Sunday, September 23, 2012

Taste Local Taste Fresh

The Fiddleheads/Fertile Ground table at Taste Local! Taste Fresh! last weekend. I spent it paddling in Algonquin Park and having close encounters with a couple of moose, but my intern Jackie and volunteer Jana represented. Thanks to Jackie for doin' up the lovely table decorations and Fiddleheads for the tasty beet salad!


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

The 1st of the Lasts


Hard to believe it’s September! This week a lot of you will have sent kids back to school. September is a transition time for us too at the farm. For me, it is the time when we are officially over the seasonal hump. It’s still busy, but every day is a wee bit less work than the day before.  The days are generally a bit cooler and more comfortable to work outside in, and we’re starting to watch the frost reports! Our next major transition comes with the frost, when many of our crops will be killed and we’ll switch to offering our fall selection of vegetables.

All the crops are now in the ground for the fall. The final things we planted included spinach, arugula, salad mix, mustards, cress, radishes and tatsoi. We’ve been busy with the 1st of the lasts: the last thinning of the season (in the fall beets, turnips and daikon radish); the last BIG weeding in all the fall broccoli, kale and cabbages; the last sowing of seeds, and the last harvest of some summer crops like cucumbers and zucchini.

We spend a LOT of time harvesting this time of the year – we’re still in peak production right now. Fortunately, there are fewer other things that need doing, what with the planting finished, the weeds mostly beaten back, the irrigation lines in place in all the rows, and a lot of our finished crops already turned under and planted to cover crops. It feels good.

There are still 6 more weeks of CSA left, and plenty of fall storage harvest and field clean-up to finish after that, but there is something about September that brings some relief and a slightly more measured pace to our days in the field.

Enjoy the amazing variety of vegetables while it lasts! I know that I’ve been absolutely gorging myself on heirloom tomatoes 1000 ways, roasted eggplant, fresh cilantro and raw pole beans, knowing their season is far too short and I’ll be bemoaning their frosty demise all too soon…