(Mt. Vernon, Iowa)
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Greetings shareholders,
This week, we have potatoes, onions, pretty good looking tomatoes, ripe peppers, eggplant, edamame, broccoli, gorgeous green beans, chilies, lettuce, chard, kale, and herbs. Everything looks very good right now; I think you will really enjoy the vegetables this week. Apparently, lettuce can live on fog, because we've got fantastic mixed lettuce now. Covered with road dust, but lovely otherwise. I didn't expect this lettuce to be ready to harvest until the first of October, so I was very surprised when I found it tonight. Don't know how it happened, but we're rich in lettuce! It tastes great now, and will become even sweeter as the nights get cooler, and with bigger leaves once it gets a good drink. There is about nothing better out of the garden than fall lettuce. It is so much nicer and so much easier to grow than lettuce in the spring.
You'll get some pretty tomatoes this week. Some are from us, and some will be from the Local Harvest CSA in Solon. One great thing about no rain for 23 days is that the tomatoes stopped dying! So, we've been able to get some good tomatoes. Finally.
I spent a good chunk of my time last week setting up the trickle irrigation system to get the fall greens, radishes, spinach, broccoli, turnips, etc.... up and growing. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. I can't figure out if the problem is with gravity and the long run of ups and downs between the pump and the garden, or with the new life form that seems to be living happily inside my filter system, or something else. I worked all weekend to sort it out, but still can't get water to the garden. Because of the dryness and the delay, we might not have the greens like I like to give you in the fall. Or, I'll get it figured out, and right after that, we'll get a nice gentle, half-inch of rain, and the crops will come flying out of the ground because they are so happy to get a drink of the good stuff.
The deer have found the lettuce patch. I intend to make good use of that lettuce over the next 8 weeks, and my plan does NOT include any deer. It looks like there might have been a polka party out there sometime in the last few nights. If you have a practical suggestion about how to keep them out of the lettuce that doesn't involve me sitting up all night with a shotgun in my lap, and also will not result with me getting my name in the paper, I would be happy to hear your idea.
Never-ending potato digging continues this week. Tuesday for sure, possibly Wednesday, and Saturday for sure, unless we get enough rain to make us quit. Only about 2 miles of potato row left to go. Everybody is welcome to join in.
For those of you coming up from Iowa City, Highway 1 is still closed on the north side of town. To get the the farm ignore the signs and ignore your GPS. Just stay on Highway 1 to downtown Mt. Vernon, turn left at the stoplight, turn right on 8th Avenue, go out of town a little more than a mile, turn left on Abbe Hills Road, and you'll find us about a mile west.
VERY IMPORTANT ITEM FOR YOUR CALENDAR: This is the last week that you pick up on your regular Monday or Thursday night. For the week that starts on September 27, everybody picks up on Saturday, October 3, between 10:00 and 2:00. The last 5 pickups of the season will be the 5 Saturdays in October.
ANOTHER VERY IMPORTANT ITEM FOR YOUR CALENDAR: Family and Friends Harvest Celebration is next Sunday, September 27, 4:00 until sundown. Please bring a main dish, and either a drink or dessert to share for the potluck. We'll have hayrack rides, roast some marshmallows, and enjoy the evening. You can bring a lawn chair and your neighbors, but not your pets. Please plan to attend. It's usually a very nice time. Everybody is welcome.
In case of rain, check the website. www.abbehills.com. I'll put any cancellation information up by 2:00 Sunday afternoon. Hope not. But do hope for some rain before then.
See you this week,
Laura
Tags:
Posted by Laura
@ 11:12 AM CDT
Greetings shareholders,
This week, we have more of the same: potatoes, onions, eggplant, peppers, chilies, edamame, chard, kale, tomatoes, and herbs. We'll have lots of nice potatoes, I think from now on. We dug Red Norland and Superiors this week, and I think there are a few Yukon Golds left in some of the boxes. Remember that the potatoes weren't sprayed with any pesticides, so it is perfectly safe to eat the skins, and I think almost any potato dish is just as good with the skins. My family eats mashed potatoes all the time that have little pieces of skin mashed right into the mix, just like in the expensive restaurants. Except ours are better because they are free of pesticide residues and are really fresh.
