Welcome to week 2 of the summer CSA season! If this is your first week of deliveries, a few logistics to cover:
1. Be sure to set your preferences in your member profile. If you like something a lot and want it in your box each week, rank it a 5. On the other hand, if you never want to see something in your box, rank it a 0. When you go to customize your box each weekend (the "store" is open for customizing your boxes from Friday when you get this email until Sunday evening) you can swap any of the items in your box for other items available, but the Harvie software actually builds your "draft box" on Friday with your preferences in mind! If there are limited quantities of something you really like, rating it highly will help insure it ends up in your box and not someone else's box (who might not really like it to begin with.)
2. Please return your boxes! We'd love to reuse them and keep them out of the waste cycle.
3. Regarding Covid-19: While we're talking about returned boxes, be assured any returned boxes sit in quarantine for a week before being reused. Furthermore, we are using best practices when packing your boxes - wearing masks and gloves, as well as frequently sanitizing surfaces in our packing area when we are putting your boxes together. Finally, please be respectful of any protocols your pickup site may have regarding safety. Please wear a mask when you are picking up your boxes, and be patient if you need to wait an extra minute while another person is getting their box to maintain appropriate distancing. We're all in this together!
4. Melissa at Wild Hollow Farm has given the green light for flower bouquet deliveries to begin on June 17! Fruit box deliveries will start when the first strawberries are ready, so we'll keep you posted on how those berries are coming along. Stay tuned!
Here at Great Oak and the other veggie farms, it's GO TIME. Ten-twelve hour days are pretty standard right now, there are so many functions need to happen this time of year, but thankfully the big push to get things in the ground is starting to wind down. We have been transplanting loads of broccoli and cabbage this week, and should have the last of the winter squash transplanted by this afternoon. The final big transplanting project will be the outdoor peppers, and when those are in we switch priorities to weed management. As much as I enjoy getting all these crops in the ground, it's quite a timeline to keep up with and I actually don't mind when we can finally change our focus to weeding (with tractors as much as possible!) This spring, the weather has been fairly dry, which allows us to get out in the fields as often as possible for a variety of tasks from cultivating to transplanting. When the fields are dry, our old mechanical transplanter does a good job of getting lots of transplants in the ground while 2 transplanters ride behind the tractor, keeping our backs and knees in good shape for seasons to come. It even waters the plants in as we transplant!
Speaking of weeding, we've already been busy keeping the spring flush of weeds at bay in our early crops. We've got some handy tools for the tractor that really help minimize the amount of hand weeding and hoeing we need to do. The onion field is looking pretty clean, which is really important to having nice sized onions, as those thin onion leaves don't do much to shade out any weeds! We've been able to keep them clean with a tool called a tine weeder, which attaches behind the tractor. It is terrifying to run through your crops as the tines blindly run over the entire bed - crops and weeds alike. If all goes well, the spring tines on the implement gently root out the small weeds as you drive while leaving the larger crop standing. But like most things with mechanical weed cultivation, timing is critical. If the crop is too small, the tines will tear them out along with the weeds! Or if the weeds are too large, the tines simply are not able to uproot them. But so far - no hand weeding on those onions (yet!)
Here's what the tine weeder looks like:
The other tool we've been using to keep the weeds at bay is our rolling basket weeder. Also terrifying. The baskets roll between the rows of the crop in the beds on our old 1947 Farmall Cub within literally an inch on either side of the crop. When the weeds are small however, it does a great job at cleaning up pretty much everything in the path of the rolling baskets - but if you veer at all, it will do the same clean up job on your tiny plants! Here's what the basket weeder looks like bolted beneath our trusty old Cub:
More importantly, here's what the crops look like after we run through them - below (first pic) is our first planting of beans after being basket weeded just as they are getting their true leaves. Underneath that pic is the second planting of carrots freshly basketweeded right after they have germinated - so tiny and tender! It takes some a steady hand to go basketweeding through tiny carrots like these.
Can you see the tiny rows of baby carrots sprouting above? Don't swerve!! Ahh... if only all of our carrot plantings looked as nice as this one :) Full disclosure: here's a pic of our first planting of carrots this spring - timing is everything, and unfortunately we missed the mark on our mechanical cultivation, so it's back to hoeing we go.
Now that the threat of frost is over for the summer (hopefully!) we don't have to cover up our strawberries at night. They have been blooming prolifically this spring, and we're starting to see the first green fruits appear! But they aren't the only green fruits we're seeing - little green peppers, green tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, and even little green cukes are forming on the plants in our hoophouses. In a few short weeks, we'll be starting to enjoy the first fruits! Somehow, the first fruits really seal the deal that summer is truly here, and there's no turning back.
That's it from the farm for this week - stay safe and be well!
In community -
Chris Duke
Farmer, Great Oak Farm
CSA Manager, Bayfield Foods
