Samhain the Last Harvest Festival and the End of the Pagan Year

Samhain is the best known of the Pagan Festivals, now re-branded as the playful Hallowe'en in the world of Capitalist Industrial Christendom.  We were setting up our giant pumpkin and lights at the entrance to Luckyfarm77 before dark.  All of a sudden, three vehicles pulled up full of parents with neighbouring children.  One family was dressed as Lord of the Rings characters - a Wraith, Legolas the Elf, Aragorn the King, and Gandalf the Wizard.  Another family had little welders and a giant popcorn girl.  Finally, the one year old toddler was dressed as a drooling crab!  We gave out almost all the bags of healthy organic goodies to the young and young at heart.

We harvested our remaining tomatoes and sweet peppers and ripened them in hanging paper bags.  We roasted the tomatoes and peppers along with herbs, onions, and garlic on parchment paper and then pureed them to make "Marinara" sauce.  Since we only have small batches this year, we froze the sauce into empty feta containers.  Next year, if we have more tomatoes and peppers in a greenhouse, we will go back to canning.

 

Here is another batch with some zucchini about to be roasted.  Linda grew the zucchini in an experimental hay-bale inoculated with compost teas!

This is the first time we tried to grow onion "sets".  This is a two year process to grow onions.  We planted onion seeds in July and we then harvested the tiny bulbs. 

The small bulbs are cut off and dried.  These "sets" will be planted early next spring in March.  We also used some of the cut-off greens in salads and also a vegetable broth.  Our orange cat Wilma is excited about the sets drying on the table!

Even at this time of year we are still harvesting crispy beets and carrots.  There are still some potatoes, kale, and Swiss chard in the ground.  Of course, our herbs will continue to be harvested deep into the winter.