Since the potatoes weren't sprayed, they suffered quite a lot of fungal disease this cool and wet summer. I'm pretty sure that the disease problems will shorten their storage life. The best thing is just to eat them every week, but if you do want to store them, put them in a dark, moderate temperature, dry place. Never keep them in a plastic bag as it traps moisture near them. While in storage, check them frequently so you can take out anybody who starts to get stinky.
Big thanks to the potato digging helpers last week: Coe Environmental Club including Clarissa, Sydney, Brian, Ayla, Malyssa, and Mai. Also Sarah Benesh and Cindy Strong. You wouldn't have potatoes without the help of these volunteers. We'll be doing it again this week on Tuesday, Wednesday maybe, Friday, and Saturday. Let me know if you want to help. So far, everyone agrees that it is a weird sort of fun job. Except Brian from Coe. He refused to comment.
The onions will be nice now, too, although not as sweet as the early summer onions. Since they're not as sweet, they will keep a little longer. I think we'll have Yellow Sweet Spanish this week. I've got lots of red onions so you can take a few every week, probably until the end of October.
We should have a few more tomatoes this week, like maybe even more than a pound per share! I can't stand to pick the tomatoes this year - they are too sick for me to look at them without getting sick myself - so my worker, Tricia, is in charge. She thinks we'll have a nicer harvest for the next couple of weeks for sure. You might even be able to make yourself a BLT in a couple of weeks, if the L grows just a little more and the T's can stay alive a while longer.
I'm sorry that there's not more variety in your shares this month. It was a tough summer, much worse than 2008 for getting seeds planted and weeds killed, and plant disease was more widespread than I have ever experienced. A lot of the things we thought we would grow for this time of the season failed. Whenever we could get into the gardens between rains, we planted, so we have broccoli, green beans, cabbage, daikon radishes, beets, cilantro, lettuce, and turnips almost ready to harvest. However, that's right where they have been stuck for a couple of weeks. We got the warmth, but now they need rain to reach harvest maturity. Asian greens, arugula, mustard greens, radishes, and a little spinach are further behind, but with the right combination of rain and warmth still might be possible to harvest in October. We'll keep optimistic, but I'm planning to pull out the irrigation this week anyway. Watch, as soon as I get it all out and lugged up the hill, the rain will get here.
Calendar items: We have only 1 more full week where you pick up on your regular night, September 21/24. Starting the week of September 27, everybody switches to Saturday pickup until the end of October. So, if you are a Monday person, your pickup schedule is Sept 14 (this week), Sept 21 (next week), October 3, Oct 10, etc... If you are a Thursday person, your schedule is Sept 17 (this week), Sept 24 (next week), October 3, Oct 10, etc..... There are five Saturdays in October. Pickup times on Saturdays will be 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. I'll send you a couple of reminders, but if your memory is anything like mine, it wouldn't hurt to put these dates and times on your calendar right now.
Remember the "Taste of Mt. Vernon" this Thursday night at the Farmers Market. Tickets are $20, with a portion of the ticket sales going to benefit the market. Six local chefs are going to cook tasty little treats using foods grown on farms around Mt. Vernon. It should be fun. There are only a few more tickets available, so be sure to get yours in the early part of the week. I have a few more and will have them on hand Monday night during pickup.
The Family and Friends Harvest Celebration is back on the schedule by popular demand. Sunday, September 27, 4:00 until the kids (or Laura, whichever comes first) have to go to bed. It's a potluck dinner- hayrack rides -marshmallow roast - type event. Please bring a main dish and either a dessert or drinks to share. Lawn chairs would be helpful, but please, no pets. Bring your relatives, neighbors, and friends. Everybody is welcome. I'll arrange for the picnic tables if you'll agree to pitch in a couple of bucks to help with the rental fee. It will be fun. I hope you can come.
See you this week,
Laura
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Posted by Laura
@ 11:21 PM CDT
Greetings shareholders,
This week, we have potatoes (nice ones this time), onions, beets, eggplant, peppers, tomato (or maybe, tomatoes, if we are lucky), kale, chard, edamames, chilies, and herbs. We've been able to dig more potatoes and, while they are not disease free, they are much nicer than the ones that had been underwater during the big rains of two weeks ago. We will be finishing up the white, sweet onions this week, and also the summer beets. There are lots of eggplants, but peppers and tomatoes are being very, very slow to ripen.
