Dug Up The Dalias

  I took this photo days before I dug up my Dalias and stored them in the warm dry basement for the winter. Chris Thompson, my friend who's been farming in cooler climates his entire life and more than half a century, gave me these North Creek Raft-red Dalias several years ago. In his experience, this is the variety of Dalias that do best in the Adirondacks. They've done well here at my sandy farm. The foliage is a deep, lush, healthy green and the stem a thick deep maroon from the time they peek through the ground in the spring until the first hard frost in the fall. Wistfully, as soon as they are really starting to bloom, it's time to dig them up due to cooler temperatures.

Long Lake Harvest Pretty Corny

Long Lake students take a field trip to visit local farmer Chris Thompson's crops. Note the student in the center holds a pinkish-red corn cob.

Students harvest carrots to compete in the Fourth Annual Carrot Tasting Contest at LLCS next week.

Chris suggested we hose down the carrots before bringing them back to school.

We also pulled corn off stalks and husked it. When one student found a red colored cob, Chris told the class about a myth surrounding red corn cobs. Apparently this is a rare find. We did find a couple more red cobs out of the dozens and dozens of corn cobs we husked. Chris grinds the corn into cornmeal. In the past, we have been the recipients of some his fresh, local cornmeal. We've used it to make cornbread for our annual school-wide Fall Feast.

Chris let students take home whatever corn they could carry and one student exclaimed, "I didn't know I was so corny."

Back at school we said goodbye to the sunflowers who will surely wither in the hard frost this weekend. The tomatoes are covered with row cover but probably won't survive the weekend either.

Thankfully, the cabbage and Brussel sprouts (below) are hardy, will survive the weekend and be harvested in the upcoming weeks.

Fourth Annual Carrot Tasting Contest and Around the Corner Garden

Crunch em'. Munch em'. Eat em' in a bunch em'. Carrots pulled up from the ground will make you healthy all around. Vitamin A will feed your skin. Sharper eyes are another win. Carrots, delicious raw or cooked. Carrots, an idea as bright as they look. Carrot posters created by Noah Howard.

We used pelleted carrot seeds with amazing results this year .... Check out the size of the carrots we harvested for Long Lake School's 4th Annual Carrot Tasting Contest!

Altogether we harvested 25 pounds of carrots from our Corner Garden.

Digging for potatoes

Hope the warmth continues so our Brussel sprouts have time to mature.

Students carefully pick cherry tomatoes and retrieve the ones that fall to the ground in the process. The branches are fully loaded.

Cutting a Delicata squash from the vine is a collaborative effort.

Garden-inspired artwork - Note the squash, top row in the center, is the one harvested by students in the picture above it.

Milkweed (as drawn above) lives in the garden too. This fall students learned how important milkweed is for Monarch butterflies. 

Reflection

The leaves are rapidly changing the walls of the Gorge and the heavy rain this week brought the river up a couple feet. Nate took this photo on an overnight raft trip last weekend from a camp named Carter's Landing in Mile Long Rapid. The Hudson was at a very low level and looks this "bony" after the "bubble" of water from the dam release flows downstream. The rafters camped on river right on Carter's flat bivouac. The location is one of several former log driving camps along the river, according to Jeff Dickinson's book , "So There We Were: River Running in the Hudson Gorge". The loggers were some of the first to brave the rapids through the Gorge in the mid 1800s. Get a copy of Jeff's new book at: http://www.amazon.com/So-There-We-Were-Running/dp/1480083313 

This is another great photo Nate took this season. It's a Great Blue Heron most likely watching for it's next meal. In "Medicine Cards" by Jamie Sam and David Carson, "Heron is the power of self-reflection, of knowing the self by discovering its gifts and facing its challenges. It's the ability to accept all feelings and opinions without denying any emotion or thought." This season I discovered gifts such as learning to speak Chinese to converse with rafters from China, mentoring a young girl studying computer science who also hopes to become a guide some day and reconnecting with a childhood friend who owns a tiny 10-ft NOT-self-bailing raft and tagged along with a raft trip.  I also weathered the "storm" of two negative online reviews. In a sea of excellent reviews, two went rogue. We are passionate business owners who've put everything into North Creek Rafting so the reviews felt like a slap in the face. However, we've learned to see the feedback as a gift, for all of us to be better at what we do every day, and for all of us to be better at serving our rafters. And after all of this, North Creek Rafting had a highly fulfilling season. Raft with us year ten, 2016!