CSA For September 11th!

All the tomatoes under fleece! Two five-hundred foot rows!
Thanks for pal Deb who came and helped!

The last thirty six hours, for us, have been all about frost!  Wednesday night had a possibility (although I don't think it happened) and tonight's forecast low of -2 Celsius ( about 29 F.) will absolutely do some damage.  Wednesday afternoon we put aside soap making and barn cleaning and a few other chores to cover, protect and harvest everything we could!  The summer squash will not make it through temperatures below freezing so we took everything we could find.  Today's CSA families will get a handful of the delightful wee baby summer squash and free choice of some larger green and yellow zucchini.  We saved enough big ones for Tuesday's families, because they will hold well.  And we donated a bunch to Samaritan House.  We had to make hard decisions today: dig potatoes or keep harvesting tender veggies?  The tender veggies won out, so there are no potatoes for CSA today!

The cucumbers will probably not survive also.  We have covered the Lemon Ball and part of one patch of slicing cukes but the rest will be left to fend for themselves.  The thing is, when frost comes, is that we only have so much stuff to cover stuff with!  And our priority:  the tomatoes and peppers.  It is unbelievable to us that our CSA families have not yet gotten a ripe tomato!  And it's almost the middle of September!  So we've picked some that were showing some colour and have 'tucked in' the rest!

We've given you a ton of links for using summer squash.  Here's one we've never, ever shared before: How about making your own gummy candy from dehydrated summer squash?

Everyone got a fairly good supply of cucumbers today.  I found this article very interesting: cucumbers as the new baguette!

Many of you will still have larger sizes of summer squash and here comes the winter squash!  All are fabulous stuffed - here's a link with a myriad of stuffing recipes!  We've taken the first of the Spaghetti squash today, and it and vegetable marrow, as well as large sizes of zucchini and Patty Pan are my favourite for stuffing.  The sweeter winter squash, such as Kabocha and Acorn, are lovely with a fruit stuffing.  Simple, easy and looks impressive on the plate!

It's 9:30 PM and I'm just finishing the blog post.  After getting home from CSA we've had a quick bite to eat, put the goats and chickens to bed, fed the dogs and cats, then picked some crab apples for some friends that want them but can't seem to get over here to pick their own.  It was getting too dark to even see the crab apples, so we've unloaded the CSA crates from the truck, checked all our frost protection and covered a few more things and there is nothing else we can do.  It is what it is - and we'll find out tomorrow just what has transpired!

So for today, FULL SHARES:  Slicing cucumbers, Lemon Ball cucumbers, beets, Delicata, large Spaghetti squash, small 'Small Wonder' spaghetti squash (round one that looks like it has green netting), Acorn squash, Winter Sunshine Kabocha (the small orange one), green zucchini, small and large, yellow zucchini, Jalapeno and green bell pepper, corn, carrots.

PART SHARES:  Slicing cucumber, Lemon Ball cucumber, beets, Delicata, Spaghetti, Acorn and Winter Sunshine Kabocha winter squash, small green and yellow zucchini, large zucchinis, jalapeno pepper, corn, carrots.

SINGLE SHARES:  Slicing cucumbers, Lemon Ball cucumber, beets, Delicata, spaghetti, Acorn and 'Winter Sunshine' Kabocha winter squash, green and yellow baby zucchini, large zucchini, jalapeno, corn, carrots.

More Than Just Frost....

Another bucket load to unload at the garage!

With just a touch of Mother Nature's hand, the growing season is largely done for us!  Friday night was not just frost, or even hard frost: Friday's night's temperatures went well below the freezing mark.  Our thermometer read -7 C (about 18 F) at 6 AM Saturday morning.  Vegetables are done growing for this year!  There had been hope for the summer squash and cucumbers after the touch of frost last week: the tops had been touched but the inner plant was okay and they had started to flower again and had some new growth.  Now, all hope is gone and the plants are all blackened, collapsed heaps, almost unrecognizable.

We had some warning in the weather forecast - although it did get even colder than predicted!  Thursday was CSA day for us so we were busy harvesting for our families, but taking a little extra of everything when we could.  Friday was all-out last-chance harvesting.  Where do you start when it might be your last chance to harvest?  Well, first you prioritize:  anything in the ground like potatoes and beets will be fine.  Then you look at the economic value of our products and those products in demand.  For us, priorities were winter squash and tomatoes.  Everyone is tired of summer squash: they've sauteed, muffined, loaved and frozen to the max!  Winter squash, from pumpkins to Kabocha to Delicata, that's what customers and CSA families are looking for now.  And tomatoes - well, you can never have enough!  Lots of customers are still looking for good paste or plum tomatoes for canning sauces and salsas!

The tomato plants are just crispy now!

