Coming Up For Air

Aah... so nice to just breathe again. With the end of our season drawing near, it really does feel like we're finally coming up for air. What a season it has been - certainly one we will remember, but would rather forget. The respite of relatively normal weather in August ended abruptly with hurricane Irene - dumping over 6 inches of rain on us over the course of the storm. As if this wasn't enough, the following week brought an additional 5" - for a total of over 11" in a ten day period. No wonder it feels good to breathe, we've been drowning.Actually, we have little reason to complain, considering all the flood destruction that occurred all around us. Minglewood came through alright, just a little more muddy, rotten, and smelly than normal. The damage to our crops was minor, compared to other farms, but still significant for us. Much of the fall lettuce was lost due to rot, the spinach drowned and died ... again, and most the broccoli was damaged by diseases brought on by too much water.

The other consequence of the storms was that it delayed the planting of the last of the fall crops by a couple of weeks, meaning they did not have much time to grow before the cooler weather set in. Fortunately, fall temperatures have remained fairly mild, so we have bean able to harvest some of these crops for our final markets.

Due to this whole situation, we have not had as much product for market as we would like, especially salad greens. After selling out early on both Wednesday and Saturday markets for a couple of weeks, we decided to consolidate what we had, and just attend the Saturday market for the rest of the season.
Despite all the problems, the produce we do have has been beautiful, perhaps the nicest of the whole year. Growing conditions in the greenhouses for baby salad greens has improved, so we have had some lovely arugula and musclun greens. In the fields we continue to harvest escarole, radicchio, cilantro, broccolini, baby boc choi, and Asian stir-fry greens, as well as, lettuce for our cut mixes. Recent additions on the market table include: baby salad turnips, Tuscan kale, and broccoli rabe.
In the field tunnels we're continuing to harvest heirloom tomatoes and bell peppers. The ripening of the tomatoes has slowed dramatically, as expected, in the past few weeks, but we've still got a respectable sampling of all the varieties. The hornworm activity seemed to abate for a few weeks in September, but came back with a vengeance in early October. Some of the plants have literally been reduced to nothing but stems. Oh well, at least it made finding the tomatoes a whole lot easier. Oh yeah... if you want to meet the hornworms up close and personal, check out this You Tube link: www.youtube.com/user/vanlinc#p/a/u/0/ONvXw4SgvX4
Mushrooms are one crop that actually like all the rain. Many of our logs sprouted spontaneously over the past few weeks, without having to soak and force them to produce. This past week we brought a record16+ pounds to market. It is also the season for our cool weather strain of shiitake, Snow Cap, to produce. This is a beautiful robust mushroom, covered with a downy white fringe.

Things are pretty quite on the farm these days. The crew has been cut back to just Fridays to harvest for Saturday's market. The fields are gradually being put to bed for the winter. Despite all the rain, we did find a couple of dry windows in the weather to seed some nice cover crops of oats, peas , and vetch, which have done wonderfully. So far our frosts have been light, so things are still refreshingly green.
Aah... breathe in... breathe out...