We are cropping out!
This week on Hawkins Farm continued the motion of felt summer, with some long, hot summer days out in the field spent in harvest mode. Harvesting to its most organized, yet fairly intense extent: The crop out.
When we crop out, it means that we clear out what’s left in a bed of vegetables so that there's nothing left but dirt and plant roots. A typical bed has three or four individual rows that run parallel down our 50-foot beds. The mental game of working straight down the row when we are cropping out has been a real challenge for someone like me, so I have just been doing my best to keep up with Erin and Michael, who can just plow through tasks like it’s no one's business.
With Michael mostly washing all the veggies in the washroom, we relied on Erin’s fast hands to knock out each bed, and we were grateful to have a new hand, Kimberly, on the farm helping us to get through such a heavy workload. We cropped out a bed of kohlrabi, a bed of carrots, double our typical bedspace worth of lettuce, a bed of turnips and FOUR beds of beets! Beets beets beets, that’s right folks, it was beetsville at Hawkins Farm for a few hours before and after lunch on Monday. Woohoo!
Speaking of beets, beets have been making an appearance at pizza nights the last couple weeks, along with some other fun creations. On Friday we had Rio representing the one and only Shop Two Sixty, turning out some beet, onion, goat cheese, honey glaze wasabini leaf topped veggie pizzas, as well as a hot sausage ricotta cheese that was grandma inspired.
Pizza nights are fun! Come to one! When there’s not a guest chef, Katie Jo and Volchy are whipping up their own creations (there may or may not be a cheeseburger pizza in the near future…)
Check out what Brett from Dirt Wayne had to say about his time spent at pizza night last week: “Every ingredient in each of the pizzas either comes from the farm or is sourced from other farmers nearby. This place is where the circular economy is most real in our region. You can’t beat the quality of the food or the ethics of all the folks who made it. Here, local isn’t a marketing tool, it is a deep and abiding commitment to the health of people and the land.”
“The circular economy” is something that shows up here at Hawkins Farm in the smallness of our tasks, and the careful thought that goes into keeping the richness on the land. For example: after all this cropping out, we recognized that we were at the point of the year where we have to prioritize the integrity of the veggie over the aesthetic. We still want the vegetables to be pretty, don’t get me wrong! However, in order to keep them fresh for far longer, we removed their tops upon harvest. What do we do with all these tops? Tops are a great source of nutrition for animals as well as humans, and the animals actually love being delivered cartloads full of carrot, turnip, kohlrabi, and beet tops. And if you keep your chickens, pigs, and cows happy and healthy with more greens from the farm, you’re definitely gonna have some good eating later on.
The cropping out this week has provided some ample space for fall veggies! Woohoo! We’ve got some cleared out beds that can now be cultivated and prepped for the next leg of the growing season. All that’s left is a few more beds of garlic, and we are well on our way to the 2023 growing season Pt2.
For real though, garlic takes forever. On Thursday Erin brought her boys to clear some garlic beds. Between her Thursday and my Friday, we still have a good three beds left to go. Just look at that hearty Kindy Garlic though!
-Alex
