THE BEET: VOLUME 18; WEEK 13

 

FULL SHARE & YELLOW HALF SHARE PICK UP TONIGHT

Pick up today: 5pm - 7:30pm at PS 56 on the corner of Gates and Downing

This Week's Share

  • Eggplant

  • Red bulb onion

  • Escarole

  • Sweet corn

  • Green bean

  • Carrot

  • Tomato

  • Basil (!)

  • Winterbor kale

  • Peppers

  • Fruit: Yonder Farm’s peaches or Windflower Farm's organic melons

Some of you will remember that downy mildew killed our basil crop just prior to our first harvest. Our second planting consisted of varieties reported to have resistance to the disease, and it appears we’ll get a small harvest from those plants. Small victories! Look for them in this week’s shares.

Delivery #13, Week of September 2, 2019

What’s new on the farm?

It was a week of heavy machinery activity on the farm. Over the course of the week, using the big old John Deere 6400, Julia and I took turns chisel plowing portions of the farm in preparation for fall plantings. And, as is customary on the Saturday prior to our open house, I put the backhoe on the JD 5100 and dug three new outhouse holes. Nate then put the fork lift on the JD 5425 and moved the outhouses to their new locations. And that was just the beginning.    

Three of our farm roads washed out because of the heavy rains this spring, and I spent part of this morning finally hauling gravel with my bucket loader to fill ruts and level the surface of one of them. Of the other two, one was on a slope across an open field and not badly washed before we decided to find an alternate route. It has since recovered with a minimum of assistance from me, and owing largely to the vigor of well watered perennial grasses growing on rich earth. The third road may be beyond repair. It was badly rutted when we arrived here 20 years ago. The good news is that much of it is down to bedrock, so it will not erode further. The bad news is that it’s the only way we have to access the North half of our home farm, so we will need a solution. Our farm tour this weekend will take us on all three of these roads. Perhaps we can do some brainstorming.

My carrot bed lifter caused us a bit of grief this afternoon. There are a number of bonafide carrot harvesters on the market, but they are for farmers who grow far more carrots than we do. Our bed lifter, really just a poor man’s harvest aid, is nothing more than a stout blade that is drawn under the carrot bed at an angle, gently lifting the earth in a wave from below the carrots’ taproots, and loosening them. The actual harvesting is performed in the next step, when the farm crew pulls the carrots out of the loosened earth, puts them in crates and puts the crates onto harvest wagons. The grief I refer to relates to how dry it has become. As a result, the blade could not penetrate the soil to a sufficient depth, and it kept cutting the tips off of the carrots. You’ll see some of this in your shares. Penetration was a little deeper after I piled four heavy building blocks on the toolbar, but wasn’t satisfactory until I added two members of the harvest crew. Although it’s true that carrot tips aren’t much good to eat, they certainly make a bunch look pretty.

“Feed the soil” is the mantra of organic vegetable farming, and composting and cover cropping are its twin pillars. This week or next, I’ll visit Chris Cashen, who farms near Hudson, to pick up a 20-bushel tote of mixed rye and hairy vetch seeds. It’s time to sow cover crops! In fact, it’s time to make the season’s last plantings of all kinds - from fall and winter salad greens to next year’s garlic, strawberries and onions. 

I’m looking forward to the open house at Windflower Farm next week. I hope to see you here. Remember to BYOB and bring a dish to pass. And dress for cool, late summer weather.

Have a great week, Ted

Veronica