Growing A Farmer: Week 21 August 27-September 1

Harvest

This week's harvest: Green Beans, Okra, Eggplant, Peppers, Sweet Potato Greens, Hakurei Turnips, Tomatoes, Okinawa Spinach, Asian Salad Greens, Popcorn, Peas, and the first of the fall Beets.

On Tuesdays we harvest for the CSA. It usually takes all day and we have to deliver 8 boxes Tuesday afternoon and another 70 Wednesday. So, a little thing like torrential rain can not stand in the way. We got drenched this week. The guys got the worst of it harvesting Green Beans but the rain continued for most of the day. We all changed into dry clothes at lunch only to get hit again while harvesting Okra.

When the veggies get wet we have to dry them out before we can pack them. The barn turns into a tetris-style amalgamation of tables and fans.

Green Beans drying after a good rain bath

Add the Okra

MUD

All that rain was over Tuesday but parts of our sweet potato field held onto it for at least a day. I'm a little worried about what that means for the sweet potatoes.

Hakurei Turnips

Peanuts-Not quite ready yet

Eggplant Penguin

The Asian Greens in Jeff Cook Field were ready to eat this week. We made a mesclun out of them for market and I made this cheat sheet which came in pretty handy for our customers

Popcorn

We also harvested the Popcorn this week. It is a variety of corn that is intentionally left to dry on the stalk and be popped. We weren't the only ones with designs on eating this corn though and we lost quite a bit of it to raccoons.

Production and Distribution

Fall CSA Week 2

In the Box:

Sweet Potato Greens

Hakurei Turnips

Purple Potatoes

Eggplant

Apples

Okra

Green Beans

Arugula

Spaghetti Squash

Market offerings

Elizabeth and I went to Market this week. I took on the role of lead pepper roaster. It's job that gets very hot but at least the aroma of the peppers roasting keeps it pleasant.

Elizabeth selling

Pepper Roasting

Burgie the Egg-win

Maintenance

Gus' Field- Brassicas

We did a lot of maintenance this week. The transplants that went in two weeks ago were already in need of weeding, which we did first thing Monday morning in Gus' Field and Jeff Cook Field. We also did some weeding in the hoop houses.

Bunching Onions

In our down time this week we busied ourselves prepping onion and garlic seed by separated the bunching onions and garlic cloves .

Lots of garlic

Each Clove will be a new plant

Where the Crop Mob harvested the African Squash last week we still had half a field of plastic mulch to pull up. It took 2 and a half hours but we got it all pulled up and piled. It is still sitting in the field waiting to be taken to the dumpster. I'm still feeling pretty conflicted about all the plastic we use and throw away. It really is necessary on this scale with the amount of labor we have. It keeps the weeds away from the plants giving them a chance to grow while we're off tending the 40 other varieties and ignoring them for weeks at a time.

Planting

Monday we removed the plastic from Pasture Field where we had been solarizing seven beds. I planted parsnips in six of them. I started out with the multi-row seeder but the seeds were pelletized and a bit too big so I switched over to the Planet Jr and did 5 rows in each bed.

We also transplanted Endive and Brassicas into Jeff Cook Field with the transplanter. Basil was transplanted into the Hoop House with the fall tomatoes.

We also started more plants in the Greenhouse this week: Lettuce, Chard, Broccoli, lots of Onions, Parsley, Brussel Sprouts, Spinach, Collards, Kale and Cucumbers

The fungus amongus

This stuff is pretty cool: Mycorrhizal Inoculant. It is a powdery mixture of fungal spores that you can add to potting soil, directly to transplant roots or otherwise incorporate into soil at the roots of a plant. We are experimenting with adding it to some of the trays we are starting in the greenhouse. The ones that get the Inoculant are being labeled +I.

A Mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association between fungus and the roots of a plant. This occurs regularly in nature. I knew about the relationship between some species of mushrooms and certain trees but did not realize how pervasive these relationships are. The fungus sets up camp at the roots of the plant where it benefits from the above ground work of photosynthesis and picks up nutrients from the plant's roots. In exchange, it sends out it's own root system, mycelium, which spread much longer and farther than any plant's. Because the fungus and the plant exchange nutrients this gives the plant a much larger root system and access to a lot more potential plant food through the increased surface area of the mycelium.

There's a whole lot going on underground

Greenhouse Starts

Farm Life

This week was all about getting wet and trying to dry off after.

Rain boots don't work so well when they have holes in them :(

Chicken Sitting! Our Chef extraordinaire went to visit his homeland of England this week and I got to baby sit the chickens. I don't have any pictures of them because I only ever saw them in the dark around 6am before having to be at work at 7. My payment for this charge was I got to keep all the eggs I could gather. Here is one day's bounty.