Last week I got very excited about all the different items in your boxes.  Unfortunately, the untimely heat wave that was gripping both the farm and the Bay Area caused more than a few problems for us and you.  While we did our best to harvest and cool down the perishable items like lettuce and kale as early in the day as possible, it was still much hotter than those vegetables prefer.  As a result, they were more fragile than normal when they were packed into your boxes.  But the bigger problem was the weather in the Bay when they were delivered, especially on Wednesday.  Temperatures at some of our drop sites broke 90 degrees that day, seriously compromising the quality of several of the items.  By Thursday, things cooled down quite a bit.
We apologize for any quality problems that subscribers suffered with boxes delivered on Wednesday.  We rely very heavily on the weather in the Bay Area to keep our produce fresh between the time is is unloaded from our refrigerated trucks and when you pick it up.  Luckily for us -- and for those of you who live there -- it doesn't fail us very often.  And when it does, there is very little we can do about it.  Please contact us at csa@terrafirmafarm.com if you need a credit for any produce that was damaged by the heat.
Unfortunately, the lettuce and kale in some of your boxes were not the only victims of the late-season heat wave. We were about 20% through with our annual winter squash harvest on Tuesday, when the heatwave shifted east from the Bay to the Valley and temperatures really began to spike.  Normally, winter squash harvest is a fairly stress free task.  A storage crop, it's not terribly  perishable, and the weather in late September usually poses little threat.  With so little hot weather this year, the squash was actually slower to ripen than usual, and we had decided to give it another week or so to sweeten up in the field.
One result of the cool August weather was that powdery mildew had weakened many of the squash leaves.  When the heat wave hit, the leaves collapsed almost immediately, leaving the mostly ripe squash fully exposed to the sun.  In just a few short days, many of these squash were sunburned on the side facing up, leaving them soft and useless.  With so many items to harvest for the CSA boxes, we were unable to dedicate much time to the squash harvest until Thursday, by which time the damage was already done.
I won't end on a down note, though.  The losses we suffered were to what would have been a record yielding crop, a real barn buster.  Even with a significant percentage of the crop burned up, we still ended up with an amazing amount of beautiful butternut, delicata, and -- a new crop for us -- acorn squash as well as pumpkins for Farm Day.  And despite the temporary affect of the heat on the quality of the greens in your boxes last week, the fall crops in the field made it through the hot spell nicely and look beautiful now.
          Thanks,
                     Pablito