Week 11: Fall crops are just around the corner

The end of this week marks the halfway point in the season and fall is already feeling just around the corner (especially after last week's beautiful September-like weather). After bringing in the harvest each day, we've been concentrating on caring for our fall crops. On Friday we started harvesting yellow storage onions. We pull these out of the ground when the green tops turn mostly brown, and then lay them out in our greenhouse to cure for a few weeks before distributing them as part of the CSA share. I'm really pleased with how the onion crop looks so far. We tried out a new yellow storage onion variety called Pontiac that has produced some of the largest onions I've seen at the farm in years.

We also focused a lot of energy last week weeding and hoeing our fall carrots and brassicas (this includes cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli and kale). The brassicas look quite good, aside from a wide semi-circle on the edge of the cauliflower that appears to have been a groundhog's personal food stash.

We've also been eyeing the winter squash, which we'll begin harvesting in a few weeks. Winter squash harvest is one of my favorite projects of every season. After clipping the squash off the vine and piling it into rows in the field, we drive a tractor between the rows with a squash bin on the forks and toss squash into the bin.

While we these fall crops are not too far off on the horizon, we can all enjoy the wide variety of summer crops in season right now:

What's in the share: Lettuce, Greens, Escarole, Celery, Beets, Carrots, Summer Squash/Zucchini, Cucumbers, Peppers, Eggplant, Tomatoes, Watermelon, Potatoes, Marini's Sweet Corn, PYO Beans, PYO Cherry Tomatoes, PYO Flowers, PYO Herbs.
New this week: PYO Hot Peppers, Purple Haze Carrots (maybe).