BLACK WEEK
Hello! Our resident rabbit catcher/freelance writer, Jane, has left us defenseless, so it’s Nellie here, back in action after a brief sojourn to stress my way through summer finals – I apparently picked an eventful couple weeks to be away. I missed the beginning of sweet corn season, a deer corpse, and DNR aquariums! Terrible!
We’ve made it to week 8 of the CSA with half of August behind us. It’s also the final week before the fall semester begins, and we’ve all gotten a bit spoiled with how quiet campus has been up until now. Speculation as to whether Cherry Lane will ever be open again runs rampant. The potatoes have died back, which means Chris gets to pull out the potato harvester (his best friend), and that I must psychically prepare myself for sorting through a bin of 16 100ft rows worth of potatoes any thinking about rotting. We’ve just done a large harvest of carrots this morning, and root knot nematodes are still hanging around what was our tomato tunnel from last season which hurt end of season production. Luckily, only a small portion of carrots seem to be affected, and while it’s a problem, their growth patterns make for a pretty unusual visual.
This is very much a transition point in the season, with some of the big blocks of crops (you guys have no idea how many onions came out of that field) starting to be phased out for the next set of plantings or cover crops. An apt change as most of the interns return to classes, you know? Feels like once the summer squash gives up the ghost you’ve really passed the turning point of summer. Even if the coneflowers are dying back, the wetland is at its most showy this time of year, host to swamp milkweed, black eyed Susan, and ironweed in spades, as well as the odd visiting flock of birds, who tend to cycle between it, the sun hemp and the buckwheat. Toads and leopard frogs have been frequent sights in the high tunnels; they seem to really like the low foliage with carrots. Goldfinches have been active in the herb garden and they’re near enough to the back porch that you can catch some of their less frequent vocalizations. They’ve got some fancy songs! As you can guess, Merlin gets a lot of use out here.
STATE FAIR SPOTLIGHT (by Emily Earnshaw):
Last Thursday we all went to the state fair for a both educational yet fun “field trip”. I go to the state fair almost every year, so I was excited to do it with most of the farm staff. We saw all of the animals and did as many of the stops as possible. We loved seeing the draft horses and I even stayed later to see the draft horse show. We made our way through pioneer village for the free tastes of maple syrup and maple cream. We of course admired the large tractors and many agricultural exhibits. In the glass barn we played a child’s game dedicated to soy and learned how many things soy is an ingredient in. While the point was to emphasize the importance and versatility of soy, as SFS majors we also mused over the impacts of such a reliance on soy and how its demand can help keep farmers in monoculture and industrial agriculture. We ended as a group with the DNR building to see how many fish we could identify and watch the flood exhibit that I have always enjoyed every year at the fair. I was able to see the cheese sculpture at the mercantile and the art building later in the day and always enjoy both thoroughly. We all had our fill of fried food and fun and can’t wait for next year’s fair.