Seasonal Transitions: CSA Summer ’13 ” Week #11

 In CSA Newsletter

A recent family photo - just sharing for fun.

We’ve officially passed the mid-way mark of the summer CSA season. In several different ways this marks a transitional point in our season. It’s the time of year when harvesting begins to dominate our farm duties. It’s tomato time. And it’s also a time of year when we say goodbye to some of our seasonal work crew, and say hello to new faces as well.

Harvest Time: The very beginning of the season is all about seeding, transplanting, and weeding.  Then as crops begin to come in, we add harvesting to our duties.  For about 4 solid months, we are juggling all of these 4 main tasks. And then, all of the sudden it seems, towards the end of August, it changes.  Now it’s all about harvesting.

All direct seeding in the field is now complete. All of the seeding for transplants in the greenhouse is also complete.  There are no more food crops that we can plant that would be ready before it gets too cold.

As for weeding, most of the crops still in the field are well enough established that the major weeding is complete. Mike is only using the cultivating tractor on successional plantings, like lettuce and scallions, at this point in the season.

The fields are full of food yet. And over the course of the next 2 months, we will work at getting food out of the ground and either washed or into storage.  Onions & potatoes are ready right now. Any spare moments we can spare from harvesting other things, we are chipping away at getting these big crops out of the fields and into storage.

Tomato Time: From now until the frost, every Tuesday and Friday afternoon we will be picking tomatoes: red, orange, pink, yellow, purplish, and all kinds of stripes and shades in between.

Goodbyes & Hellos: Last Friday marked both Anna and Jada’s last days on the farm.  Anna worked as a field crew member for the 2011 and 2012 seasons.  She had hoped to work at a farm that combined a day care (a combination of two of her passions) this season, but it didn’t work out.  So we lucked into having her part-time for the peak of the season.  After three season working with Anna, we are sad to see her go. But we wish her luck as she moves to St. Paul and embarks upon a Montessori teacher training program.

Jada, a Mt. Horeb native, began working for us as a worker share four years ago.  Instead of buying a share, her folks paid her the value of the share, and then she worked for the food here once a week. The next summer, after she graduated from highschool, she was a worker share here again. That season she began to work additional paid hours. The last 2 seasons, Jada then worked as part of our main crew. She recently returned to Beloit College to start her junior year in college. We wish her luck in her studies and her upcoming experience abroad.

We want to thank some worker shares as well, who will be going back to school. Thank you, Robin, Alex, Cameron, and Krystal for all of your hard work!

And finally, we want to wish a warm welcome to Kate. She started her first day here yesterday. She will pick up where Anna and Jada left off. We look forward to getting to know her better as the season continues.

We wish each of you a smooth transition into late summer – in all the different facets this time of year takes on in your life.  And try not to forget to pick up your box! (The first week kids start back at school is the highest week of unclaimed boxes we see all season :).

 

In the Box:

  • Bottle Onion
  • Cucumber
  • Eggplant, Globe
  • Eggplant, Japanese
  • Green Beans or Jumbo Flat Italian
  • Parsley
  • Red Potato
  • Sweet Corn
  • Sweet Onion
  • Tomatoes, Heirlooms
  • Tomatoes, Slicers
  • Zucchini

REGs only:

  • Orange Cantaloupe

EOs only:

  • Carrots
  • Watermelon

Think Ratatouille!

Summer Week #11: Wednesday, August 21st ” Group A EOs