Welcome back to school!
The student farm is bustling with life again. Being a student farm, we don’t just employ students, but we work with many classes. This week both the small farm experience class and the specialty crop production class headed out to the farm to harvest potatoes. Between the harvests, we ended up with roughly 2300 pounds of potatoes! Though they won’t be in your bag this week, get excited, because they are coming!
Getting back into the semester has been a bit of a challenge, but we’re getting there. After a summer of physical labor, sitting all day for classes and homework has been an adjustment. There’s also a degree of independence one has during the summer that is no longer there during the semester, and its absence can be difficult to work through. However, it is good grounding practice for my mind, body, and ego to remind myself of where I am in life (college), and what I’m here to do(learn). Being a student is only as effective as your willingness to accept and engage with knowledge, and though I might have forgotten that after a summer away, I am quickly remembering.
I’m keeping it short this week, being swamped with this new beginning, so I’m happy to hand it over to Chris, the best farm manager ever, to do a crop update!
Crop Update:
This is not all encompassing but will cover many crops, if you have specific questions send them my way!
The season has been very wet this year so we are fighting many more weeds/disease than we would appreciate but production has been really incredible and we look to keep it up for the second half of the program!
Kale
We had a bit of an incident a week and a half ago where cross striped cabbage moths hammered most of our kale over the weekend. Not much died but I was concerned they would struggle to recover, good news is they all have nice big green tufts so hopefully have the kale back in a few weeks
Winter Squash
The rain has not helped but there are some varieties that are still doing well so expect to see some butternut, acorn, spaghetti, and a smattering of other varieties a little later in the season
Onion
The yellow onions have cured almost perfectly(might be the best year for it) so you will begin seeing them this week and continue getting them
Last week for the reds sadly, I really do like them a lot
Potato
Fantastic year it would seem. Would expect to see them in one to two weeks!
Roots Crops
Radish: they will be back imminently and should be around for the much of the rest of the program, will range from small reds to larger watermelon radish
Carrots: another burst with a couple weeks of them, more have been seeded so another few weeks of them in 7-8 weeks
Bok Choi
Starting next week we will have a number of weeks with a couple varieties, one small and one larger
Cabbage
Last week of napa cabbage so a little break from cabbage after this
Green headed ones will be back in 4-5 weeks
Tomato
Cherry/Grape- Continue to do great so will have lots as we continue
Slicer- they got a bit of a trim earlier in the season as the deer keep finding ways to break in but they are getting close, hopefully only a few weeks out at most
Peppers
Sweet: we have a lot of and that will continue
Very hot: taking their time as the weather has been fairly ‘cool’ but hopefully in a few weeks
Eggplant
We will continue to drown in them for now but probably only 3-4 more weeks
