I was asked by one of our members about our harvest. To paraphrase: “Do you harvest the produce on one particular day of the week then dole it out over the course of the week? I want to know which day I should choose as my pick-up day”.
An interesting question with a very long answer. Actually, it is a very short answer to the specific question. The answer is “No”. But I am assuming most people want to know more about our harvest schedule than this one question. So sit back, grab a cool drink, relax and prepare for a long post.
But before we do that, don’t forget to order stuff like Veggies, Fruit, Cheese, Meat, Seafood, Eggs, Coffee, and Ice Cream.
And don’t forget to tell your friends, neighbors, colleagues, family, strangers, etc. about our farm. We appreciate your support.
Back to our regularly scheduled program.
To understand why we harvest the way we do it is important to understand our motivation. Our goal is to provide you with the freshest, tastiest produce with the longest shelf-life possible. So in any given week we will harvest from three to seven days of the week; it all depends on the time of year, what is ready and the weather forecast. Each item we grow has potentially a different harvest schedule. However we can divide them into several different categories and explain the process for each.
The first category is perishable produce where the fresher the better and where, if not needed, leaving the produce in the field is not detrimental. A good example would be lettuce. People like their lettuce “picked that day” fresh. Lettuce typically can last another day in the field (though eventually this isn’t true as it gets more mature). We will harvest these types of items on an as needed basis during our “normal” harvest days. These harvest days are Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (Thursday morning pick-ups are fulfilled on Wednesday harvest days). On these days we check the demand for the day then harvest based on the demand. For example, if we have 100 shares worth of produce to supply we harvest 110 heads of lettuce – harvesting a little extra for unforeseen events.
The second category is items that grow quickly and are best harvested at a certain size. Good examples here would be cucumbers or summer squash. With these items we want to get them when they are large enough but not too large. These items grow so fast that we need to go through the patch every other day – even on the weekends – checking every plant to see if there are any fruits ready to be picked (during particularly hot spells we may go through the patch every day). We store these in the cooler and give them out on the next pick-up day. Sometimes we miss a couple fruits and end up with baseball bat size squash. These we don’t send out in the delivery boxes but keep them in the pick-up tent for those people who want extra-large squash.
A third category is items that may keep in the field for a while but at some point have to be harvested otherwise they will “go bad”. A good example of this type is sweet corn. Typically treat sweet corn is like the first category – harvesting only what we need for that pick-up day – until it matures to the point where leaving it in the field makes it less desirable. At that point we harvest the remaining ears of that variety and cool it in the walk-in cooler to dole out the next pick-up day. This sometimes results in unequal distribution over the course of a given week. However, we keep track of how much each share receives. We compensate in future weeks so that everyone gets an equal amount over the course of the season. Peppers are similar except a pending frost is the event that causes us to harvest the remaining fruits.
A fourth category is items that are time consuming to harvest but store fairly well in the cooler. These items typically don’t keep well in the field so need to be picked on a regular basis. Beans and peas are good examples of this category. Typically we harvest them in bunches and dole them out as quickly as possible. We may pick them on a non-pick-up-day due to having too much other produce to pick on a pick-up day. However it would be rare for them to hang around for more than a couple days.
A fifth category is just like category four but they can also keep in the field. These include potatoes, and carrots. With potatoes and carrots we will dig a row or two or three, wash them then store them in the cooler or for potatoes in a cool, dark room. It is just more efficient to dig these in batches than to dig a few every harvest day.
A sixth category is items we want to harvest all at once. Onions, garlic, sweet potatoes and winter squash fall into this category. We spend all our free time over a few days to a week harvesting these items then cure them prior to giving them out. Edamame is similar except we don’t cure it; we just dole it out over the course of the week.
A seventh category is items that keep well in the field for a very long time. Cabbage comes to mind here. We harvest cabbage on an as needed basis. It is also harvested when it reaches a certain size. Cabbage stores very well in the cooler and the demand for it rarely exceeds the supply, so we just harvest it whenever we need more and it is available.
A category all by itself is tomatoes. We harvest tomatoes in the afternoon after the dew dries. This results in less transfer of diseases and cleaner tomatoes. We try to get to them every few days. Storing tomatoes is problematic so we try to get these out to the members as soon as possible after harvest.
Eggplants fall somewhat into the second category in that we want to harvest them at a certain size but since they don’t grow as fast as cucumbers or summer squash we can go through the eggplants each harvest day; leaving them in the field over a weekend isn’t detrimental like it could be for cukes. Watermelons are similar except the time between harvests is closer to four or five days instead of every other day.
Then there is the category of items that get harvested whenever. Things like kale and Swiss chard are harvested when there is enough in the field, the members aren’t overwhelmed and it is looking nice. It doesn’t “go bad” leaving it in the field so it may not get harvested if there is enough other stuff.
I think everything we grow fits into one of these categories (though I didn’t mention every item we grow). This is a pretty simplistic description of how it works (yes, I’m not kidding); there are additional decisions that are made, approaches that are modified based on factors not described but you get the gist of it. As you can see we sometimes end up harvesting every day of the week and at a minimum three days a week. I know other farms have different approaches. I feel ours works well for us and gets us as close to our goal as possible: providing you with the freshest, tastiest produce with the longest shelf life.
Feel free to ask more questions and I will address them in future newsletters.
This week’s joke comes curtesy of one of our members Jacob:
What vegetables have a band?
Turnip the beets!