It has been a week unlike any other during my time as a farmer. At a time of usual "peak" abundance, our farm has been turned into a wasteland. Each day we go out into the fields, the view appears worse than the day before. The economic toll appears truly staggering, forcing us to dig into our finances and lean up our business in a way we've never been forced to. There are signs of recovery in some crops (kale, herbs, root crops) but our primary economic engine we rely on for late summer income - peppers - has been mostly wiped out.
Thank you for all your many messages of support. I know I haven't replied to some of you, either through email or in comments on our social media posts. Know that we hear you, we feel your support, and are putting out the biggest fires first. I will be writing a more in-depth letter in the coming days to shed more light on what we're facing, how we plan to recover, and what implications there might be for members. So I won't go into detail here in this newsletter or insert more gory hail damage photos into this newsletter (besides the cover image), but you can get plenty of that by checking out our Instagram/Facebook posts.
At first glance, it appears our members will be somewhat shielded from the losses. You can expect less diversity in upcoming boxes, as many crops were completely wiped out and others set back a few weeks. This coming week, shares will be fairly tomato heavy, as our greenhouse plantings were mostly protected from hail and they're a higher value crop. We have also increased the unit size for tomatoes - 1 qt of cherry tomatoes instead of 1 pt; 3 lbs of slicer tomatoes instead of 2; and 5-lb bags of roma tomatoes. This means some members will have fewer different items in their boxes, and overall volume may be smaller due to fewer bulky items taking up space in the box. With that said, we did not have to decrease the value of the veggies going into shares, and it seems possible we'll be able to continue to maintain this in the coming weeks.
Crew Bios
From our postharvest manager, Sarah Lang.
Mike and Godfrey are our MAST interns this season. MAST is a program out of the University of Minnesota that matches international students with US farms fitting their areas of interest. So they get a lot of hands-on experience, and they can also choose to study for a semester at the university for more in depth learning. Mike and Godfrey are both from Uganda and chose to participate in MAST because there are very few opportunities to get educated in production agriculture in their own country.
At home in Uganda, Mike has a wife and a baby. He is currently farming a 2 acre plot of land with his parents. Long-term, he plans to grow passionfruit with some vegetables. He says he’ll up the amount of veggies short-term, to provide income for his farm while waiting for the passionfruit to establish. He’s been in the US since spring of last year and was previously placed on a flower farm. While there, he gained a lot of greenhouse propagation experience. When he isn’t farming he enjoys sightseeing (both in the US and in Uganda) and cooking- especially chicken and beef curries. He discovered Sungold cherry tomatoes while working at Sogn Valley, and just can’t get enough of them!
Godfrey also farms with his parents. They currently have a subsistence dairy farm and also grow a small amount of vegetables. He is looking forward to applying some of the things he learned at Sogn Valley to their systems, buying some more land, and bringing the vegetable side of the farm-especially peppers and tomatoes- up to a commercial level. He has been the master tomato trelliser for us this season, which will definitely come in handy with his own operation. Outside of work, he enjoys hanging out with friends, watching movies, and going for a swim. Favorite veggie? Microgreens, because they’re full of nutrients and are easy to use (sprinkle on salad, eat with eggs for breakfast, etc). And yes, he did have them for the first time at Sogn Valley. We recently discovered that he’s been running the heater in his cabin at night even sometimes in summer, and bet he’s looking forward to returning home to a warmer climate.
Notes on items in this week's box:
- Cantaloupe fruits from our first planting were a surprise survivor from the hail storm. We already had some in the cooler from a Friday harvest, and we were able to harvest a good number more on Monday after the hailstorm. The plants are trashed (and thus the future of cantaloupe this season) but surprisingly most of the ripe fruits seemed to have little damage. Still probably wise to eat sooner than later, since there may be some bruising not evident right now. The hail stones must have hit the fruits.
- Sweet corn is a crop we used to grow, but abandoned because of seemingly insurmountable pest pressures - seedcorn maggot, racoons, and corn earworms. However, our neighbor asked us to plant and manage a sweet corn planting for him this spring to harvest for the food shelf during this pandemic year, and he offered to let us pick some for our farm shares. We aren't counting on a large amount, since he has already harvested a couple times, but about half the members this week should get a couple ears. Hopefully we can pick again for the following week, and we may get a larger volume from a new planting.
- Green peppers this week were donated by Julie Grossman's horticulture lab at the University of Minnesota. They're coming form a high tunnel research trial, so the research team just needs to weigh the fruits to get data, and they're giving the harvest to us. Many thanks to them for their generosity.
- Green beans will be coming from our second succession planting. The plants were damaged by the hail, but many of the fruits on the downwind side seem just fine. We are going to stop washing beans, as we've found that washing reduces shelf life, leading to development of rusty reddish spots after a week or so in the refrigerator. Some beans may be dirty, so just rinse before use.
- Lettuce heads were under a row cover during the hail storm, but had some light bruising. We expect the bruising will heal, but there will still be some torn leaves and they should be considered more perishable than usual.
- Tomatoes are our new staple crop until other greens and herbs rebound and root crops size up in the fall. Our plantings of cherries, slicers, heirlooms, and romas are all looking pretty healthy still. We have bulk tomatoes of many types available for purchase as extras this week. This is now peak season for tomatoes, so it's a good time to buy if you plan to can or preserve tomatoes in some way. The extra sales are also helpful for us, financially.
Thanks to you all,
Dana, Karin, and the crew
