What do hurricanes and CSA farms have in common? Find out right after these brief announcements.
Just a reminder about the Fall Garlic Gala! Come see the farm, get a little dirty planting garlic, then sit back and enjoy some good food, great conversation and a pretty ok bonfire. Saturday October 7th from 1:00 until we plant all the garlic, eat all the food, and run out of things to discuss. Please let us know if you can make it. This is a family friendly event and there are things to do for people of all abilities!
We’re still looking for help — either paid or volunteer. Please spread the word!
Farm News
This week may be a great week to catch up on all the produce currently sitting in your fridge. I feel we are entering the calm eye of the hurricane. The last many weeks have had a whirlwind of produce. I look to the future and see a lot more on the horizon. But this week we seem to have a bit of a lull. The transition from Summer to Fall is a tricky time of year to keep the shares full. The warm season crops are winding down and the cool season crops haven’t ramped up yet. Plus certain fall crops are better after a frost. So the shares may be a bit smaller than we would typically expect. Maybe that is a good thing.
Tomatoes
You may have noticed recently that some of our tomatoes aren’t as clean as in the past, may not look as nice and may not last as long. If you have some of these tomatoes you have some that were grown outside the hoop house. The difference is pretty stark and clearly shows how great it is to have an indoor growing space for the tomatoes. Now this year has been an especially hard season to grow tomatoes outside. It has been fairly cool with frequent rain in August. The coolness slows down the growth and maturity of the tomatoes. The rain exacerbates the spread of tomato diseases. Even with the indoor space the reduction in sunlight and the cooler evenings slow the production of the tomatoes. So you’ll continue to see fewer tomatoes until sometime next summer when they ramp up again.
Watermelons
We finally started harvesting the watermelons that weren’t eaten by the deer. Thursday and Friday folks got them last week. Tuesday and Wednesday folks get them this week. Watermelons are tricky since we can’t really tell reliably how good they will taste unless we do destructive taste testing. Let us know if the melon you receive is as tasty as the deer seem to think! Speaking of which, the deer prefer the Yellow Doll melons (expensive seeds) to the Sugar Babies (inexpensive seeds). They have expensive tastes.
Rain
After a long wet spell this summer we were inundated with an overwhelming supply of dry. This dryness forced us to start irrigating various crops these last several weeks. It also prevented us from planting the fall cover crops; no reason to plant crops if there is no rain to get them to germinate! But finally the forecast had 100% chance of rain on Saturday! Yay! I spent four hours planting cover crops on Friday. Unfortunately that 0% chance of no rain was all the chance it needed to not rain. So we got no rain. After irrigating more on Sunday and a forecast for spotty passing showers on Monday we finally got some reasonable rain today. I must say these spotty passing showers seem not very spotty nor passing very fast — both good. Unfortunately however, the rain occurred on a harvest day — not good. However this gives me more time to write the newsletter (good or not good, you be the judge).
What will we have this week? As I mentioned this is a good week to catch up on eating the produce in your fridge. It will be a lighter than normal week. As always onions, and garlic. Plus we should have peppers, some tomatoes, some cherry tomatoes, some tomatillos, some eggplants, some cucumbers, some carrots, some edamame, something else and maybe some other things. Oh, and I think we will start harvesting the kale again. We like to wait until we have a frost to harvest the pie pumpkins and winter squash. We prefer to wait for a couple frosts before we harvest the rutabagas and Brussels sprouts. So far no frost (yay?) The third planting of beans is a week or two away (so no frost for them!) And finally, we want to wait until next week to harvest the leeks so that that can go with the potatoes we plan to harvest next week. Seems like I should have labeled this section “What won’t we have this week?”
I believe there are no other shares except FlowersShare.
As always, do not hesitate to contact me with questions, comments, jokes, puzzlers and future weather related farm analogies!