This Week on the Farm 10/9
Well all of the warm season crops are finished for 2012. The multiple frosts have taken their toll. We have bell peppers in the box this week only because we harvested them late last week and kept them in the cooler. Enjoy your last bell of the season!
Even with this cooler weather we still have a lot of produce out in the fields and there are quite a few crops that could use a decent rain. Don heard on the weather channel this morning that we need 6 to 12 inches of rain to get us back to where we normally are at this time of the year. You have to wonder what long(er) term impact this extended drought is going to have on perennial vegetation. I know I am worried about our raspberry canes for next season.
Tyler is in absolute heaven right now. This is his favorite type of working weather. He loves the fact you can be outside in jeans and a sweatshirt and not break a sweat, but not be cold either. At this point in the season we are both so exhausted that it is hard to enjoy the weather as much as we should. I know in a few weeks when the snow starts to fly we will be remembering this weather fondly.
Last week I mentioned the garlic we have on order. Well I was right, one of the varieties is out of stock. At least they are substituting it with a similar variety, but still it is a little irritating to not get what you order. Garlic always seems to be problematic when it comes to being in stock. We will probably start planting it early next week. In the meantime we need to spend some time figuring out the best way to plant it so that it isn’t as backbreaking a process as it was last year.
Every year toward the end of the season we send out a survey to help us plan for next season. It helps us to know what varieties you liked/hated, if a crop was in the box too many/too few times, or other things that you might like to see in the box. We are going to try creating a survey online so that we don’t have to mess around with printing copies and stamping envelopes. We will send out an email in the next week or two when the survey is ready. It isn’t mandatory, but your input helps us improve as farmers and as a business. I am sure there will be a lot of comments about tomatoes, and believe me when I say I want tomatoes in the box probably more than you do!!
Next week, October 17/18, is the last delivery for the every other week “Pea Group.” For those of you in this group, please make sure to bring back all of your totes that might be sitting in you car/garage/house/apartment/man cave/cubicle/etc. We ask that you bring a bag of some kind to transfer your produce into and leave the blue tote at your pick-up site. By bringing back all of your totes and leaving your final week’s tote at the pick-up site we are able to save costs for next year’s shares by not having to replace tons of totes. We will have a couple of extra plastic bags at each pick-up site in case you forget, but please do your bit and help keep costs low for all of your fellow members!
Bean Group members and every week shares, the above applies October 24/25. I will send out a reminder email next week in case you forget.