Wk 38 | Fall 8 CSA Newsletter Tues | Nov 19
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Call/text Robin at 708-370-8017 if you have questions about your delivery tonight. |
By the skin of our teeth we were able to complete our fall root harvest last Friday. By Saturday, rain set in, and the same system that pounded Chicago with heavy thunderstorms and severe weather on Sunday gave us another round of significant rain. We're now experiencing freezing conditions most nights, so we're relieved to have cleared the field of crops.
Our only field activity to coordinate by year's end is to spread 20 tons of compost/acre. That is a big job for big equipment, and it's better to do that when the field is either thawed and dry, or frozen, to avoid soil compaction and a big mess in the mud. With all the wet weather we're having, it seems easier to wait for the frozen ground option that the increasingly cold weather will provide. They're calling for high temps in the 20's and low 30's this weekend and early next week. That should keep the ground frozen and the spreading operation clean.
With field crops harvested and our hoop houses more or less planted, things have slowed to a very manageable pace at the farm. There are still 5 hoop houses planted to crops (kale/chard) that need to be cleared and replanted to spinach in the next week or two. These hoops will provide spinach for our 2014 spring CSA boxes. And there is a fair amount of farm clean up and maintenance to do as well. But there isn't anywhere near the sort of time sensitive pressure that exists most of the year. In some ways it almost seems boring--even moreso than the "boring" I dream about during the growing season. Every year I dream of not getting buried with responsibility during the craziest and most difficult summer months when it's hot and everything is growing super-fast, including the weeds, and we can barely keep up. I joke about planning for a "boring" year to keep this summer period from being overwhelming and stressful beyond an enjoyable point.
In fact, our experience and skill in growing crops and managing the farm should well result in this manageable situation I dream of. Our accuracy in understanding our capability and predicting our harvests has improved to the point that I see less and less of a need to try to overproduce as we currently do. It would be terrible to have hundreds of CSA customers and then not have enough produce or enough variety. So we've typically planned and planted significantly more than necessary--to prevent our worst fear of such a shortfall from occurring. After a few years of learning what we're capable of and consistently having more than we need and can easily sell, we're going to have more confidence next year in planning so as to not overshoot our needs as much.
This time of year, the boxes get a little less exciting and there's a little less variety. Hoop spinach is slightly behind what we'd like as we had tomatoes growing the hoops later than we expected. It was hard to pull tomato plants that were still producing well in late September and early October. Those of you who were with us at that point probably were happy to have tomatoes so late into the season. The tradeoff is that spinach got a little bit later start than normal. No big deal though, as there's lots of nice spinach growing, the conditions this time of year are excellent in our hoops for spinach growth, and there will be lots of it in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, we've got excellent root crops featuring our fantastic carrots, and this week, we've got some ugly but top notch kale coming out of the hoops. Like spinach, kale responds very well to cold weather becoming sweeter than when grown and harvested in warm weather.
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Questions?
Call Robin (in Chicago), 708-370-8017 | Chris (farmer/owner), 608-712-1585
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