Happy Fall Equinox week! From here on out, we're losing daylight, and we've still got so much to do here. Shorter days and cooler nights mean closing up the tomato hoophouses every evening, then opening them up again first thing in the morning so they can "vent" out all that warm humid air to prevent disease. The mornings are foggy, wet, and cool now, and we're layered up in jackets and rain bibs to keep ourselves warm and dry. But when that sun starts to clear the trees and kiss your face it feels so good.
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Remember that fall spinach we planted 2 weeks ago, with the various row coverings to help keep soil cool so the seed would germinate well? Our shade cloth worked well, and the spinach got it's first hoeing this week. As we remove warm season crops that have run their course (goodbye, sweet snacking peppers), we're seeding spinach as fast as we can.
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Outside, the field crops are ready for harvest in a big way. We finished up the onion harvest yesterday, and they are all safely curing down in the greenhouse now for winter. We wrapped up the cabbage harvest for our friends and fellow Bayfield Foods Cooperative members at Spirit Creek Farm as well this week. Our hats go off to them for their steadfast support of local farmers through sourcing nearly all of their produce from small family farms like ours in our region. Once our root cellar has cooled off enough, we'll sock away as much cabbage as we can for the winter CSA season.
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We're pulling hundreds of pounds of carrots every week now as well - and the cool weather just makes them sweeter! - but our main focus now is on getting all of the winter squash out of the field in the next week or so before the inevitable cold settles in to stay.
Calling them winter squash is a bit of a misnomer - they are definitely more like FALL squash. They can take a light frost, but anything more than that can damage the squash fruits to the point where they don't store very long before going bad.
Thankfully, the weather has been mild this fall, and the weather looks good for getting them harvested in a timely fashion. We still have not had a frost here at the farm (big shout out to Lake Superior for keeping us a little warmer in the fall!) though several places in our region have had a few nights of frost this past week.
Starting this coming week, there will be a variety of winter squash available in your CSA boxes, including delicata (pictured above), acorn, red kuri, beautiful butternuts, and spaghetti squash as well. Our favorite quick and easy way to eat squash is roasted in the oven with salt, pepper, and olive oil, but there are so many great ways to enjoy squash! We'll be working through the weekend to make sure we can get it all harvested - wish us luck. It's GO time here at the GO Farm.
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Growing fresh produce is always a gamble - will enough people want to eat the crop when it is ready for harvest? Some crops are pretty straightforward to figure this out with. Tomatoes for example take over 3 months from seeding to their first harvest, but keep producing fruits for weeks and weeks. Crops like broccoli and cauliflower take nearly 3 months from seeding to get to the point where they are ready for harvest as well. But believe it or not, after taking SO long to grow, they have a harvest window only about 5 days when the head is at it's prime before it is not marketable. After that time, the plant will not produce another head - it’s a “one-cut-and-done” kind of harvest.
Trying to figure out exactly which 5 days those heads will be ready 3 months in advance is no easy task, and it hurts when the timing is off and all that work is for naught when the heads go bad (which has happened several times this summer.) Crops like these are risky to grow, but they are SO GOOD (and good for us!)Our final plantings of broccoli and cauliflower are coming on strong right now - this coming week will be THE 5 days of prime production for the majority of the plants. We’d love it if you could add some to your box this week. We'll have 15# cases of both broccoli and cauliflower, so if you missed getting bulk broccoli or cauliflower earlier this summer, now is your chance!
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Fall is a big time of crop transition here at the farm, and the crops that are available in your CSA boxes will vary from week to week now more than they did in the summer as warm season crops wane and cool season crops begin to shine.
Keep enjoying those tomatoes while you can (and don't forget to drizzle some balsamic reduction on your tomato salads!) We have one more planting of sweet corn that is coming ready, however the caterpillars have taken it over and we're just going to be mowing it down unfortunately. The melons are finished as well now, but we're impressed with a few of the varieties and will be growing them again next year.
Wrapping up the summer crops is always a little bittersweet, but I am excited about the fall staples that are getting ready to grace our tables - spinach, squash, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and beets, and brussels sprouts.
Lastly, I wanted to let you know that after some more trouble shooting, our trusty Farmall Cub is FINALLY back in action with working hydraulics again! We've got it parked in a hoophouse for winter now, but it will be ready to get after those weeds again next year as soon as we need it.
Well, that's it from the farm for this week. Back to work for me - the clock is ticking, and winter is coming. Take good care and be well!
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
