A couple of announcements then on to this week’s news!
Still planning on planting garlic on Saturday, October 4th from 1:00 until done — weather permitting. Hope to see many of you here!
Still taking back pint-size clam shells.
What will we have this week?
Acorn squash! Also lots of radishes, onions, garlic, peppers, some tomatoes, some cherry tomatoes, some tomatillos, lots of arugula (it is surprisingly strong tasting for the first cutting!), beans and I’m sure there are other things I am forgetting.
It is a Cheese, ‘Shroom and Flower week. This week’s FlowerShare will be decorative gourds.
It is also the first week for delivering parts of WinterShare for those who ordered WinterShare. We’ll be distributing the onions, garlic and shallots this week. For delivery folks, they will be in an onion bag with your name on it near your pick-up box. On-farm people can ask for it when they get here.
Farm News
The more I farm the more I realize how little I know about farming. Seems counterintuitive but I think when one starts out learning about a subject there are a lot of unknowns — both known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Then, as one gains knowledge many of these known unknowns become knowns and many of the unknown unknowns become known unknowns. But these unknown unknowns may in fact be an infinite set so even if you’ve been a student of a given subject for over 20 years there are still many unknown unknowns that become known unknowns.
What made me think of this was my dog wanting to go outside one last time before bed. Well, it wasn’t the fact he wanted to go outside, but more the fact that as I was walking him around I was trying to think of a topic for this week’s newsletter. Without his insistence on going out I may have forgotten I needed to write a newsletter! Thanks Link! And in trying to come up with this week’s topic I thought about how this season’s winter squash is surprisingly trouble free. Well, not completely trouble free but there are far fewer issues than we’ve seen in past years. Seems like a good topic for this week’s newsletter!
Typically in the past many years we would lose 20-30% of the squash in the field due to disease — frequently black rot — or pest damage — deer, mice or beetles. This season we left maybe a couple per row or around 30 or so. I don’t have a final total on our squash harvest but with the acorns alone we harvested over 300 so the cull rate this year is incredibly low. And that is where the unknown unknown became a known unknown. What causes some seasons to have such horrible disease issues and other seasons not so much?
Typically it seems wet seasons have more disease pressure. This has certainly been a wet season. Why didn’t it create a bigger disease problem in the squash? I don’t have a good answer other than perhaps the small population of cucumber beetles had something to do with it. My hypothesis is that the beetles damage the squash which allows the pathogen to enter the plant. Fewer cucumber beetles results in less damage and therefore less disease.
Another hypothesis I have is that perhaps with the squash maturing a week or two earlier than usual allowed us to harvest them before the black rot took hold. I don’t think this is the case but it would be something to consider. My final hypothesis is that the deer did so much damage in the past that even though our deer fence isn’t 100% effective, it is effective enough to limit their damage to far fewer squash than in recent years. I suspect the final reason will be a combination of all these hypotheses and a bunch of unknowns.
In any case, the bright side of this now known unknown is that it seems to be a good winter squash year! It’s also a good pumpkin year. Now of course there is still plenty of time for things to go wrong in storage but at least we are starting from a stronger position than we have in the recent past. So get out your winter squash cookbooks.
One last farm observation: We’ve seen a number of hawks flying around lately and three bald eagles. There also seems to be far fewer bunnies than even a few weeks ago. There could be a correlation here. Go Hawks! Go Eagles!
Recipe of the Week
Since we have beans and garlic I thought I’d throw this recipe in this week’s newsletter.
Garlic Green Beans
Ingredients
- ½ lb green beans washed with stems ends trimmed
- 2-many cloves garlic crushed
- ¼ c water
- 2 T butter
Instructions
- Wash and trim beans.
- Place beans and water in pan.
- Cover and steam beans for about five minutes until crisp tender.
- Remove cover and add crushed garlic and butter to pan.
- Mix and heat for one minute until garlic is fragrant.
- Remove from heat and serve.
Notes
As always, do not hesitate to send in questions, comments, suggestions, etc.
Joke of the Week
What is a pumpkin’s favorite sport?
Squash