Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we have beans, peppers, chilies, leeks, tomatoes, watermelon, kale, collards, basil, and cilantro.  There is a little okra, although the okra is fizzling out fast from some icky looking leaf disease.  I have a few beets and carrots left from earlier that I think I'll share with the new shareholders who just joined the CSA a couple of weeks ago.  There isn't enough for all of you, and it would be nice if the new people could at least have a taste of those crops this season.  We didn't get any potatoes dug this past week.  When I had help, there was mud, and when it was nice, all my workers were busy with school.  Maybe we'll get some more potatoes done this upcoming week if it doesn't rain too much.  I'm also taking a week off from giving you onions.  Seems like you might have a lot of onions at home and they need to be used.  We have some nice storage onions and I think I can keep them for you for a couple of weeks while you work your way though what you have already.  The varieties I have stored (Copra, Candy, Big Daddy, and Mars) were the healthiest, most disease resistant ones we grew this season, so I think they will be nice all the way through October.

We have a nice surprise this week - watermelons!  They are small, sweet, cute, and very, very juicy.  A really ripe watermelon sounds hollow when you thump it, and when you poke it with the knife, frequently it will pop itself open.  These guys are so ripe and so full of water, they sometimes break just from being picked up.  I really thought they were all dead because weeds covered the melon patch for so many weeks, I couldn't see anything too hopeful coming out of it.  We stumbled onto them yesterday, literally.  My dad broke seven of them by bumping them with his boots before I got him out of the field!   I think you will enjoy them.  (There is another crop of watermelons that could be ready mid-October, but I'm not making any promises in a year like this.)

No eggplants this week.  Remember how I said it looked like we were winning in the competition with Colorado potato beetles for eggplants?  Well, I was wrong.  They came back with a 4th !!!! generation of larvae chowing on the leaves and blossoms the next day after I said that.  I had thought that I would spray one more time, so to prepare, I cut off all the fruits that were present two weeks ago.  Those are the ones I have been giving you.  I didn't spray, but it didn't matter, because the cooler weather has caused both the beetles and the eggplants to slow down their development so much that almost no fruits have grown since the last harvest.  Hopefully, we'll get one more big harvest out of the patch before frost.  It's hard to imagine that 2000 plants have only given us 2 or 3 eggplants per share this season. 

Some of you have asked me about bell peppers, like when are we going to get a ton of them?  Probably never.  There are 3000 pepper plants in the garden, which should be enough peppers for all of you plus everybody in about two more CSAs.  But, once again, both quality and quantity are abysmal.  Blame it on the weather and eat them fast, because as you have probably figured out, they don't store very well!

On a more happy note, the winter squash look great.  I'll start to cut them in about two weeks.  I hate to hurry the squash harvest.  I always think they taste better when they get a little cool weather and sit around for a while.  We'll enjoy squash in October.

Another thing that looks great is the fall garden.  We've had good rain and good growing conditions and no deer have walked in the garden in 15 nights now that the whole thing is set up like Fort Knox with electric fence.  Lettuce, radishes, Chinese cabbage, beets, Asian greens - they all appear to be happy and healthy.  And, another garden miracle, I am successfully growing spinach!!!!  This is huge.  (And so not like me!!!)  Once again, I'm not making any promises, but I'm optimistic that we will have some very nice things to eat in the fall.

What did you find out in your garlic taste test?  Send me your results and I'll compile them and send them to my garlic seed suppliers.

We have two more weeks of veggie pickup on week nights, the weeks of September 13/16 (this upcoming week) and September 20/23.  Starting the following week (the last week of September), everybody picks up vegetables on Saturdays, 10:00 until 3:00.  The final pickup will be Saturday, October 23.  Please start wrapping your brain around the schedule change.  It sometimes sneaks up on people.

Saturday, September 25, at least two big things are happening in Mt. Vernon that I know about.  One is the Lincoln Highway Arts Festival, 10:00 until 4:00, uptown MV.  The other is a meet-and-greet for my friend, Francis Thicke, who is a candidate for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in the elections in November.  You'll get an invitation to the event later this week.  I hope you can attend, or will take some time to learn more about Francis and his ideas about energy self-sufficiency, sustainable food production, and the future of agriculture in Iowa.   He's got great credentials and I think he's got a lot of ideas that would be a huge breath of fresh air for all of us, both farmers or eaters. 

See you this week,

Laura