September Farm Update!

By Farmer Richard

Watermelons moving up the harvest belt to be washed!

As we near the end of summer and approach the official start of autumn on September 22, we acknowledge that this is a very unique and sometimes challenging time of the season.  Late summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, melons, watermelons and sweet corn can come on fast and furious in the heat of August leaving us scrambling just to keep up with harvest.  When September comes and we lift our heads to take a breath, it hardly seems possible that just around the next corner the danger of the first frost is looming!  The official first average frost date for our area is September 15!  Yikes!  Now, that doesn’t mean we’ll get frost, but the overnight temperatures have been getting cooler and we’ve had to grab an extra jacket for chilly mornings which reminds us the first frost will be coming soon.  We haven’t seen frost until October for many years as we experience the effects of climate change.  We can’t forget however that climate change can yield extremes on both ends of the spectrum.  Will we get an unseasonably warm fall or a cold one?  We can only guess!

Look at all the Mini Sweet Peppers on one plant!

The challenge of this time of year lies in both the amount of work we have to do as well as trying to work with and around the challenges of weather.  We are still harvesting the last of our summer crops including two plantings of tomatoes, lots of peppers, the last planting of sweet corn, and the last of the melons.  While we’re sad that zucchini and cucumbers are finished for the season, we did breathe a sigh of relief that we could mark those harvests off the production list for the week to free up crew time to do other things….like harvest winter squash!  As we try to finish off summer crops, fall crops are coming in already.  We’re nearly finished with winter squash harvest and started harvesting the first of this year’s celeriac crop last weekend.  The parsnips, carrots, black Spanish radishes, beauty heart radishes and daikon are all in the queue for harvest as soon as this rainy week passes and the fields dry out.  We’ll have a little overlap in time where summer and fall will be demanding our attention simultaneously!

Mountain Merit Red Slicer Tomatoes, a disease resistant
variety in our second planting.

During this time of the year we watch the weather, checking it multiple times per day to plan our work schedule.  We have to be ready to respond to the threat of frost, even if it’s only one cold night followed by a few more weeks of warm temperatures!  We have to make the difficult decisions about whether or not we can harvest the remainder of the most frost-sensitive crops or if we need to invest in covering them.  If the latter, we need time to put the covers in place along with sandbags to hold them down.  You can’t do this at the last minute because conditions are not always appropriate for laying out covers.  Please note, it is not advisable to try to put covers over crops with winds of 10-20 mph or the covers will likely end up in the trees!  If it looks like frost may be coming, peppers and tomatoes are, at present, our most vulnerable crops that would be our priority to cover.  Most other crops, such as lettuce, spinach, parsley, baby bok choi, etc, can take a light frost and recover with minimal to no damage.  Once we start seeing temperatures in the 20’s we’ll have to add more covers to protect our late season head lettuce, escarole, radicchio and tat soi.

Bins and bins of winter squash including
Black Futsu Pumpkins!

I mentioned that we’ll finish our winter squash harvest this week, and the next crop we typically get questioned about this time of the year is the beloved sweet potatoes!  They are sizing up nicely, but could use several more warm weeks of growth.  If this chilly weather looks like it’s going to stay around we’ll likely need to cover the sweet potatoes just for some heat gain to accelerate their growth rate.  We typically start harvesting the last of September of first of October, so it won’t be long!  Both winter squash and sweet potatoes need some time to “cure” before they are delectable, sweet and ready to pack in in your CSA boxes.  Curing helps to set their skins so they store better and develops their flavors and sweetness.  As tempting as it is to eat them as soon as they come out of the field, we know from experience it’s better to wait a few weeks.

Fields put "to bed" with a cover crop to hold the soil in
place over the winter and build fertility in the soil.

In addition to harvest, this is also the time of year when we are preparing to put fields “to bed” for the winter and preparing them for next year’s crops!  Once we’ve taken the final crop off a field for the current season, we need to consider what will be planted in that field next year.  This impacts our decisions about compost and mineral applications as well as figuring out the most appropriate cover crop to plant on the field.  Cover crops are an important part of managing our land, both for fertility but also to prevent erosion and loss of our precious topsoil over the winter.  This week we received four pallets of cover crop seeds from Albert Lea seeds, so as soon as the fields dry out this will become a top priority.

Beauty Heart Radishes as far as you can see!

Despite the challenges, we love this time of year!  The cool working conditions are a welcomed relief from the hot days we’ve worked through over the summer.  Weed seeds germinate more slowly which means our late planted crops can grow faster than the weeds and dominate.  We’re still cultivating and hand weeding, but very soon the weed pressure will lessen.  The cool to cold temperatures of fall also impact the crops in different ways.  The green color of kales, spinach and other greens intensifies and crops such as red lettuce and red mustard produce deep gorgeous leaves.  The cool weather also causes flavors to be more balanced and sweet.  Crops such as radishes and arugula mellow out and, in our opinion, taste much better than when grown in the heat of the summer.  Fall brassicas including cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and Brussels sprouts will benefit from the cool temperatures and you’ll be able to taste the difference when you eat them!  While many farms start to wind down in late September or October, we’ll continue to go strong and our harvests won’t be done until the very end of November or possibly December!  For those of you who have been with us for years, you know there are still a lot of seasonal favorites remaining to experience this season.  For those of you who may be joining us for the first year, get ready for some hearty fall boxes!  Many longtime members dread the point in the year when they have to return to shopping for produce at the grocery store.  However, if you play your cards right this window of “grocery store shopping” can be pretty minimal.  Now is the time to be preserving things for winter.  We’ve had a great response this year to our “Produce Plus” offerings.  There is still time to freeze peppers and make some tomato sauce to stockpile for winter use!  As we move into fall, there will also be opportunities to stock up on root crops and other vegetables that can store well into winter, even after CSA deliveries are finished.

This year's leeks...coming soon! 

We hope you enjoy eating through this transition point in the season as well.  Tomato season isn’t over yet and peppers are in their peak.  Instead of pairing tomatoes and peppers with zucchini and cucumbers, we can transition to tasty dishes made with fall root crops, winter squash, leeks and potatoes.  It’s another transition in our seasonal eating journey as we follow Mother Nature’s lead.

This will be the first year in many that we will not be hosting our annual Fall Harvest Party.  Late September can be a magical, beautiful time to visit our valley.  However, due to the pandemic precautions we’ve implemented on our farm this year, we’re going to have to settle for connecting through social media and our weekly email connections.  Please know we miss seeing you in person and look forward to opening our farm to you again in a future season.