This Week’s Harvest
Watermelon (yellow or red)
Cantaloupe
Winter Squash (Delicata and Carnival)
Red Onions
Tomatoes
Red Bell Peppers
Sweet Italian Peppers
Japanese Eggplant
Sweet Corn
Farm News
Ben and I have a work ethic that’s probably borderline insane and this is particular true when significant rainfall creeps into the forecast. From Monday to Sunday we’ve been working nonstop getting the farm in good shape before yesterday’s rain.
Our winter squash crop is ready to harvest and so far we’ve got everything but the butternuts in and curing in the dry barn. This includes acorn, delicata, carnival, pie pumpkins and a new mini butternut variety called Honeynut. Cucumber beetles and squash bugs will nibble on the fruits and powdery mildew can cause them to not store well. We were beginning to see evidence of both in the field. Butternuts are much more hardy so we are okay with them still being out in the field, but very glad everything else got harvested. Winter Squash is a fun crop to harvest as you can see in this video!
Next up was planting our final round of brassica transplants, including bok choi, kohlrabi and broccoli, as well as seeding our direct seeded brassicas including radishes, turnips, and greens. We had beautiful soil to plant into thanks to it being in rye and vetch cover crop over the winter and spring AND buckwheat in the early summer! Three rounds of planting and a few direct seeded beds give us 2 acres of various brassicas for the fall boxes. Actually we started picking from the field this week with the kale!
The final push came this weekend when we were hoping to plant all of our finished fields to cover crop. This is a multi step process that involves discing, making beds, spreading the seed and then lightly raking the seed in to cover it. With the cooler and wetter forecast coming, we knew we had a perfect window. We had our employee Dan come in Sunday to help spread the seed (1,500 lbs!) over about 12 acres! The delicata squash picture above (at the start of the farm news) shows the fields that we put in cover crop. While Dan was busy with that project, Ben was hustling to cultivate everything in sight before he lost sight! Dan went home after all the seed was spread and Ben still had to drive over the 12 acres with the tractor and rake to cover the seed. This is an easy enough job to do by headlamp so he waited till it was dark and continued his cultivating in the meantime.
We had a quick bite to eat at 9:30 pm (didn’t mention that I was busy all day putting together a special order of over 500 lbs of vegetables) and went back out to finish our jobs. Ben finished covering the cover crop seed around 3 in the morning and I turned off the pack barn light at 2 am. Needless to say we were so thankful for yesterday’s rain that forces us to actually stop and rest. At least for a little bit!
Recipes
Roasted Delicata Squash and Kale Salad
Ladera (Eggplant and Peppers with Basil)
Coming up next week (our best guess……) Sweet corn, green beans, carrots, tomatoes, winter squash, red onions, watermelon, peppers