Farm News – September 12, 2013
Hi Folks,
Fall is in the air! We’ve been waking up to some quite chilly mornings this past week. This cooler weather will make the lettuce and the mustard/brassica family happy, but production from the heat loving crops such as the tomatoes and peppers has begun to slow down. We will take a week off from eggplant this time around. There are still abundant small fruits on the plants but they need time to size up. Our third planting of summer squash should be producing abundantly about now, but instead it is declining. A fourth and final sowing is about to begin production, so I am hopeful we will be able to have enough for every other week distribution for the next month or so. I am hoping for at least another 4-5 weeks before we have our first frost.
We are still very dry here on the farm, with last week’s scattered storms delivering only a scant 0.3 inches of rain. Our next shot at precipitation will be Thursday; keep your fingers crossed! In the meantime, we are continuing to move the sprinklers around the fields to germinate the seeds and water in the transplants.
We will be getting back into more greens in the coming weeks. This week we will have a choice of arugula or tatsoi. Lettuce will return to the shares next week. Bok choi, broccoli raab and spinach are just around the corner. We have radishes for this week, however, due to poor germination we will not have enough for all groups. This week some groups will receive salad turnips in lieu of radishes, which they will get next week while the rest enjoy the salad turnips.
We have some beautiful green cabbage at the moment, but they are mostly gigantic heads, so we will have to cut them in half for distribution. We also have a fair number of very large watermelons which I would like to send as an extra, but this will be contingent on the individual group’s willingness to cut them up at the distribution site.
The share for this week will be: Tomatoes, peppers, leeks, choice of arugula or tatsoi, string beans, kale, yellow potatoes, choice of parsley or thyme, green cabbage, and possibly summer squash.
Enjoy! Farmer John
