Farm Notes is online! This week we're talking about the animals on the farm.
Welcome to the Autumn CSA! To all of you--whether continuing on from summer or starting new this fall--thank you for joining us! We are so happy to have you!
Here are some of the early signs of fall on the farm:
We dug the first bed of sweet potatoes and put them into the greenhouse to start curing. They will be sweet enough to eat in about a week, and we will be rich in sweet potatoes for all the weeks of fall. The crop looks amazing and abundant.
We are starting to pick these gigantic heads of bok choy and Napa cabbage--some of you have found these in your bags and probably are wondering if you need to get another refrigerator to cope with the fall bounty. I don't think all of the fall greens will be that big. These are unusual! I hope.
The tomato plants are dying, right on schedule. The blight that consumes tomato plants starts at the bottom and works its way up. The vines are about 3/4 black with a vigorous tuft of green at the top. The tomatoes will start to taste more acidic and less summery sweet because they don't have all the green leaves to capture the sunlight and create that full flavor. We are starting to deconstruct the cherry tomato rows because the cherry tomatoes are starting to be sour.
We are just about finished with summer squash and we have picked at least 3/4 of our winter squash crop. Another bountiful harvest. We are going to run out of containers pretty soon. Keep eating!
The garlic seed for 2022 just arrived. It feels like we just finished pulling the 2021 garlic out of the ground and it is already time to start thinking about planting for next year.
We are down to our lean autumn crew--sometimes a bunch of us go to Loudoun to help with a big project because that team can seem pretty small in the face of all those weeds in the carrot patch. Weeding in the fall is satisfying, though, because the weeds grow much slower now than they did in the summer, so it is possible to make real progress.
Our sweatshirts and long sleeved shirts are starting to accumulate in odd places as we shed them in the late morning and forget to find them before we go home. Eventually we won't be leaving them around...
Questions about your vegetables? Take a look at ID That Veggie! For more recipe ideas you can find us on Pinterest!
