It has been a fun and amazing wild mushroom gathering year in this part of PA. Learning lots of new mushrooms but it’s a challenge as there are so many that look so similar!! The conditions were ideal for an abundance of all sorts of mushrooms and a kind friend is guiding us to differentiate the bad from the good. Many are being dried for winter soups. They’re so ephemeral, popping up where there was nothing and in a few days all that is left is sort of a disgusting pile of slime. Would love to identify all those that grow on the farm. If you have a favorite definitive mushroom identification guide, let us know!

Approximately 48 days after they were found some of the snake eggs have hatched!!! (see earlier post) They are milk snakes, born with an umbilical cord attached! There is a bit of hope for the remaining eggs but the first 3 all hatched within a day or two of the other. We’ll wait then and perhaps do an autopsy on a remaining egg. The babies will be released close to where the eggs were found.

The new carrot colors are far from new, the first carrots were purple, white and yellow. Orange was the unique variety that got cultivated widely hundreds of years ago. The orange color is the result of Dutch cultivation in the 17th Century, when patriotic growers turned a vegetable which was then purple into the color of the national flag.
Purple carrots have up to 28 times more anthocyanins, than orange carrots. Black Carrots also contain anthocyanins, flavonoids have anticancer compounds, they are free radical scavengers in living systems, as well as inhibitors of LDL (the bad) cholesterol and the black carrot anthocyanins are especially active.
We have not yet planted black carrots, haven’t seen the seeds for them. I am wondering if they look very appetizing. The purple carrot, we noticed, are not always purple all the way through. Some have yellow or orange insides, but some are deep purple the whole way. The "Deep Purple", I think, are uniformly colored the whole way through. It was disappointing when we first planted purple carrots to find that the variety we planted had only the thinnest layer of purple on the outside and if you peeled them they were orange!
Yellow carrots are rich in Xanthophylls, similar to beta-carotene, they are linked to eye health and may reduce the incidence of lung and other cancers.
Red carrots are rich in Lycopene, found in, is a type of carotene also found in tomatoes. It is believed to help prevent heart disease and, in conjunction with other phytochemicals, reduce the risk of certain cancers.

Purple carrot varieties: Indigo, Maroon, Purple Dragon, Cosmic Purple,
Purple Haze
Yellow Carrots: Sunlite, Solar Yellow, Yellowstone,
White Carrots: Creme De Lite, White Satin
Red Carrots: Supreme Chateney, Red Samurai
Black: Black Knight, Indigo

Concords are the favorite of all fruits on the farm. It's funny though when the strawberries are first ripe they are our favorite, then when the cherries ripen they are we we have been waiting for and of course the peaches vie for top ranking. Soon we'll be saying the same about the crisp ripe, bursting with juice fall apples!!

We had a great crop of edamame ( green immature soybeans) again this year. A third of the crop is being saved for planting next year. We are trying to save more and more seed, if something works well and we really like it it makes sense. The black pearl soybeans are for some reason expensive seeds, even though they require nothing different than the regular soybeans, so it is just a matter of availibility. We have lots now , so if you would like to try some, let me know. The Black Pearl are a delicacy in Japan as they are so buttery delicious.