It was a warm breeze with orange autumn skies this week.
We experienced weather that did a good job of knocking words like “better” or “best” right out of my system, because who can predict higher temperatures like the mid-80s when October should be steadily bringing down the digits? You never know what to expect when you have something like a front row seat all day to all the growing pains of skies, wind, and rain; you can watch all of the weather’s steps for big portions of the day, day after day, and you’ll notice that it’s hard to know what to expect next. But you grow to expect something nonetheless.
I expected it would be cold this week, but I came rolling in on Monday with a pants-shaped mistake on my legs. It got hot! By the time we got lettuce, scallions, bok choy, and turnips all sorted out, I was grateful that I had a change of shorts waiting for me in my car.
We typically have my bluetooth speaker blasting a wide range of work-appropriate tunes while we carry out tasks like scallions, carrots, or potatoes; tasks that take a bit of time have a nice flow to them with the backdrop of an upbeat rhythm. (This is probably why Thursday delivery days feel so groovy. There’s a lot of hard work and rhythm that goes into collecting your groceries!) The speaker was a yard sale find. Its latest move is to only last 20 minutes, not nearly long enough to accompany the entire task of bunching up scallions. Instead, we worked to the beat of windless, cloud-dimmed light, exclaiming aloud that a breeze would be welcome if it ever decided to show up.
It made the snack break that followed our pepper and eggplant harvest sweeter than it already would’ve been; this week was sweet in general due to a Hawkins birthday party. We’re lucky out here that the Hawkins family knows how to work with an appetite, as well as always sharing in the good eats. We were swimming in cake and turkey burgers this week, and since I work Fridays on the farm, I was sent off with a hefty slice of Farmer Jeff’s meatloaf. There's really nothing but good eats around here.
Speaking of beats, we’ve got all sorts of beets on the far south west corner of the farm! Woohoo! Beets beets beets. Erin, Kimberly, and I made our first pass through lots of beds of beets and boy oh boy, are the new beets big! With taproots stretching out nearly a foot on some of the bigger ones! We’ve got more of the red beets you’ve been feasting on throughout the course of this year’s CSA, as well as pretty, perky, golden beets, and red swirly chioggia beets. It won’t be long before the walk-in cooler is filled to the brim with all sorts of sweetheart, red, and napa cabbage and all the beets we will be pulling out for the next few weeks. Beets beets beets!
Yep, we were pulling all sorts of new stunts this week out here. The ginger crop in the high tunnel has been inching toward ready all summer long, and is ready for its first round of shares this week. Woohoo! And the baby kale you’ve been snacking on all summer? Well, this round of babies grew into bunches of teenaged kale this week. It’s the same blend of red, tuscan, and russian kale just… bigger. And bunched, not bagged. Woohoo! But I’d say the craziest stunt of the week was the first ever compost-baked-potato on Hawkins Farm.
You thought we were wild throwing cabbages like footballs last week. Well, if familiarity breeds contempt, then I guess good old fashioned farm fun breeds modern no-till farmer science projects. I came into my Tuesday to a Kimberly and an Erin hastily fashioning some all red potatoes into their own little foil wraps, with Erin claiming that one of Farmer Zach’s compost piles ought to be a suitable location to bake a potato having reached a temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit. So we took a little trot over to the compost pile, and Erin made a hole for some potatoes to sit in for the day while we worked. After checking the potatoes at four o’clock, we determined that they would have to sit overnight before they could be considered “baked.” Lo and behold, when Kimberly and I checked them in the morning, we found six of the seven potatoes we had placed in the pile to be slightly crispy and mushy! Woohoo! Who wants a compost-baked-potato in their share?
We probably can’t offer potatoes baked in a compost pile in a farm share without some sort of health inspector having something to say about it, but it remains true that we’ve got some real forward thinking things going on out here.
-Alex
