2024 CSA Newsletter #16

Well, we finally got some much-needed rain last week. I was starting to get a little nervous that we hadn't had any significant precipitation in a while, but Mother Nature came through for us. It's hard to believe, but we are a third of the way through the fall semester already. The student interns are in a nice groove. I know I have previously mentioned it, but I am very impressed with their growth during this farm season. They all started with minimum experience when they started with me back in January and have flourished throughout the season. I also have the privilege of having these students for their Sustainable Farming and Food Systems Capstone class. They all have some exciting projects that they are working on, and I look forward to sharing them with you as the semester progresses.

We continued with our fall projects last week. Most of the heirloom tomatoes are now "topped". The eggplant has fizzled. I made the tough decision to pull most of the plants last week. There were lots of flowers on the plants but there isn't enough time left in the season for them to produce viable fruit. Even though we will be growing winter crops in the protected and heated greenhouse, we still need to contend with day length. Soil and air temperature, along with water is important for crops to grow, but so is the amount of day length. We don't use any artificial lights in our operation, so we must have crops established before there isn't any plant growth from the middle of December to the middle of January. When growing space is at a premium, sometimes crops need to be pulled before we want to. We will flip that bed in the next week or two and get it planted with the rainbow chard we recently potted on. 

With the change of seasons, we saw a dip in summer crop production for this week's CSA share. The slicing cucumbers are chugging along, but this will be the last week for the pickling cukes. It was a good season for them, but they are bidding us adieu. There will still be cherry, beefsteak, heirloom, and sauce tomatoes to choose from in the share. The greens this week will once again consist of kale and lettuce mix. There will also be fennel, bell and frying peppers, and hot peppers. We will be moving onto a new garlic variety this week, Russian Red. It is similar to the Chesnok Red that has been available the previous weeks. Included in the "specialty peppers" choice this week will be boxes of shishitos, poblanos, snackers, bananas, and anaheims. The latter two were previously with the hot pepper mix, but the plants were loaded this week, so I wanted to get them picked. There will also be cayenne powder as part of our seasoning/spice choice with the jalapeno salt. Finally, if you would like to, there is some basil that you can "u-pick" in the greenhouse. It's mostly toast and too labor-intensive for us to harvest and sort, but there are still some good leaves if you are looking for a small amount. If you go into the greenhouse and walk straight back, you will find the bed with the basil. 

Have a great week!

-Farmer Todd