CSA Newsletter #21

We have made it to the penultimate CSA week, folks. I'll save my thoughts on the season for next week but it is amazing that it is November already. What's even crazier, is that there are 5 weeks left in the semester before finals! I am going to just let that sit in for the moment as I move on to farm news. It finally happened. Our first hard frost. I joked with some of my students that the first hard frost is better than waking up on Christmas morning. The light frosts are great but that hard frost, that's the one that tells you are on the precipice of the end of the season. Out of all the craziness of this year, I am impressed that it took this long to finally happen. And even though we got it, the weather has actually been pretty great, otherwise. I think I saw that it might even hit 70 over the weekend.

We've tackled some of the big end of the season jobs last week. All of the tomatoes of reasonable size have been harvested and the plants have been removed from the ground. That's always a bittersweet time of the season for me. We put so much care and effort into our tomatoes throughout the season that it's always a little sad to see them go. But I'm also a bit happy because all that care and effort takes a lot of time. I have my student interns keep journals of their time spent on the farm and working with the tomatoes tends to be one of the favorite tasks. Consistently over the years, the joy of working with them wanes as the season progresses. Most of the garlic also got planted last week, as well. There's a little more left to plant and then mulch them and that job can be crossed off the list. We are trialing a new plant spacing this year to see if we see a big difference. One bed was planted with 12 inches between cloves and the other 6.

This week's share will still have tomatoes in the choice. Our greens mix is returning this week, as well as hakurei turnips with their tops. There will be more cabbage in the share too. The broccoli was a surprise last week and I'm sorry that there wasn't enough for everyone. There were about 20 plants that got mixed in with the cabbage when they were planted in August. I'm going to take one more walkthrough tomorrow to see if there is any more that I can include in the share. There will also be more gochugaru, paprika and the "tri-blend" cayenne powder to choose from. And finally, hot peppers and fennel round out the choice.

Have a great week!

-Farmer Todd