the amounts are down from what we hoped.  We did get a few broccoli and tomato starts planted and will be harvesting those soon, and the greens we re-planted are starting to come up and grow more vigorously, so we hope to be back to an abundance before too long. 

Meanwhile, at the market each week we will have some veggies and also a good assortment of grass fed beef.  Emily is ramping up plans for baked goods, so look for banana bread, cinnamon rolls, and other goodies at the market soon.  Texas laws changed recently to simplify the process of legally selling baked goods, jellies, and such.  We're grateful to be able to share some of Emily's delicacies with a wider audience.

We're also planning new berry and fruit tree plantings.  We'll add 20 blackberry bushes to our current 10 and also replace a couple fruit trees that did not survive this year.  We're hoping our orchard and berry patch will bear some fruit next spring.  We started planting a couple years ago so may get a little harvest in 2014 and look for an abundance in 2015 and beyond.
 
We've attached some recent posts from the website.  One summarizes the health benefits of grass fed beef, as compared to conventional grain-fed 'supermarket' beef.  Very exciting to see the rigorous scientific research confirming that grass fed beef is not only better tasting and safer for you, but also provides powerful necessary nutrition.  The other post details how we work to extend the growing season for warm weather crops. 
 
Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and we look forward to seeing you at the market.

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Health Benefits of Grass Fed Beef

A fairly recent article (2010) summarizes the last 30 years of health and nutrition research on grass fed beef. The article is technical and scholarly which can make for slow reading. But it's a tremendous resource that combines the various health benefits into a single ...

Read online.

Picking ripe eggplant and cutting basil, in case the cover strategy doesn't work.

Extending the Harvest

An early cold front brought near freezing temperatures last night and a low of 30 is forecast for tonight.  We've covered the tomatoes and some peppers and eggplant, hoping to extend the harvest.  Our average first freeze is early December, so hopefully we'll have another 3 weeks before we're forced to abandon these crops for the season...

Read online.