THIS WEEK’S HARVEST
Mustard Mix, Assorted Lettuce, Purple Bok Choi, Dino Kale, Baby Carrots, Sugarloaf Chicories, Bicolor Sweet Corn, Onions, Summer Squash & Zucchini, Persian & Lemon Cucumbers, Sarah’s Choice Cantaloupe, Galia Melons, Tomatoes, Tendersweet Cabbage, Garlic.
U-PICK
Please remember to check the u-pick board for updated weekly limits before going out to pick
Albion Strawberries: Are back! | 1 pint per share this week
Pickling Cucumbers: Gleanings | See week 6’s newsletter for harvest and pickling tips
Cherry Tomatoes: See week 8’s newsletter for variety descriptions
Amethyst Green Beans: Gleanings
Frying Peppers: Shishitos & Padrons | See week 4’s newsletter for harvest and preparation tips
Jalapeño Peppers
Buena Mulata Hot Peppers: Cayenne type hot pepper | See Week 10’s Newsletter for description
Tomatillos: Located next to the frying peppers
Herbs: Dill, Thyme, Oregano, Marjoram, Tarragon, Onion Chives, Garlic Chives, Vietnamese Coriander, Culinary Lavender, Culinary Sage, French Sorrel, Lemon Verbena, Cilantro, Tulsi, Various Mints, Catnip, Chamomile, Purple Basil, Genovese Basil, Thai Basil
Flowers!
HARVEST NOTES
Bicolor Sweet Corn: Before you do anything to this sweet corn, take a bite of it raw. It’s like candy!
Galia Melons: Originally developed by growers in Israel, Galia melons were the first hybrid of intensely perfumed Middle Eastern melons. The Galia melon looks like a cantaloupe on the outside and a honeydew on the inside. Its light green, smooth-textured flesh, and honey sweet.
Abundant Italian Basil, Dill & Cilantro: We are swimming in great basil right now! There is a beautiful patch of new Italian Basil ready for picking on the West side of the garden and with this summer heat the first succession is looking great too! Also check out the newest planting of dill and cilantro also on the West side of the garden (closest to the cherry tomatoes).
Cherry Tomatoes: 2 pints this week! With this summer heat our tomatoes are finally starting to come in. Gird yourself for the tomato avalanche!
VOLUNTEER WEDNESDAYS
Come work with us! Find us in the garden or fields from 9am - 11am on Wednesday mornings for our standing volunteer morning. We’ll work together on tasks like weeding the garden, deadheading flowers, cleaning garlic. Come hang with your farmers and put your hands in the soil! All ages and abilities welcome!
FARMER’S LOG
FALLING INTO LATE SUMMER
This week was our first week that had at its center a big storage harvest — the cabernet onions for storage — and with this harvest we began of the Fall Phase of our harvest season. As one of our farmer heroes, Dan Kaplan of Brookfield Farm near Amherst, MA, put it, “After a winter of planning. A spring of getting going, plowing, and planting. A summer of crop growing, putting out fires, keeping plants alive, staying hydrated. We arrive to a fall of harvesting, of playing the cards we've been dealt, of reaping what we have sown. Or another way to look at it: Winter is dreaming and scheming, Spring is action, Summer is fretting, and Fall is acceptance. And that is where we are heading headlong right now. That first hurdle into the bittersweet final place where there's nothing more for us to do, or worrying about — just plain being with what is.”
Here’s what this looked like in the fields!
Monday morning had us doing our usual pre-harvesting for Tuesday — with Lauren, Grace, and Ashlynn going through the cucurbits, tomatoes, and poblanos. We were happy to see the tomatoes coloring up with this nice summer heat. Kayta rested (Monday is her Sunday) while David went to Harmony to get potting soil for a big Fall beet re-seeding (as we didn’t like how our initial seeding took in the Farfield — lots of damping off.) In the afternoon, Grace, Lauren and Ashlynn did a gopher and leak check in the drip tape lines of the u-pick zone, and prepped the 47 beet trays, while David cultivated the pathways of Bolero storage carrots in the Farfield with the electric tractor.
On Tuesday we did our main harvest, washed, Ashlynn ran pick-up, and Grace and Lauren got those 47 trays filled with beet seed!
All five of us spent most of Wednesday in the Farfield, with Lauren on the New Holland making fresh beds for this week’s transplantings and prepping the next block of ground for next week’s plantings, while Ashlynn, Kayta, and Grace hoed the fall storage carrots, chard, and beets, and David on the Kubota mowing down the expired foliage of 3 of our 4 potato varieties to begin the curing process! Potato harvest is imminent! In the afternoon Lauren, Grace, and Ashlynn led the weekly transplanting (Napa cabbage, bok choi, and chicories) while Kayta walked the crops to plan this week’s harvest and David built irrigation lines for fall plantings.
Thursday morning it was back to our normal hot crop harvest routine, with the addition of bulk harvesting rainbow and romance carrots. After lunch Grace and Lauren washed and bagged the roots, did a gopher check, while Ashlynn, David and Kayta harvested this year’s Cabernet storage onions. They looked great… possibly the biggest we’ve every grown of this usually small variety! We paraded them back to the farm from Farfield and spent the rest of the afternoon setting the onion out to cure on tables in the greenhouse Be sure to take a peek in the greenhouse to catch a glimpse of our growing onion hoard — it is a site to behold! Walla Walla onions are up next…
Today, Friday, we all harvested the fresh crops for tomorrow’s pickup (hello, sweet corn and Galia melons!). After lunch, Grace and Lauren put the last trellis line up on the cherry tomatoes, set gopher traps and weeded problem spots around the garden, while Kayta did the week’s direct seeding (arugula, mustard greens, daikon radish) and row covered them in the Farfield. We finished the day with a comprehensive walk around the farm to plan for next week, onion cleaning, and prep for Saturday CSA pickup!
That’s the roundup of a great, late summer week on the farm that felt and tasted like summer and saw the first of our big fall harvests rolling back to the greenhouse from whence they came in the spring.
We hope you enjoy the bounty!
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