So, Friday morning right after milking, the harvesting frenzy began.  I set to work on tomatoes, Farmer Man to winter squash.  Farmer Man definitely had the harder task (as is also so!), because he was cutting squash, filling the tractor bucket, unloading at the garage and doing it all again.  That included twenty pound carving pumpkins, fifteen pound Marina di Chioggia, heavy Australian Blue pumpkins, ten pound Red Kuri and numerous five to ten pounders of everything else.  We briefly considered not attending the Global Market, to get in as much as we could.  We decided we could get enough done, and still be there to sell as expected - just a wee bit more disorganized then usually.  I set to work in the tomatoes, starting with the Romas, Margeritas and Opalkas, using a three bucket system: ripe, almost ripe and green.  We both left lots of small, under ripe product in the field - just not worth our time and space!

Fortunately, Henry and Derrick came to help and got right to work in the tomatoes with me.  We worked feverishly all morning.  About 1:30 we stopped to prepare for the market.  Fortunately, much was at hand and we knew how much we needed to prepare.  Potatoes were already curing in the garage, getting ready for winter storage in the root cellar.  Farmer Man bagged potatoes, I portioned tomatoes, we both weighed and labelled winter squash.  Off to Global Market for me, Farmer Man returned to the farm to keep harvesting!

Basil in the hoop house is largely okay,
except for a little patch right by the wall.

I must admit, even with the knowledge I had, I was not fully prepared for the temperature drop at the market Friday night.  I was freezing, just freezing by the time Farmer Man came to pick me up!  I had big plans to keep harvesting, but after milking the goats, I was assured that there was not much more to do except cover excess squash that was on tables outside the garage.  Up early Saturday morning to prepare for market and we could see the damage had been done!  Prepping for the Global Market Saturday morning was quite easy because everything was right at hand!  A peak in the hoop house, and everything there seemed largely okay!

Even though the 'growing' season may be finished, the work is not done by any means.  There are still potatoes and beets to take up.  Garlic still has to be planted.  Stakes and cages have to be removed from tomatoes, assorted other tags, fencing and such has to be picked up.  We'll leave a lot of plants in the ground, as is, for winter, to help capture snow and decrease soil erosion.  And maybe, just maybe, our late planting of lettuce will still grow and we'll have a fresh salad in a couple of weeks!

Frost!

The zucchini this morning!

Truck of Hubbard

 Yikes! Yesterday, Tuesday, frost was predicted and for today, September 14, hard frost is predicted.  Yesterday being CSA day, it was hard to balance getting ready for CSA and preparing for frost.  We concentrated yesterday on the really delicate things like summer squash, tomatoes, basil and cucumbers.  Fortunately, our employee Henry was able to come back later in the day and, while we were meeting our CSAers and holding the wee Neighborhood Country Market, he was picking tomatoes like crazy.  He did an awesome job of picking and sorting, so that the golden are together, the paste types are together and so on!  We still have to 'deal' with them all, picking out the ripe, storing the unripe properly - but that will be another day.  There's something, roughly, like three hundred pounds of tomatoes out there!

After returning home from CSA, about 7:30 PM, we had a bite to eat, unloaded the truck and then Farmer Man put on his head lamp and went to harvest all the cantaloupe and watermelon.  He was out until well after dark.  It actually got colder than predicted: about -2 C with a 'feels like' value of -5 C (about 28 F, feeling like 22 F).  We woke up to frost on the grass and roof, and shrivelled plants all over!  Now, for those of you not in Manitoba, perhaps not even in Canada, frost on September 13th is not bad for us!  It has been known to come in August!  It has also been known to come as late as the end of October, so it was inevitable, but still too early for any gardener!  It was a harsh one, too; this was no light touch of frost!

Up this morning and back at it with an even colder evening predicted for tonight!  We had figured that root vegetables would all be all fine; winter squash could take one night, but probably not two of freezing temperatures.  Frost causes water-soaked areas where rot is more likely to start.  It wouldn't really affect the meat, but it makes them rather ugly and more prone to quick deterioration.  Our great selection of winter squash is a mainstay of our Farmers Market business through to the end of October, so worth spending a little time!  We had Carissa and Henry coming to pick potatoes, as we are trying to finish that harvest and get potatoes cured so that we can sell bigger bags for winter storage.  We got that done in toques and scarves.  A little rest and a snack and we were off to the north field, which holds carving pumpkins, Sugar Pie pumpkin, Hubbard squash and the popular Butternut.  Our Butternut have done awesome this year, but few are ripe!  We loaded the back of the truck with Hubbard and the related heirloom Boston Marrow, as well as ten gorgeous Halloween pumpkins.  The bucket of the tractor was stuffed with Butternut.  The truck was unloaded into the garage, and we returned to the field and stuffed it again, this time with more Hubbard and Butternut!  It was an afternoon and evening of cutting stems, picking up squash and carrying them to the truck.  Some of the Hubbard and a couple of the Boston Marrow were well over thirty pounds!  I didn't carry any of them.....

