This weather is crazy. I am not complaining too loudly, because we are REALLY enjoying warm fingers and sunshine, but our "normal" daytime highs are currently our nighttime lows! It feels like fall will keep going and going, but the summer crops are winding down with the shorter days now. This might be the last week for broccoli and cauliflower from our farm, as our final plantings have been on fast forward with the warm temps and have all just about come to maturity now. Farmer Brian still has some late cauliflower that will hopefully come ready soon. Our brussels sprouts, however, are just getting ready for harvest, and they are looking mighty fine!
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Last week, we crawled through the field trimming off all the lower leaves on each plant. It took forever - there are a LOT of plants out there! - but is well worth the effort. This helps improve air flow and increase sunlight penetration into the plants to help prevent disease on the sprouts as they form. Cool dewy mornings leave the plants wet as the sun is coming up, and those wet warm mornings are the perfect conditions for disease in those persnickity brassica crops. As organic farmers, we lean heavily on good management to keep disease at bay without synthetic fungicides. Once the lower leaves are gone, you can really see how nice those sprouts are looking!
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Those plants sure do look strange all pruned up, almost like something out of a Dr. Seuss book, some new kind of truffula tree. If you are not sure that you like brussels sprouts (yet), I have good news for you. The brussels sprouts breeders have been working hard for the last decade or so to breed the bitterness out of the sprouts. I remember eating brussels sprouts out of my Nana's garden as a kid, and they honestly tasted awful. Even after the first frosts had sweetened them up a bit, they were still pretty bad. Nowadays, brussels sprouts are a whole 'nother animal - and they taste fantastic.
If you are not sure how to cook them, or if you have had them boiled or steamed before, I BEG you to try them roasted in the oven. I think there is no finer way to showcase all that the humble brussels sprout has to offer than to roast 'em up at 425 in the oven with some salt, pepper, and a healthy drizzle of olive oil. Chop them in half first, then dredge them around in the oil, salt, and pepper on the pan before you put them in the oven. Turn them around on the pan after about 10 minutes, and shoot for a nice browned sprout. My mouth is watering already!
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Elsewhere outside, we've been busy mowing down our late summer seeded cover crops. Most of the time, the first frost terminates the crop of oats and peas, but this year the temps have been so mild that the oats are going to seed! We definitely don't want that to happen, because if they make viable seed there will be one heck of an oat crop growing in those fields next spring. We are planning to use those fields for veggies next season, and want the oat and pea cover to just die and mulch down the earth for the winter. So, we mow. But look how nice those cover crops look - not a weed to be seen!
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Believe it or not, we STILL haven't had a frost or a freeze here at the farm yet this season. Farmer Brian at Northcroft Farm said he's had 3 frosts so far this season, but still nothing for us yet. We're kind of hoping for some cooler temps soon to help cool down our root cellar so we can pack it full of great produce for winter. Frost this time of year helps take down cover crops, and makes hardy crops like brussels sprouts, carrots, and beets sweeter. As farmers who rely on semi-predictable weather patterns, the ever-changing weather seems to always keep us on our toes.
Finally, another project we've started to tackle this week is construction of our permanent, larger microgreen grow room. When we started the microgreens last winter, it was in our squash storage room as a trial to see how well they would be received. We've been blown away with the sales, and quickly outgrew the room we'd been using, so we've been scheming up a bigger room all summer. Now that the squash is harvested and curing down in the garage, we'll need to move it into the squash room for proper winter storage soon, so it's time for the new micro room to materialize. We put on our carpenter hats and got it mostly framed out this week (in our spare time...haha!) - here's what it looked like in the beginning. We'll keep you posted on how it's coming, but we're sure looking forward to having some more room for production.
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That's it from the farm this week. Take good care, and we'll check in again next weekend!
In community,
Farmer Chris
Great Oak Farm
