The Share:
- Lettuce
- Peppers
- Eggplant
- Tomatoes
- Onions
- Scallions
- Beets
- Chard
- Cucumbers
- Summer squash and Zucchini – these crops are starting to decline so they may not be available for the entire week
- Watermelon
- PYO Beans
- PYO Cherry Tomatoes
- PYO Flowers
- PYO Sunflowers
New This Week:
- Potatoes from Heron Pond Farm (read more about them below!)
- Red Garlic
- PYO Hot Peppers
- PYO Tomatillos
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| A partial view of our tomato harvest from above |
As we enter the first week in September the offerings in the
share room have begun to shift towards our late summer crops. As summer squash and carrots begin to fade
out (Fall carrots will begin in 2-3 weeks so they will be back in the share
very soon) and tomatoes continue to ramp up at a terrifying pace we continue to
struggle to find time to get anything done besides harvest! This kind of distraction is both a blessing and sometimes
also a big pain in the back but it is important to pull back from the moment
every once in a while to examine the larger happenings at the CSA. A point I brought up last week and promised
to return to was our mission to cooperate with the local farming
community. I wanted to expand a little
bit on what we are doing and how this benefits the farm, the shareholders and
the local farming community.
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| Tomatoes: a pain in the back. |
As many of you who
have been members for more than a few years know, Appleton Farms CSA has a few
pest problems. Potato bugs, scab and
quack grass have blighted our potatoes, reduced yields and cost an enormous
amount of time that could have been better spent elsewhere. These pests are all symptoms of a larger
problem that we’ve been struggling with for a while. We haven’t been able to rotate our crops
sufficiently to break these pest cycles.
Couple this with our somewhat outdated and undersized potato digging equipment
and you’ve got hours of wasted labor and months of ground tied up in a crop
that produces a little less each season and contributes to a spreading pest
problem. Not having potatoes for the
share is obviously not an option but what else could we do? Enter Heron
Pond Farm of South Hampton New Hampshire.
We’ve done a little business with farmer Andre Cantelmo in the past and
really respect and the quality of his product and his approach to good farming (follow the link and read more about Heron
Pond on their website). As it happens,
one of Heron Pond’s main crops is potatoes!
Where our equipment is undersized and our crop rotation is too tightly
spaced, Heron Pond has sized up potato production to a much more economical scale. We shook hands this winter on a deal to
provide Appleton with over 10,000lbs this season! We will be doling these beauties out in the
share room for most of the rest of the season and including them in the Thanksgiving
share this fall.
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| Heron Pond Potatoes displayed in 2lb quart containers |
Of course one day we plan to get back into growing potatoes
in Appleton soil but this reprieve from the pressures of growing such a needy
crop will allow us to 1) break the pest cycle, 2) Scale our equipment
appropriately and 3) focus on growing the crops we do best. In addition to sourcing potatoes from Heron
Pond we will be sourcing most of our fall carrots from Picadilly Farm in New
Hampshire. Read more about our partnership
and history with Picadilly in future posts.
Look for a midweek update this week on our exciting partnership with the Boston Area Gleaners and details about how you can get involved!
