Notes From the Farm

 

Trouble on the road

Last week (week 12) was a tough one for our delivery! The farm truck died outside crested butte with a dead transmission, and the produce arrived late to the delivery spot. One box was lost during the transfer to a new vehicle, and we wound up towing the truck to the shop for repairs. At least nobody was hurt and it looks like the truck will be ready in time for this weeks delivery, thanks to Lara for covering the last delivery in her own vehicle.

Questions and Answers

The next few Week’s Boxs

Salad Mix – last week

 

last week we had blackberries and raspberries from Austin Family Farms and some very ripe peaches from First Fruits. Plus the rest of the nectarines, some pears and small early gala apples.

this week we start into apples and pears, and the end of the peaches. we’ll have a variety of types of apples and pears until the end of the season.

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Potatoes – started digging this week

Notes From the Farm

I hope this helps illustrate the value you are getting with the CSA, and I want to let you know that the farm appreciates your financial support and the fact that you are taking and using all our produce. We hope you enjoy the last upcoming seven final weeks of the season. Box sizes will begin to decline over the next few weeks as cooler weather prevails and the days shorten

 

More Notes:

Last chance to reply to Valentin’s CSA survey. You can fill it out online.

Questions and Answers

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – a high quality crop at the moment – a few more weeks of salad left

 

A bit of a lull qty wise in fruit this week, plenty more coming!

Peaches – outstanding, nectarines and pears – First Fruits, Paonia

leave pears out for a day or two to ripen

coming soon: Apples, many varieties

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Potatoes – we will start digging these for the boxes over the next few weeks,  but leave most of the patch for the last few weeks of the season.

Tomatoes – starting to really ripen in the hoop house

Notes From the Farm

 

More Notes:

Valentin and Lizzy leave for france in two weeks! As we head into fall, we will have to fill the gaps in our harvest crew. Please come down and visit the farm next Saturday to meet them and at least tour the farm. We are offering several workshops in harvesting and cooking throughout the day, as well as lunch and dinner. I will be posting complete details on the farm festival activities on the website soon and I will email you again then. Bring your friends or family, but please let me know as soon as possible if you plan to attend (how many and for what part of the day). (Also, please leave your dogs at home).

Please don’t forget to reply to Valentin’s CSA survey. You can return the printed survey, or you can fill it out online.

Questions and Answers

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – more coming

Onions – more varieties coming in over the next few weeks

 

Peaches – Pruett Orchards (Powell Mesa)

Apples from the Kropps – the first apples of the season, crisp and tart! many varieties to come!

coming soon: Nectarines

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Potatoes – we will start digging these for the boxes over the next few weeks,  but leave most of the patch for the last few weeks of the season.

Tomatoes -a few at the farm festival, then some in the boxes the following week.

Notes From the Farm

Basil - Just a reminder that we don’t wash the basil, its too sensitive to water damage. Just rinse before using! We are offering basil to CSA customers at our wholesale price which is $12/lb. A recipe calling for four packed cups requires close to a pound.

 

More Notes:

 

Accounts due! At this point all accounts are due – please send your balance in full ASAP! We need these funds to pay works and the farm bills. I sent statements out last week by email – if you aren’t sure about your balance, please call or email me. I will also mail statements and call, but please save me the trouble by sending a check immediately to PO Box 969, Hotchkiss CO 81419

 

Questions and Answers

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – moving into a new patch next week.

Onions – white ‘candy’ onions

 

Peaches – Red Havens – First of the season from Paonia – First Fruits

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Bulb Fennel – sizing up, ready next week

Notes From the Farm

This week the farm is swinging into summer big time. I took a short break to visit my mother in North Carlina with the kids over last weekend, and in the six nights I was gone, things grew like crazy. Its amazing the changes that happen every day on the farm and there is nothing like being away for more than a few days to make me appreciate this.

Valentin ran the show in my absence, making critical decisions like what was ready to be picked for the Tuesday harvest! Thanks to him for keeping the ball rolling (and to the rest of the harvest crew who happily come out every harvest to pick and process).

 

More Notes:

 

The flowers are in full swing this week. We have beautiful snapdragons and statice and offer them in convenient ‘bundles’ at $10. We don’t have the time or labor to make bouquets this year, but the bundles can be easily coaxed into bouquets once you have them. The glads are really kicking in and I really want you to check them out, so this week i’m offering 8 stems (instead of the usual 5) for $10. Regular stems are also on sale: 12 stems for $10.We will have flowers at the farm (friday) and on the truck sunday to purchase, but its best if you order ahead (just email or call). When you get them, cut the bottoms and put them in water asap. change the water and trim the bottoms every day or two and your flowers should last 1-2 weeks.

Upcoming boxes will contain little bags of basil – perfect for a sauce or dressing, but not enough to make pesto. For pesto quantity, please call or email. If you visit the farm, we also offer pick your own basil at a greatly reduced price – its very labor intensive to pick!

 

Questions and Answers

Some of you asked how these compare to the flood of glads hitting city market last week – which are selling for something like $10 for 20 stems. Quite simple, there is NO comparison! our glads are HUGE, thick stemmed and freshly picked. Their grown without chemicals here on our farm, hand weeded and planted with loving care. The flowers at the supermarket are still glads, but they are thinner and smaller, they are grown in chemically intensive monocrop mega farms in places like equador where cheap labor and lax regulations mean easy business conditions. They were picked days and days or a week or more ago and they are probably coated with pesticides. 