Back at the house, a wee rest, and back out!  Farmer Man took the head lamp and the tractor and went up to the Sugar Pie pumpkins.  He dropped me, drop clothes and a few crates at the lower field of winter squash.  I harvested or covered Australian Blue Pumpkin, Spaghetti and Delicata squash.  The Kabocha and Buttercup will have to fend for themselves - there was no more daylight, energy or drop clothes!  There were still goats and chickens to put to bed.  Farmer Man returned with a bucket load of pumpkins, which are all just parked in the barn.  The last truck load of Butternut and Hubbard was backed up to the garage and covered; there was no energy for unloading.  Now, we wait and tomorrow we'll see what the night brought us!  

Fall Is Here - Oh, Yeah!

We'd avoided the few light frosts that hit the Brandon area last week, but this weekend hard frost hit us. And how! Now, we are fortunate to have a lot of well-established shelter belt, which did give some parts of the gardens good protection. But, the open areas and the low areas are pretty much finished! Our late-seeding of lettuce got a touch of frost, the summer squash are all pretty much toast, the tomatoes (which never really ripened) are done and gone. The winter squash plants are dead but the squash is mostly fine - except those that the deer have started to crack and gnaw. The sweet potatoes, well protected, seem to be okay. The basil is finished but the calendula next to it is okay. The garage, our staging area, is crammed with things we tried to save like watermelon, cantaloupe, summer squash, peppers and tomatoes. So, we'll still have a good supply for the final outdoor Farmers' Markets this weekend; it's hard to believe there are only three more regular markets: Thursday night and Saturday morning at Riverbank Discovery Centre and Friday Night at Shoppers Mall!

An Early Winter Storm

Usually, in Manitoba, the question is: 'Will it snow for Halloween, or not?'. This year, we had an unusual storm for Thanksgiving; night time temperatures dipped to -8 C (about 16 F), and we received a couple of inches of snow. We knew some bad weather was coming and harvested everything we could, packing the garage with winter squash, boxes of tomatoes and crates of peppers. What is left in the field is gone, done, dead. The picture is of the spaghetti squash field, many left in the field. Had the temperature stayed closer to 0 C, most of the winter squash and pumpkins would have been fine. But, it was cold enough to damage them and make them unsaleable. Now, if Farmer Boy stopped and thought about it, he could get pretty depressed about thousands of dollars of product left in the field. But what Farmer Boy sees is pig food! It's just a matter of getting the tractor out there, loading it up and then off to see the pigs! And with the weather returning to normal October temperatures and the snow melting, it's a rather enjoyable task!

Hard Frost in the Forecast!

Every market gardener dreads the call for hard frost. It means the end. (Most market gardeners are also slightly relieved because we're all worn out by the end of the season!) Last night's forecast called for a low of -6 C (about 20 F). Frost has actually come late to us this season. We've had a light touch a couple of times, but last night was harsh. Even winter squash can be damaged at that temperature and although it wouldn't really affect the quality of the vegetable, it looks ugly and people don't want to buy it. So, Farmer Boy got really, really busy yesterday. All day and right into the evening with a flashlight, he was cutting squash and pumpkins, loading the tractor and hauling it up to the garage. I picked tomatoes and peppers. Fortunately, Serhiy was here to help; he started out on potatoes and then moved to beans. We ignored root vegetables like carrots and beets, and abandoned the potatoes because they will all be fine.

The very sad thing about yesterdays' harvest is that there is still sooooo much out in the fields that will largely go to waste. We have boxes and boxes of green to orange to red tomatoes; and there were so many more. In this funny growing season the tomatoes should have been full on by the end of August but are ripening slowly through September and into October. The peppers were still flowering, thanks to the warm temperatures at the end of September. We know we've done everything we can - the rest will provide some nice treats for the local deer, mice and gophers!

Farmer Boy gets Fleeced!

Horticulturally fleeced that is! Or row covered. Fleece is an excellent tool for the pesticide-free farmer or gardener. Light enough for water and sun to get through but keeps bugs from getting in. This lightweight cloth we're using offers a couple of degrees of frost protection, too. (A very important consideration for the Prairie gardener, even in June). Here, Farmer Boy has covered baby cabbages he and Frank just planted out. This will keep the cabbage butterfly from laying her eggs, which become little chewing machines when they hatch. This fleece is not completely tucked in - all edges should be covered with soil to really seal it. However, we may be replacing this three foot roll with a six foot roll because it's not loose enough for the cabbage to grow. This is really a triple row of cabbage, and there is just not enough give to allow the plants to expand.