Will We Have Ramps & Overwintered Spinach for the First CSA Deliveries?

Ramps emerging in the woods!

By Andrea Yoder

Spring is officially here, but some recent days have felt more like winter has returned!  For those of you who have been part of our farm in previous years, you know every good farmer conversation either starts with or gravitates to a discussion about the weather.  So, the leading question for today is “Is it an early spring or a late spring?”  Well, it’s been both! In mid to late March all indications were that it just might be an early spring.  Temperatures started to warm up, the garlic was pushing through, pussywillow started to bloom and we had to move fast to cut the willow before it went too far past its prime.  We also had to take the covers off the garlic field and loosen the mulch so the new sprouts would be able to push through.  Those two tasks occurred in the same week, posing a challenge for our small winter crew.  However, as always, they pulled it off!  

Snow Drops dusted with snow, March 31, 2022

Towards the end of March, that picture of an early spring started to show signs and symptoms more congruent to a late spring.  We woke up to a snow-covered valley on several occasions and we’re finishing up this week with a fierce, cold wind and temperatures forecasted to dip down to 25 degrees for several days in a row.  Vegetables don’t grow when it’s that cold, so what originally looked like an early start to spring is now officially a late start.  What is a farmer to do?  Great question and one we’ve been asking ourselves every day as we set up work plans and priorities for our crew!

On April 4 we welcomed back 25 members of our field crew who come from Mexico on a H2A visa to work with us for the growing season.  After a few months of rest with their families, they return to us refreshed and ready to get back into the fields!  Unfortunately, weather conditions have not been conducive to doing field work, so up until Monday and Tuesday of this week most of our work has been indoors.  We’ve taken advantage of these days to bring our farm back to a sense of order after winter.  We picked up sticks and cleaned up our farmyard in addition to doing some clean up around our fields and in the woods.  We’re working on cleaning up fallen trees, branches that blew down over the winter, and have been grading field roads.  We have also been able to do some cleanup work on some new land we’ll be farming this year as well as clearing some of our woods of the invasive honeysuckle.  All the tractors and field vehicles are being serviced, which means a lot of oil and filter changes!  Our CSA delivery trucks went in for their annual inspections this week and will return to the farm with a clean bill of health and, in the case of the Twin Cities delivery truck, a new set of tires!  These are just a few of the repair and maintenance projects we’ve been working on.  We’ve also been whittling away at our list of spring projects including spring cleaning our packing shed areas, doing some work on our employee housing, maintenance checks on all our fire extinguishers (over 60 in total…. safety first!), cleaning out the chicken coop and goat houses, and cleaning & sharpening all of the hand tools.

Pepper Seedlings in the Greenhouse

In the meantime, the greenhouses are nearly at capacity!  We’ve spent the last two weeks transplanting little celeriac and pepper seedlings into larger flats.  This is slow, tedious work, but Leonardo, Erik, Felix, Nestor, Ana and Lupe, as well as a few others have done a great job and the plants look great!  We have two crops of broccoli and cauliflower planted with a third crop of broccoli transplants scheduled to be seeded next week.  We have three plantings of head lettuce transplants, the first of which we will plant in our tunnel greenhouse next week.  We hope to include these in CSA boxes with the second or third delivery.  The onions and leeks look great and we’re hoping to transplant them into the field next week.  Earlier this week we had a little window of opportunity to do some field work and one of the priorities was laying the plastic mulch and drip take for the onion field.  This week we seeded the last two herb components for the Herb Packs we will be preparing for you!  In mid to late May we’ll send garden herb packs to all the CSA sites, and you’ll have the opportunity to pick one up as an additional item to supplement your CSA box!  The last exciting greenhouse update is that the ginger has started to sprout!  We know this is a favorite fall item for many members, and it’s a fun crop we enjoy growing and using as well.  

Trays of culinary herbs on their way to 
becoming CSA Herb Packs!

So, with CSA deliveries starting in just three short weeks, what are we planning on putting in the box?  Will there be overwintered spinach and ramps?  The answer is the same nearly every year…. “It depends on the weather!”  We sent scouts out to some of the woods where we harvest ramps, and we were encouraged with what they found.  The ramp bulbs are a good size for this stage of their growth, but overall, they are still immature.  Richard thinks they need one good week of warm weather to support their growth to the stage where we would consider harvesting them.  Given our forecast for low temperatures through the weekend and into the first part of next week, we do not anticipate we’ll be able to start harvesting ramps until the last week of April.  In terms of CSA boxes, this is great news!  While there are no guarantees, we are hoping we’ll be able to include ramps in the first two CSA boxes this year.  

Overwintered spinach is the other spring favorite we are keeping our eye on.  We removed the field cover at the beginning of the week, partly because the temperatures were a little warmer and also because we wanted to get a good look at the field.  The spinach is fairly large already.  Last week we were predicting that we’d start harvesting spinach next week and that it would be too big to harvest for the first box.  However, Richard’s assessment is that it really hasn’t grown much over the past week.  With regards to CSA boxes, this is good news as it increases the likelihood, we’ll be able to include it in the first and possibly second CSA box!  Right now, the spinach is uncovered and we’re a little concerned about the cold temperatures and high winds forecasted over the next few days.  While we typically would put the field cover back over the spinach to protect it from the cold, freezing temperatures, the high winds we’re experiencing poses a problem with doing so.  First of all, it’s hard to put the cover back on with high winds…think giant parachute!  If we can get the cover back in place the next trick is keeping it in place, but we have lots of sandbags to help with that.  The other issue is that with the high winds, the cover is going to be moving a lot which can cause abrasion injury to the spinach leaves.  So, what’s the right answer?  Do we battle the wind and try to put the cover back on the spinach knowing it may protect it from cold injury but may cause abrasion injury?  Or do we cross our fingers and hope for the best if we leave it uncovered?  The nice thing about overwintered spinach is that it is high in natural sugars which function as a built-in antifreeze.  Perhaps Mother Nature knows what she’s doing, and we should trust her on this one.  Who knows, this could turn out to be the sweetest, most delicious, overwintered spinach ever!  

Chives waking up from a long winter!

As we head into the final few weeks of April, we look forward to welcoming our second group of workers on April 25.  As soon as the fields dry out a bit, we’ll be back out harvesting overwintered sunchokes and the remainder of our overwintered horseradish.  The chives are looking good, and the sorrel is small, but it’s up.  The next thing we’ll start looking for are buds on the trees and asparagus shoots!  If you signed up for your shares already, watch the mail for your Welcome Packet which will be arriving within the next 1-2 weeks.  If you still haven’t signed up, what are you waiting for?!  Come join us and I guarantee you’ll eat well and be well in 2022.