November Notes

Several news items that I should have posted earlier but I didn’t.
The biggest news is that Jim and Rose are grandparents again as Mark and Brande had a baby boy, Benjamin Mark Schiller. Ben Joins Maizey his 2 year old sister.
Next we are back in the cider business after a 17 year layoff. Jim and I bought an old 36 inch rack and cloth press a year ago and finally got it into service. We are currently only selling non-Pasteurized fresh cider, so we are not wholesaling it. You can only get it at our markets or the farmers markets that we frequent. We pressed today and we will press again in a week or so. We are still working some bugs out of the system but it is fun to have cider again.
Many will be excited to hear that the first of 15 double bottom semi loads of turkey manure arrive this week! We are spreading it starting in Grand Traverse County and working our way North over the next couple weeks. I am always amazed at how bad turkey manure smells, but for those who live in the smell zone please be patient, I hope the smell subsides in just a day or two after we get it spread. We are cognizant of how annoying it can be and we will pledge to spread it as soon after it is delivered as possible.

We are still blessed with an abundance of apples and we have some seconds for sauce or cooking too. Since the crop was so short we did not sell to the grocery store chain in the UP that we usually sell to. So we still have plenty here at the markets. We also have a bunch of squash left, Acorn, Butternut, Buttercup, Carnival, Sugar Dumpling, Delicata, and even some giant (and some not so giant) Hubbard squash.
John