Welcome to week 4 of the summer CSA season!
As usual, I have a few logistics to cover first:
1. Plus items this week will be home-grown, home-ground pancake mix from Tom at Maple Hill Farm (how cool is that!) as well as a loaf of Starlit Kitchen Northwoods bread featuring some tasty ingredients grown and harvested right here in our region - hazelnuts, cranberries, wild rice, and maple syrup. Dee-lish!
2. Last week was the first delivery of summer flower bouquets. If you signed up for a biweekly flower delivery, your first delivery will have come EITHER last week OR will be coming this week. You can always log into your member account and click the Deliveries tab to see what orders you have coming on a given week.
3. Summer fruit boxes will begin when strawberries are getting ripe, which is looking like the first week of July at this point. We'll keep you posted on how the crop is progressing and when those boxes will start. We picked the first few berries from our kids' patch yesterday...
4. If you have biweekly boxes, the Harvie software team is working on aligning them so all of your boxes come on the same week. This process is a manual process unfortunately and is taking quite a bit of time, thanks for your patience as they get your deliveries in sync!
5. Finally, as farm work here takes over my time, Karra (my co-manager for the CSA) will taking the reins as the CSA manager. She'll be the one getting back to you via phone or email if you have questions about your order.s She's been helping build the deliveries since this past winter, and knows her way around the ordering software better than I do! "Teamwork makes the dream work" as they say, and we're incredibly grateful for her hard work each week in making this CSA run. In addition to helping manage this CSA, she also works at the Bayfield Apple Company!
Here at the farm, it's been one heck of a whirlwind week. Last weekend on Friday evening we had a frost warning, so Friday afternoon we spent about 4 hours covering up what we could in case things got too cold. Over an acre of floating row cover was laid out primarily on winter squash (as we only get one chance to plant that crop each year, so we had to be sure to save as much as possible) but we covered our kids' small strawberry patch and a few beds of green beans. When we ran out of row cover, we put out all the pots we had over some more squash transplants to help protect them from potential frost. There were still many rows of squash, green beans, and even a few rows of peppers that we didn't have enough cover for, so we had to cross our fingers and hope that June 12 was indeed too late for a frost....
THANKFULLY in the morning, all was well - even the uncovered crops. Unbelievably, our neighbors across the field to the south of us had frost on their cars on Saturday morning, and many other folks in our area did have frost damage in their gardens. We made it, but it was too close for comfort. Needless to say, before next spring I will be investing in a few more acres of row cover to help fend off late frosts in the seasons to come!
Yesterday, we got the carrots for this fall and winter seeded. We used the same row cover from the squash to cover up the carrot beds, this time not to protect from the cold but to protect from the wind and rain. Tiny seeded carrots require a fine, deep seedbed to grow well, and this seedbed is very vulnerable to erosion. The devastating 18-19" rains of mid-late June/early July in 2017-18 really did a number on our fall carrot seedings, washing away both soil and carrot seeds. Now, we plan to cover all of our carrot seedings with row cover to help protect the soil and the seeds in case of big rains. In fact, the row cover makes a microclimate underneath that is a little warmer, and helps protect the soil from drying out in the hot summer winds, which helps the carrots to germinate more uniformly - a win-win!
Earlier this week, our son Caleb lent a hand at the end of another long day helping to finish up the fourth and final seeding of sweet corn. While I drove our big field tractor seeding the corn, he followed up behind me on the little 1940's Allis Chalmers G tractor pulling the roller behind us. I am always grateful when our kids want to pitch in and help, and learn to drive stick shift tractors! The roller is another tool we use to help prevent erosion by packing down a new seeding, and it also greatly improves seed-to-soil contact, resulting in better germination.
With the final seeding of carrots and sweet corn in the ground, the big plantings are now out of the way and we can begin to focus more time on cultivating those summer weeds out of our crops. Above you can see farmer Eric on the old Allis G cleaning up weeds among the broccoli and cauliflower beds, while below farmer Ryan follows up cleaning up weeds outside of the beds (in the wheel tracks in between beds) on our big field tractor. My heart sings when I see that old steel out in the fields, digging down weeds.
Meanwhile, our hoophouse crops have been growing gangbusters, and you'll see a few more cherry tomatoes as well as some cucumbers in some of your veggies this week. Summer is here! Have a great week, and thanks for making us YOUR farmers!
Yours in community,
Chris Duke
Farmer, Great Oak Farm
