8/6 CSA Week 11

This Week’s HarvestIMG_2979

Green Beans

Celery

Tomatoes (Beefsteak, Sungold Cherry, and Heirloom)

Eggplant

Bell Peppers

Sweet Italian Peppers

Sweet Onions

Zucchini

Jalapeño peppers

Salt and Pepper Cucumber

Salad Mix

Farm News

Weeds are an organic farmer’s worst enemy. Over the years we’ve collected quite the arsenal of cultivating tools to combat the decades worth of weed seed bank that exist on the farm. We’ve got sweeps, knives, discs, tines, fingers, spiders– all different tools that attach to the tractors and work in specific ways. This year we’ve had good dry spells and been able to work between rains which results in clean fields, healthy crops and happy farmers and customers!

What follows are several videos of the various cultivating tools. It really helps to understand all that goes into weeding on an organic operation.

Our plastic edges need to be cultivated in a way that doesn’t rip the buried plastic up. The video above shows how this is done. The spiders cultivate and throw soil up on the plastic edges and the sweeps follow behind and uproot weeds in the pathways.

Click here for a video of us cultivating kale using finger weeders.

Click here for a video of us cultivating the tiniest of beet seedlings with discs.

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The Allis-Chalmers Model G pictured above is our main cultivating tractor. Its rear mounted engine and belly mounted implement bar give the driver a direct view of what’s happening. As you can see can see, you can still get in there when the plants are pretty big- setting back the weeds so that once we can’t cultivate anymore the plants are good to go on their own.  This picture from a few weeks ago is of Dan cultivating and hilling the corn that we are now harvesting and enjoying!

Recipes

Tomato, Sweet Onion and Celery Salad (This was recommended by a CSA member. You can use 1/2 and 1/2 instead of cream and it’s even good as leftovers!)

Sweet Corn Polenta with Eggplant Sauce

Green Beans and Potatoes in Chunky Tomato Sauce

Cheese Stuffed Peppers

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) carrots, beets, onions, melons, wax beans, eggplant, garlic, tomatoes