This Week on the Farm 8/13
We would like to thank everyone who stopped out for the Farm Fiesta this past Saturday! We had a wonderful time and the food was amazing! Check out this week’s recipes on the back of the newsletter for some of the food that was served at the potluck. We have a couple of photos of the spread posted on our facebook page, so if you want inspiration to try one of the recipes, you should check that out as well.
We lucked out and had perfect weather this entire weekend. Saturday was dry and warm for the fiesta and Sunday it rained! Not only did all of the crops need the rain, we needed time to sleep and recharge our batteries. This is the point in the season where it starts to take longer to recharge from all of the long hours and hard work of farming. The adage that Sunday is a day of rest is extremely important when you are farming, but it is something that is very difficult to follow when you look out your window and see all of the things that need to get done. With eleven weeks remaining in the CSA season, now is the time where resting is very important so that we can pace ourselves effectively for the rest of the season.
I think that this has been the coolest summer, and especially August that we have experienced while farming. It is frustrating because the peppers and tomatoes should be ripening at a faster rate than what is happening in the fields and there is not a thing that we can do to speed the process up. The good news is that the plants look healthy and have a heavy fruit set. The rest of the week is supposed to be sunny and relatively warm and next week we are supposed to get back into the 80˚s, so that should help.
As you may know, our farm is a member of FRESH Food Connection. FRESH is a small cooperative of CSA farms that acts as a support network for member farms. FRESH helps member farms with marketing and promotes information sharing to make us all better farmers. As part of our membership we are required to serve on a committee.
This year Tyler is on the New Grower Committee. This past Friday Tyler and several other farmers went on a farm visit to inspect a farm that was seeking to join FRESH. While every farm visit doesn’t yield the newest idea for innovation that we can implement on our farm, it is great to get the chance to meet other farmers and talk about how their season is going.
I would like to thank my dad for coming down to the farm on Friday to help me finish constructing the tables we will be using for dry storage this fall. Last year we purchased some old table frames from a greenhouse that was going out of business. None of the tables had tops on them, so we purchased lath and nailed the lath to the tables. So far we have used them to store garlic, onions, potatoes, and several other crops on harvest days. This fall all of our winter squash, potatoes, onions, and sweet potatoes will be stored on the tables. For less than $500 we have a barn basement of tables.
In other farm news, we lost another large limb from the burr oak. This is the second limb that has come down this year, and the third since last summer. Each limb is more the size of a medium tree than a normal tree limb. It made a huge booming noise when it fell, but thankfully it didn’t hit the house.
Remember that this coming Saturday is the big potato harvest. We need all of the help we can get! We have five varieties of potatoes to dig, so the more people we have the faster it will go. A thank you lunch will follow and if you haven’t gotten a farm tour yet, we can provide that as well. Let us know by Friday if you can stop by and help out!