This is going to go out to both the Wednesday and Saturday CSA members with my apologies to the Wed. crowd. I spent all day on Wednesday on tractors. That’s been the big activity on the farm in the past week; getting ground ready for winter cover crops. I’ve been mowing and discing mostly. Next week the seed will arrive and we’ll sow all the empty ground to a mix of winter wheat, crimson clover, hairy vetch, austrian winter pea, and tillage radish. These plants will grow this fall, covering the ground to protect it from repeated rains throughout the winter as well as providing Nitrogen to the soil. The clover, vetch and peas are all legumes. Legumes, with the help of a symbiotic fungus that lives on the plants’ roots, concentrate Nitrogen from small air pockets in the soil. The fungus attaches these “nodes” of nitrogen on to the roots of the plants. As the plants grow more of these nodes accumulate. In the spring it’s time to mow the cover crop down and disc the plant residues into the soil. This process releases the nitrogen into the soil so that it can be used by the next round of crops that we plants: all the vegetables that we grow and sell. This process can produce up to 100# of Nitrogen per acre. Enough nitrogen for many crops to grow without any further fertilization.
We’ve planted the last rounds of kales this week. There’s just a few things left to plant for the late winter markets. Other than that we’re ready to plant the strawberries when they arrive later in the month, along with over-wintering flowers. Then later in October we’ll be planting the last of the crops: garlic and over-wintering onions.
The boxes we use for the CSA shares are waxed and are not recyclable, but we do reuse them. So PLEASE remember to BRING THEM BACK next week.
Ideas for Cooking
No more than 5 minutes in boiling water for the sweet corn!
When cooking the Acorn squash, cook it whole. This keeps all the flavors & moisture in the squash. Make sure to let it cool a bit before handling it to cut it in half & scooping out the seeds.