Late August Field & Farm Update

By Richard and Andrea

Can you believe we’re at the end of August already?!  We’re quickly approaching that transition point in the season where summer and fall vegetables overlap, the days are busy, the harvests are bountiful and the meals you get to prepare with all these vegetables are colorful and delicious!  The week’s have been flying by for us and there’s no shortage of tasks to keep us on our toes.  First it was garlic harvest, then a push to get the onions out of the field.  Last weekend we harvested about half of our potato crop and this week we’ve stayed busy harvesting thousands (literally) of watermelons!  The next big harvests coming up will be winter squash followed by sweet potatoes and that will bring us up to fall root crop harvest and our final big harvest push before we close out the season.  Ok, now that we’ve laid it all out, lets back up and talk through some of the details.

Farmer Richard inspecting a
pheromone trap in the sweet corn field.

While fall will officially be here before we know it, we still have a lot of summer to enjoy!  We hope you’ve been enjoying this year’s sweet corn, which has turned out better than we had anticipated.  Some of the sweet corn blew over in the storms we had back in July, but thankfully the crops have come through despite that and the corn has been very good!  After this week we’ll have one crop remaining to harvest.  This is the time of the year when we have to watch out for corn earworm, a pest that starts as a moth which lays its eggs on the silks of the corn.  When the egg hatches a little worm makes its way down the silks and into the ear.  It’s a harmless, but annoying little creature.  We’ve been monitoring its activity, first through reports from University extension who reported sightings in Coon Valley, which is not far from us.  Those reports coincided with the first moths we caught in our pheromone traps.  We’ve been using an organically approved spray to treat this pest and try to prevent the worms from being a problem.  So far it looks like our tactics have been effective, but you may still find a worm or two in this late season corn.  If you do, just trim the tip off the ear as the remainder of the corn is still wholesome and delicious!

Mini Sweet Pepper Field

As we move into the latter part of summer we are also reaping the benefits of sweet peppers, tomatoes, and watermelons!  This has been one of the most productive watermelon crops we’ve ever had!  Between watermelons, melons, tomatoes and corn, it’s been a challenge to get everything in the boxes!  We are just starting to pick tomatoes from our second planting, so there will hopefully be several more bountiful weeks of tomatoes.  The sweet peppers are just starting to change colors, so look forward to a variety of orange Ukraine, Orange and Red Italian Frying peppers and of course, mini sweet peppers!  If you’re finding the quantity of food you’re receiving is quite a lot for your household during this peak part of the season, consider how you can tuck away some of these vegetables through simple preservation methods so you can enjoy them throughout the winter and they don’t go to waste!  If you have extra tomatoes, chop them up and cook them down, then either freeze the coarse “sauce” or puree it.  If you don’t have time for the cooking part, just freeze your tomatoes.  If you have freezer space, all you have to do is wash them and cut out the core.  Put the whole tomatoes in a freezer bag and put them in the freezer.  When you take them out you can cook them down into a soup or sauce.  Peppers are also easy to freeze as you can freeze them raw.  I (Andrea) will include some of these preservation tips from week to week in the newsletter, so look to this resource for some guidance.

Looking ahead to some of our fall crops, we are happy to report that the sweet potatoes and winter squash crops both look very good at this point!  Richard dug some sweet potatoes just to see what was happening underground and they look great!  The butternut squash are so thick you can barely walk in between the rows in the field.  We’ll likely start harvesting them within the next few weeks, which means we need to get the rest of the onions and shallots trimmed, cleaned and into the cooler!

An established cover crop is
important to prevent erosion over the winter!

Last week we put out the last of our transplants with our fall lettuce crop and a crop of escarole and radicchio that we hope to harvest in November.  We’ve completed all of our main season plantings including our fall storage turnips and radishes.  We still have several weeks of plantings to complete for the crops we plant weekly including radishes, cilantro, bok choi and our fall spinach and salad mix.  Aside from this small lineup, we’re turning our attention to planting cover crops!  This past week we received over 7,000# of cover crop seed and we plan to plant it all!  Cover crops are an essential part of our system and we rely upon them to hold our soil in place over the winter as well as for the nutrients and organic matter they build in our soils.  Of course there’s also the benefit they offer to the planet as they sequester carbon.  It’s an investment in time and money, but one we feel more than pays for itself in returns!

Steam rolls off the compost pile
as it is turned with the compost turner

As we “put our fields to bed for the winter,” we’ll also be spreading minerals and compost to put fertility back into the soils for next year.  Silvestre has made some nice windrows of compost and it’s heating very nicely!  After the last turn it heated to 160°F overnight!  In order to be compliant with the NOP (National Organic Program), it needs to be maintained at 140°F for a minimum of 15 days and we will turn it to stir it up and incorporate more oxygen a minimum of 5 times during that period.  This process not only turns the raw materials into actual compost, but the time it’s held at these temperatures also kills weed seeds and any pathogens.  By the time it’s finished it will look like “black gold!”

Benchmark for the water level is in place
(lower left) & the permit is posted!

We usually start our conversations by somehow talking about the weather, so we’d better circle back and cover that topic!  Despite receiving rain over the past few weeks, we’re still pretty dry!   Our irrigation crew continues to work hard to keep up with the moisture losses we see simply based on evaporation and transpiration.  Now that the plants we’re watering are more mature, they lose more moisture every day as they “breathe,” but we also see greater moisture loss when it’s windy and hot.  On the topic of irrigation, we’re happy to report that we did receive our irrigation permit that was pending for one of the properties we lease.  We shared about this application process and our irrigation practices in an article we published last month.  We are grateful for the support of the DNR in issuing this permit, but also for the positive feedback we received from some of the community members who initially had expressed concern about this application.  We will continue to do the best we can to manage our irrigation practices responsibly.  Last week Richard and Luis put in the benchmark for the new permit, posted the permit and we’re hoping to start irrigating soon.

Cows grazing on green pastures

In the pastures, we’re happy to report both the cows and pigs are content, thriving and doing well.  The cows continue to enjoy their pasture grass and we have a good supply of hay put up for their winter feed.  The pigs have also been eating well and are starting to enjoy hickory nuts falling in their pasture.  Hopefully they’ll have a few acorns to snack on this fall too!  While we are sold out of pork for this fall’s deliveries, we do still have beef available.  If you are interested in stocking up for the winter, you might want to consider purchasing a custom half beef.  It’s our most economical offering and you get to choose how you want it processed!  Just email Andrea, our meat lady, if you are interested.

Well, there are many other crops and farm activities we haven’t even touched on, including the gorgeous purple and yellow cauliflower that we’re harvesting this week!  We still have a lot of work ahead of us to finish out the second half of our CSA season.  Pretty soon we’ll also start laying the groundwork for next year’s CSA program and start pre-booking seeds and supplies for next year.  The cycle keeps going and we continue to be grateful for your support of our farm.  Enjoy the final weeks of summer and we’ll meet you back here later this fall for another update!