I will be cutting edamame plants for you this week. Edamames are soybeans that are eaten green, and are a common snack food in Asia. The variety we have was bred at Iowa State for Midwestern conditions. To fix edamames, you quickly blanch the whole pods, then cool in cold water to stop the cooking. Sprinkle with a little salt or soy sauce, then squish the little green soybeans out of the pods. The beans are the part you eat. They are great, kind of nutty and beany and green all at once. They are slow to eat, but that's part of what makes them such a good snack food. I'll be giving you a handful of plants. I don't have enough time to take all the pods off the stems, so you can do it at the farm and leave the stems for the compost pile, or you can take the whole handful and let the kids pick the pods off the stems at home.
We had a nice warm week, which was great for drying out the soil and getting plants to grow and make fruit. But because it has been so cool and so wet for so long, most of the summer crops are either way behind schedule or dead from disease. This has been the worst year in my memory for plant disease. It's been on almost every kind of plant, and some plants, like the tomatoes, have at least 3 diseases at the same time. You may have seen or heard the spray planes in the country nearly continuously for the last two months. They have been spraying fungicides - poisons that kill fungus that causes plant disease - on the corn and soybean crops. Strong fungicides, applied over and over, are about the only way we have to fight plant diseases, except for the resistant varieties and garden sanitation practices used by organic farmers. Either way, diseases are tough, and in a cool and damp year, they take their toll. That's why we have so few of the late summer crops that we expect in abundance - tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, chilies, cucumbers, summer squash, cabbages, beans, even the parsley is sick - yields have been reduced in every crop because of very serious disease outbreaks. They aren't the type of pathogens (disease causing organisms) that can cause disease in us, but they really affect our food crops. That's why you can assume that almost all fruits and vegetables you buy at the store, and even from some farmer's market vendors, have been treated with fungicides, even if the plants weren't sick. Conventional farmers can't afford to take the risk of losing a crop to disease, so they treat just in case.
So once again, the beauty of Community Supported Agriculture becomes apparent. By your subscription, you are helping me absorb the risk of crop failure. Because of that, I'm able to grow your food without the use of dangerous pesticides. Usually we have good crops, but sometimes we have a bad crop, but in the big picture, it works out OK, plus you don't have to worry about eating pesticide residues, and I don't have to worry about their consequences on the farm ecosystem. Not enough tomatoes? Eat more kale!!!!! (OK, maybe that's a bad example, but you get the idea.)
Thanks to the volunteer potato diggers last week: Cindy Strong, Maureen Boots, Sara Benesh, and the Coe girls. We'll be digging potatoes again this week on Tuesday, maybe Wednesday, and probably Saturday, if you would like to help. It's kind of fun. In a weird way.
To settle last week's debate, I looked up the spelling of the word for the small, green, hot things we use in salsa. "Chili" is one hot pepper, "chilies" is more than one, "Chile" is the country, "chili" is the soup, and "chilly" is when you feel cold.
The fall crops look really happy. The lettuce beds are coming along nicely. Fall cabbages are as yet disease-free, and there are lots of daikon radishes, turnips, and beets. There is a little bad news: after 5 tries this summer, I never did get a carrot to grow, the spinach is skimpy, and I think the brussels sprouts are sick. I had planted spinach, radishes, and greens the evening before the last big rain. The rain really pounded the beds and washed out a lot of seeds, so I am redoing all those beds the first part of this week. They might run a little late, but I'm pretty sure we will have lots of arugula, Asian greens, and mustard greens by the middle of October. I'm almost afraid to tell you that the winter squash field looks beautiful, in case I jinx it. Although we only got about 30% of the seeds we planted to germinate (remember the ground squirrels?), the plants are really healthy and it's possible that we'll get lots of winter squash from them. We've got the soil fertility, the bees, the moisture, the sunshine - everything seems good, so that leaves only about 5000 other things that can go wrong before we start harvest at the beginning of October! Hope for the best.
Have a safe holiday,
Laura
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Posted by Laura
@ 09:59 PM CDT
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