As mentioned last week, we have a developing problem of too much produce and too few places to put it. With our butternut squash crop patiently waiting in the field for harvest--not to mention carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, fennel, leeks, broccoli and cauliflower--we'll be seriously challenged to harvest everything at its peak and get it into storage in a timely manner. We'd be in big trouble if there was a frost on the horizon, but that looks to be at least a week or two away. October 1st, around here, is about average for our first frost, but we've been in a warmer pattern, and this recent moisture helps keep humidity and temperatures up, so we may well get into the last half of the month before we need to get the frost sensitive crops, like winter squash, fennel, and peppers, out of the field.

Many crops, like broccoli, spinach, leeks, beets, and cauliflower, to name a few, like cooler weather, and grow well, though a little slower, with temps in the 50's and 60's. Last year, our broccoli plantings went in a bit too late, and with the cool fall last year, we missed out on thousands of pounds of October broccoli. This year, plantings were earlier, weather was warmer in fall, and everything will mature at a good pace. All broccoli plantings are currently producing or are on the verge, the cauliflower is just starting to show it's baby heads, leeks (which are very cold tolerant) are sizing up nicely, and root crops are moving along at a good clip. We don't want things to mature too soon either. I'd just as soon leave the leeks and carrots and beets and storage radishes in the field as long as possible. They stay in great shape there, we certainly don't need more things to put into the box now, and we're challenged for storage space.

To give you an idea of the productivity of the farm this year vs. last, we received a grant that enabled us to purchase three pallets of storage bins this year that give us nearly 20,000 pounds of additional storage crate capacity over last year. Though I don't remember exactly how close we came to running out of bins last fall, we will certainly do so some time in the next six weeks--even with this new storage capacity.

Our plan, centered around our new walk-in freezer, is to reduce the volume of our winter squash harvest by freezing much of it. This will free up a dozens of harvest bins, and hopefully give us enough of them to find a home for everything else. It will be a balance between how much we can put in CSA boxes, how much we can process and get into our freezer, and what we can leave in the field until the bitter end when it gets either too cold or wet to harvest. That last variable is certainly a guessing game. While tempting to allow fall carrots and beets to fully mature and size up and sweeten in the field, missed opportunities for dry weather harvesting can mean harvesting in mud and that is very hard for many fairly obvious reasons. So, the bottom line is for us to get going, this week, on cutting up and roasting/steaming some of our acorn squash. There are more than we can reasonably put in your boxes, so we'll start cooking them, scooping them into bags, and putting them way in a fraction the space they take when whole. This beautiful product will end up in our last fall, winter, and early spring CSA boxes to supplement our root crops, jarred tomatoes, and fresh spinach.