Week 20 Letter from a Farmer

NEWS FROM THE FIELDS:

Last Monday night we experienced our first frost. The peppers and eggplant that you received a week ago were the last of this season. Unfortunately, the tomatoes are gone as well for the year. Before the first frost we usually harvest three to four 20-bushel bins of green tomatoes that we ripen in the greenhouse. We can usually deliver tomatoes into November. This year the last planting of tomatoes was so diseased that there weren’t any green tomatoes to harvest. In total, you received 11 weeks of tomatoes, nine weeks of eggplant, and 10 weeks of peppers this season.

We finished harvesting the sweet potatoes on Friday. In the past we used to wait until the first frost to harvest the sweet potatoes because the frost killed the thick sweet potato vines. The vines clog up our potato digger and cause many breakdowns of the equipment. We noticed that over the last few years that the sweet potatoes weren’t storing very well. Jean-Paul had a long discussion with our sweet potato plant farmer this winter about how to increase the storage length of the sweet potatoes. The farmer instructed us to harvest the sweet potatoes earlier, before the soil temperature fell below 55° F. He said most farmers mow the vines so that they don’t clog up the root digger. We were able to harvest the first half of the sweet potatoes when the soil temperature was above 55° F. Then, it rained and rained and the soil temperature fell. We covered the last half of the crop with floating row cover in an attempt to keep the soil warmer. The weather provided us with an experiment: We can now compare sweet potatoes harvested when the soil was warm with sweet potatoes harvested after the soil temperature fell.

Earlier in the season, the farm was bursting with crops in all of our many small vegetable fields. Now, as the growing season comes to a close, we are harvesting most of the items in the shares from one field. This is the first year we grew vegetables in this field. Three years ago it was a hay field. We worked up the field in July 2006 and applied chicken manure and gypsum to bring the soil chemistry into line with what we need to grow healthy vegetables. We harrowed the field for a few weeks to help control the weeds. Then we seeded rye and vetch. In 2007, we harvested the rye and vetch for straw mulch for our summer crops. Then we seeded buckwheat. Buckwheat is one of the few cover crops that will grow in the heat of the summer. It also grows very thickly and smothers any weeds that come up. The buckwheat was killed by the first frost and the thick layer of dead plant matter protected the field over the winter. This spring we planted oats and bell beans. The bell beans fix high levels of nitrogen so that we can grow healthy fall broccoli, cauliflower, and other greens. In June, we plowed under the bell beans and oats, and finally began planting vegetables. Whenever we look at any of our fields, we are imagining what it will be in two or three years and reflecting on what was planted in it during the last three or four seasons.

We will have parsnips this season. We know that you have been disappointed during the last few years when the parsnips failed to germinate. They are among the first crops we seed in the spring and they are slow to germinate. By the time we can see if the parsnips are coming up well or not, it is too late to seed another crop. This year we paid close attention to the careful preparation of the beds for the parsnips. We cultivated the beds three times to destroy the weeds that would crowd out the slow-growing parsnips. We also irrigated the field before we seeded the parsnips, so that the seeds would have moisture from the moment the soil closed in around them. We irrigated again a few days after we seeded the crop. Then we crossed our fingers and watched the rows every day for evidence of parsnip germination. It was a success! Now we'll wait for a few more nights of frost that will make the parsnips sweet and delicious before we begin to harvest them.

As the weather continues to turn colder, the vegetables in the share reflect our desire for warm, hearty dishes. The shares from now until December will include: sweet potatoes, potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips, celeriac, rutabaga, salad mix (we hope), braising greens, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and winter squash. ~Jody