I didn’t know there was a new Star Wars animated series called “Star Wars: The Bad Batch” until I was Googling what to call this week’s newsletter. “The Bad Batch” worked perfectly, unfortunately. Learn why below, but first a few messages.
Please let me know if you get squash that is rotten inside. We are trying to determine how widespread the problem is. We could cut open all squash before giving it out but that would be time consuming and you’d end up with cut open squash. I only heard from one person last week and hopefully that was the only problem. I suspect there are many more that have just not said anything. So please let me know if your squash is rotten and if possible include a picture of it and any description of holes, lesions or blemishes on the outside of the fruit. Thank you!
The Fall Garlic Gala is still on for Saturday October 2nd from 1:00 until done. Come out and enjoy the company of like minded people, learn how to plant garlic and get some sunshine and fresh air! All ages, physical levels welcome. There is plenty to do. Let me know if you can make it. (If it isn’t possible to plant on Saturday we may postpone it to the following Sunday or a following weekend depending on the soil moisture.)
We are taking orders for 2022! Send in your $100 deposit or order it online. Full payment is required if paying by credit card but just a deposit of $100 is required to reserve your share.
We’ll continue to take back the cherry tomato clam shells. Bring them with you when you pick-up. Drop sites can leave them in the delivery tote. Thank you!
Five weeks left for the season counting this week. Please plan accordingly.
Farm News
As you recall we had — initially — a hot dry summer, perfect for growing squash if you have irrigation, which we do. The farm was festive with much merriment as the squash plants flourished with bountiful squash fruits. The pie pumpkins were equally impressive in their orange glory. Life was grand!
Then came the rains. For 40 days and 40 nights, or what at least seemed like 40, it rained and rained. I looked back and found in August we had 10 days of measurable rain (that is rain we thought was enough to walk over and check the rain gauge, not the weather service’s definition of measurable). The total for the month of August was over 18″. We’ve had close to 4″ in September so far. What was once a field awash in big squash leaves and big squash fruits was now a field of dead and dying squash plants. “Never fear”, we thought. The squash were already plenty mature so there should be plenty of healthy, wonderful squash. Life was still good.
Then came the day that we’ve since named “Black Friday”. The day we finally had the opportunity to wander through the squash harvesting what we felt would be the most successful squash season in the history of the farm! Boy were we wrong. As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, when harvesting we left over half the squash in the field due to them being rotten. We hauled in what we thought would be the squash that would keep the best. Then last week we further culled the harvested squash and gave out to you members the squash we felt would go bad the fastest and kept what we felt could go on to a wonderfully fulfilling life as a cured squash. Life was so-so.
Well, this week on Monday we started putting together our WinterShares. Our first stop was the greenhouse to gather the necessary squash to fulfill our shares sold. This day is now called “Black Monday”. As we started to put together the shares we began to see — and feel — the squash we previously determined were “the best of the best” were losing their battle with squash disease. Not good. Then I had the brilliant idea to shake the squash to determine if the insides had liquefied like we’ve seen a few times this season. Most disconcerting was that some of the carnival squash that looked, felt and smelled perfectly fine had a sloshing sound when shaken vigorously. We further investigated this phenomenon by cutting open the sloshing squash and confirmed they were rotten to the core. The mood in the greenhouse turned to despair. Life was not so good.
So today, “Black Tuesday”, we are going through all the squash — for the fifth time — to remove any bad squash with the intention of giving out the remaining good ones to our members. As mentioned last week, I would highly suggest using them as soon as possible. We don’t know what is causing the liquefaction of the squash and are still seeking answers from the University of Minnesota but it seems to affect the carnival squash and the few pie pumpkins we harvested the most. Sorry for the inconvenience and even more sorry for the poor squash year. I hope we find answers soon so we can maybe have a chance to solve the problem next season and return to the grand life!
What will we have this week?
Our hope is more squash, but we won’t know until we complete today’s inventory. We will also have tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, Napa cabbages, peppers, onions, garlic, the return of the eggplants!, an overwhelming amount of okra, some kohlrabi, some tomatillos, some potatoes, and some other things in smaller quantities.
We have FlowerShare this week. The flowers are slowing down but we’ll try to put together bouquets. The ornamental pumpkins are succumbing to the same malady as the pie pumpkins so we won’t be giving these out this year. I’m still hopeful the gourds keep.
We will be giving out parts of the WinterShares. We have the onions and squash ready to go so those who purchased WinterShare plan to pick these up at your regular pick-up location. Also for those who ordered WinterShare, please check your email for an exciting one-time offer!
Recipe of the week!
I posted this in our Facebook forum but since there are three of you who read the newsletter and only two that follow us on Facebook I thought I would post it here as well! This past weekend I made a delicious Thai Red Curry Butternut Squash. It was so good I wrote down the recipe which you can find here. Let me know what you think! It worked well with one of the partially rotten squash (maybe that’s what gave it the terrific flavor!)
And for all the okra you get this week don’t forget to try this Bhindi Masala recipe. So much flavor you can’t taste the okra!
That is all for now. Time to haul the bad squash to the ever growing pile of bad squash. As always, send in questions, comments, jokes, and any other ideas for solving our squash malady.