Hello CSA members and thank you for being a part of our farm this year! My name is Abby Benson and I am the field production coordinator at Featherstone. This is my 6th season here and my first season in this new leadership role. You may remember me from the past several years writing to you about all things brassica!
For the past five seasons I managed the brassica crops on the farm- broccoli, cabbage, kale, ect. I’ve now taken over leadership of the production team and am having fun spending a lot more time with our other crops. We're excited to finally have melons ripening in the field, and hope you enjoy these fresh Minnesota fruits! We wait for them all year long, ready with our jars of Tajin, a Mexican spice mix that takes melons and cucumbers to another level! Take a glimpse of some of our watermelon harvesting happening on the farm this week:
Mote enjoying the fruits of our labor!
Teamwork makes the harvest quicker!
Other crops we're harvesting right now are our cherry tomatoes, which are finally abundant and are keeping harvesters on their toes as they are pretty laborious to gather. We hope you enjoy these first pickings this week! You may have also noticed that we don’t have slicer or heirloom tomatoes yet- but just wait! This year we made a deliberate decision to eliminate our first planting of tomatoes because of the intense disease pressure. For the past two years we have watched the fruits of our labor rot in the field as diseases set into the first early succession of tomatoes despite our best efforts at prevention. I think we made the right choice, as we’ve been able to dedicate labor that would have otherwise gone to caring for a big patch of tomatoes (which produced very little), to other useful projects like weeding and caring for the rest of the tomatoes! Our first heirloom and slicer tomatoes are looking beautiful and there are HUGE green fruits on the plants. It won’t be long, and hopefully next year we’ll have plenty of early tomatoes from our new high tunnel greenhouses! Check out their construction also going on at the farm this week:
In other news, we’re growing on three new fields this year which we’ve been transitioning to organic. Our fall carrots are in one of these fields and they are SO beautiful and free of weeds. It’s a lovely sight as we drive across the farm. I can almost taste those sweet October carrots! It’s hard to believe it’s already August. Harvest is really ramping up, but the mornings have been cold and it’s hard not to start thinking about fall. We’ve already started pulling up plastic, discing in finished crops, and are preparing to start establishing cover crop to take care of the soil over the fall, winter, and into next spring. It seems we’re always thinking at least 6 months to a year ahead, already planning for ideal crop health next season!
Thanks again for all your support, it allows us to keep doing this each year! We’re all learning a lot from our first year with the Harvie choice CSA system and have been thankful for your patience and feedback. Enjoy your veggies this week! This is the best time of year for eating locally in Minnesota.
Gratefully,
Abby Ray Benson
Field Production Coordinator
