by milecreekfarm

CSA Week 12

This Week’s Harvest

Farm News

This week we had to think about watering for reasons other than just keeping the crops growing. A big task this time of year is hand weeding our fall carrots and this job is much easier and more effective if the soil moisture is just so. If it gets too dry we can’t pull the weeds out at the roots and they’ll just grow right back. That was the scenario a day I had in mind for completing the task so we had to put it on hold until we watered them.  The morning we weeded the beds started off a bit too wet but we powered through and by the afternoon the soil had reached that ideal moisture level
and the weeding went really smoothly. 

Before and after of hand weeding carrots. We have to get the weeds right next to the tiny carrots that the cultivating tractor does not get. The particular problem weed in this field is purslane.
Many hands make light(ish) work
3 beds of carrots all cleaned up!

Meanwhile, our summer carrots are ready to harvest and last week I intended to include them in the CSA but again it was too dry. The size of our CSA is such that there is no way we can harvest by digging the bed  one fork/shovel full at a time, rather we have to use our undercutter (unless it rains a couple inches and the carrots pull out of the bed with a simple hand tug).  And if it gets too dry the undercutter can’t dig deep enough in the bed to lift the carrots without breaking them. With no rain the foreseeable future, if I wanted to be able to include them in the CSA, I’d have to get water on them. At this point in the season the 2 beds of summer carrots are the only remaining crop in the field so there is no easy ready to go water set up. This weekend I spent a couple hours dragging a sprinkler line from one field to the carrot field and we ran water for a few hours just to be able to harvest them! But our watering the beds did the trick and we were able to lift gorgeous huge carrots out of the bed during today’s CSA harvest. Now the trick is getting back out there tomorrow to finish the bed before it dries out again!

The sprinkler line next to our carrot bed made harvesting them possible during this dry spell
The undercutter makes pulling and bunching carrots so easy! But it can’t be too dry or else the blade doesn’t get deep enough

Recipes

Creamy Dill Potato Salad

Edamame and Corn Salad (since you’ll be using fresh edamame, remove the edamame pods from the stalks and cook right away with the sweet corn for the full 6 minutes. Once cooled, you can shell them. Quarter and use the Juliets as your cherry tomato)

Lemony Lentil Soup with Collards

Edamame Fried Rice

Roasted Pepper and Tomato Soup (half and seed the peppers and roast along with everything else)

Coming Up Next Week (our best guess….) Collards, Poblano Peppers, Jalapeño Peppers, Sweet Peppers, Cantaloupe, Carrots, Delicata Squash, Sweet Onions, Zucchini, Salad Mix and Tomatoes