Farm News- October 18, 2012

Hello Everyone,

We had our first frost this past Thursday night, followed by a hard freeze on Friday night. We were scrambling on Friday to harvest anything that remained in the fields that would be ruined by the cold. We covered the late planting of beans which have been flowering heavily in an attempt to salvage the harvest. The beans still sustained some damage in spite of our efforts but are still alive and will hopefully recover sufficiently to produce at least a small crop. The weather is expected to be mild for the duration of October. Up until Friday we still had some tomato plants in the high tunnel greenhouses which were producing small quantities of fruit. These are now dead but were loaded with unripe fruit which was mostly undamaged. We will be sending green tomatoes as an extra this week. These are good for fried green tomatoes of course, but can also be pickled or made into a jam if you are feeling enterprising.

We also picked all the green peppers of reasonable size and so will have one last round of small fruit to distribute(yes, peppers are technically a fruit)

Most of what remained in the fields were cold hardy crops and were not greatly affected. The sweet potato vines were killed but we had already begun digging the tubers any way. The crop is good although they are not as large as they were last year.

The share for this week will be:
Cherokee lettuce, salad turnips, leeks, peppers, choice of hon tsai tai(a flowering Asian mustard) or other mustard green, sweet potatoes, choice of arugula or broccoli raab, white potatoes, choice of spinach or Swiss chard, sweet dumpling squash, and choice of an herb (dill or cilantro).

Enjoy!
Farmer John