In your box:
–Carrots
–Cherry Tomatoes (full shares)
–Cucumbers
–Garlic
–Head Lettuce
–Summer squash
–Sweet onion
–Sweet pepper
–Tomatoes
This weekend brought an event I’ve been waiting for since early March—the greenhouse is now empty for the year. When I transplanted out the last head lettuce of the year between rainstorms, I finally left the greenhouse empty and my planting schedule crossed off for the year. It’s an incredible feeling, even as I start to mourn for the green abundance of the growing season. For the past six months I’ve had some seed that needs to go into the field or into potting soil in the greenhouse, each and every week. For the past four months I’ve had some seed or small plant that needs a home in the field. And now it’s all in. The garden is completely planted, and for the rest of the season I’ll have to depend on this prior work to keep us all fed and healthy for our remaining CSA boxes.
The weather is still nice and summery outside, but there’s certainly a change brewing in the garden. The days are much shorter, most of the nights are cooler, and we aren’t getting the long hot days of mid-summer to keep everything growing and producing. This is perfectly normal for this time of year, and in many ways it’s appreciated. But it does mean that cucumbers and squash are starting to slow down, tomatoes are already past their peak, cherry tomatoes are finished for the year, and other crops are close behind them on their way out.
The good news is that we’ll have some more diversity to the boxes coming in the next few weeks. In late summer it’s always a challenge to make one box different from the one before it. But with the gradual change in weather we’ll usher in some cool-season crops, starting with kohlrabi next week and fennel and bok choy soon after that. Spinach, arugula, and leaf lettuce have all had great germination and look to be in fine shape starting in late September.
This week’s box is a little more of the same that we’ve had lately. Beans continue to be my greatest frustration of the year, as I can’t figure out why they aren’t bearing anything. Many of the plants have already shed their leaves, and the rest just aren’t flowering and putting out fresh beans like they nearly always do. This has happened before, but I don’t yet recognize what makes a good bean year versus a bad one. Next week I’ll give the plants one last chance to fork over some beans, and after that they’ll be relegated to the “there’s always next year” pile.
We still have plenty of weeks of harvest still to come, but as the end approaches we do want to pass on a couple of dates for your calendar. We’ve wanted to have a CSA work day on the farm this summer, but our schedule has been hectic and we’ll have to put it off until fall. But our first event will be a day of miscellaneous work coming up on Saturday, September 22nd. We’ll get started around 3pm and have a potluck dinner around 5:30. The work will be fun for all ages—we’ll have a variety of jobs to do and some of them can involve sitting in the shade. We’ll also take some time to tour the farm and hopefully fit in a few yard games as well.
The other event we have planned is the following weekend. On Sunday, September 30th we’ll have our annual year-end potluck and harvest party. Join us for an evening of farm tours, yard games, meeting our farm community, and eating some great food. We’ll get started at 3:30pm and start the potluck at 5:30 that night.
We hope to see you out at the farm! We’d love to meet you at one or both of these events. Our farm is located at 17250 County Road 122 / New Germany. More details to come.
Expected next week: Tomatoes, beans, head lettuce, cucumber, zucchini, red onion, beets, basil and kohlrabi.
Fox & Fawn Farm 