CSA Newsletter #17

I hope it's not just me, but how is it October already? It feels like if I close my eyes for too long, I am going to miss something. But here we are, on the back stretch of the farm season. The end of the week and over the weekend gave me my first fall scare of frost. I have a love/hate relationship with fall frosts. I love how it really slows things down. For me, it's the little nudge that the end of the season is coming. What I hate is that I never feel fully prepared for the first good frost. I would prefer if I could schedule it but I felt as prepared as I was going to be for the predicted lows. Granted, we didn't get any frost these past nights but we had some beautiful fall days where I was able to capture as much warmth as I could in the hoophouses before buttoning them up for the night.

I wasn't worried about the outdoor crops but I'm always pulling for those hoophouse crops to push as late into the season as possible. I love to see us harvest as many tomatoes that have started to ripen as we can. That's one of the great things about supporting and participating in a local food system. The food tastes better when it can be harvested at peak or as close to peak ripeness as possible. It stores better. We were finally able to finish the topping of the tomato plants. There was a noticeable drop in production this week. We picked the beefsteaks at various stages of ripeness this week to try and jumpstart the last of the tomatoes on the plants. The unintentional planting of August hoophouse cucumbers alongside cabbage is doing surprisingly well at the moment. The cucumbers have really taken off after getting them trellised. There are a lot of flowers and a bunch of fruit starting to form on the plants. Just keeping my fingers crossed for them. The cabbage and small amount of random broccoli plants are doing great. We planted at a closer spacing in the hopes that we would get a minimum of baby heads. I'm fairly certain that we will mostly exceed baby heads.

Ok, let's get to the week 17 choice. All the different tomatoes are still a part of the share. There will be more of the Hakurei turnips in this week's share with the greens attached. The kaleidoscope mix is back in full this week also. The basil is slowing down but hasn't given up yet. There will still be fennel and hot peppers, as well. Lastly, there will be leeks in this week's choice. The leeks are from some of the farmers at Groundswell's Incubator Farm. Groundswell is a local organization dear to me and am glad that this is another way that we can collaborate with them.

Have a great week!

- Farmer Todd