This week’s share:
Tomatoes
Arugula (presented in a bunch, instead of bagged this week)
Spring mix (bagged greens)
Sage (bagged herb)
Summer Squash
Carrots
Onions
Beets
Beans
Edamame beans (furry shelled beans)
Sweet Pepper
Hi everyone,
A couple of weeks, Bruce, one of our drop coordinators made me realize that some of my newsletters are pretty grim. He had just read the newsletter about the beans, where I started: “So it turns out the summer of 2012 was too hot to grow beans. Or eggplant. Or peppers,” or something like that. What I continued to say was that it is now finally cooling off enough that some of those crops are actually fruiting nicely now, but after the first line, Bruce thought more bad news was on its way. With that in mind, I am going to do my best to make this newsletter entirely optimistic.
I found late blight on our tomatoes this week. In case you don’t remember from earlier apocalyptic newsletters, late blight is a moderately catastrophic disease that affects tomatoes and potatoes. How catastrophic you ask? It caused the Irish Potato famine. Well, that was actually probably caused more by a variety of societal and social issues which this disease brought to manifestation. How catastrophic for the farm you ask?
NOT AT ALL!!! Turns out our tomatoes were slowing down in production, and this was the last week we could have given you ripe tomatoes anyway. Instead, next week you will receive green tomatoes, and I have a couple of recipes in mind that make this prospect incredibly exciting, and not at all depressing. Furthermore, now we get to remove the tomatoes from the field, till those areas, and put down cover crop, which will make the soil more fertile and weed free for next year. I just bought some buckwheat today to throw down. It was an exorbitant $55 for a bag. But hey, it wasn’t treated with chemicals. And buckwheat really will be the best cover crop for us: It grows quickly so it will accumulate a lot of organic matter before it freezes which we can then till back into the soil, it smothers weeds with its broad leaves, and it dies over the winter, which will make it easy to till in with our two wheel “tractor.”
In other news, the weather has been beautiful here on the farm. We’ve got some chilly autumn nights in the last few days, and I even worked in long sleeves yesterday!
I hope everyone’s enjoying the veggies!
Ben and Mimi