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – still coming in

Onions – We are picking thru the onions to get the largest ones. We’ll have more later in the season.
Garlic
- hard neck variety this week, a little smaller heads than the soft necks, and with a slightly different flavor – can you tell the difference?

 

None… Fruit break this week! We will have peaches next week (or possibly the week after)

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Bulb Fennel – sizing up, ready this week or next.

Turkey Hill CSA Newsletter – Week 7

Notes From the Farm

I took a few more pictures today that I’ll post soon. The garden looks beautiful, with the latest round of tilling and mowing clearing things up quite a bit. The beans are just starting to grow, and are loaded with flowers (soon to be beans). The summer squash is flowering and we’ll have zucchini and other summer squash starting next week. Unfortunately, the winter and summer squash took a real beating this year; a cool may/june meant slow seed germination and lots of weed competition, then once we had weeded out the baby squash, the squash bugs and grasshoppers decimated a portion of the crop, leaving about 30-40% of my original planting; although a sad loss for the farm, my ambitious attempt to plant two acres total of winter squash means what are left with should still be a reasonable quantity. If certain varieties are missing, I’ll shop around for another farm that might be able to supply it.

Speaking of shopping around, I left a little money in the budget to buy (local, organic) veggies from other growers to help fill in weak areas in our season. One upcoming crop is sweet corn. The last few years we’ve been able to get famous Olathe Sweet corn – organic – usually starting around the beginning of August; We’ll have a bit of our own ‘Delectable’ sweet corn in September. I’m also hoping to buy some tomatoes from my neighbor Mark at Thistle Whistle Farms – he has thousands of georgous, trellised, earlyish tomatoes; our own tomatoes are still weeks away from ripening.

We hilled up the potatoes for the last time this week and a tiny bit so we can offer you a little it for the box (the rest will come in the last 4-5 weeks of the season). The spring carrots are nearly done, the fall carrots are looking great. The beans are just beginning to be ready, and the summer squash is close. Come visit the farm, and don;t forget about Aug. 22 – keep that date open for our soon to be announced farm day.

 

More Notes:

The flowers are now available; we have bundles of flowers for $10; this week I have beautiful Gladioli that last 2 weeks in water (trim the bottoms every few days); I’ve also got snapdragons and statice available – let me know what colors you want and we’ll put a $10 bundle of fresh flowers aside for you (delivered in your tote or at the farm).

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – we’ll try to have this mix every week

Garlic – still drying, don’t put garlic in a plastic bag or it might mold

Spinach  - the last of spring

NEW:  Herbs – Chives, Thyme, Savory (one of the above)

 

Last of the bing cherries from First Fruits, Paonia CO

2-3 weeks until peach season begins!

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Collards – email me if you want them, we only have a few plants.

More cilantro and dill

Flowers by the bundle, details soon

Basil for pesto (special order $12/lb – wholesale price!)

Pick your own basil – email

Cucumbers, we’ll have a ton

Parsley – flat and curly

summer squash – zucchini 

tomatoes, corn, winter squash, eggplant, etc…

Turkey Hill CSA Newsletter – Week 6

Notes From the Farm

The farm has been busy with the transition from spring to summer. We are clearing out the old spring beds – spinach, carrots, beets & replanting some with fall onions, beets and more salad. Lots of tilling down weedy old beds, and lots of mowing with the tractor between the bed sections and around the edges of the fields. This a big job on the tractor, but also onvolves taking apart and then re-assembing a bunch of irrigation pipe.  Its all worth it though – besides making things look great, mowing  and tilling weedy areas are critical to controlling pest damage on the farm! The grasshoppers and rabbits love living in the tall grass sections and then chow on crops at the edge of the beds. We’ve had some damage this year in the carrots and the chard that was pretty bad. fortunately, once the pests habitat is gone they move out to the surrounding fields where the grass is still tall and they can hide from predators.

Speaking of predators, I’ve spotted the turkeys again recently, i saw a group this morning with four adults and 25 or more babies, of varying sizes. I hope they will start to make their sweeps through the field hunting bugs!

Also this week, the tomatoes in the hoop house got pruned and tied up. The hoophouse tomatoes will be our first of the season, but they are still weeks away. We did start picking artichokes this week – these are small size, thornless chokes called ‘Imperial Star’. The first harvest(s) are especially small, but the are great tasting and you can eat nearly the entire choke. There are NO hairs (yet) in the middle, so you can (after cooking well) just hold the leaf tips and eat off the entire bottom. I don’t have enough to give everyone a reasonable amount this week, so I’ll dole them out to some of you each week over the next few weeks.

The green onions in this week’s boxes are the last of our onion seedlings – these are basically baby onions! We’ll have more traditional scallions and possibly pearl onions in a few weeks. The main season onions are sizing up nicely, and a bunch of crops are just a few weeks away. Some boxes will also get spinach this week – this is the last of the spring spinach. We are topping the beets this week, they are all large sized and we’ll have beets for a week or two more.

 

More Notes:

 

Valentin and Lizzy are here and helping out tremendously already. If you pick up at the farm, please say hello if you see them hanging out in the harvest area. Also, CB/Gunnison delivery people – you’ll see Valentin and Lizzy on one of the upcoming delivery – July 26th – he will be interviewing a people for his CSA research – if you are there to meet the truck when we come!

I’ll try to snap more pictures in the next week and email them out. The field looks great, everything is growing nicely!

 

 

Questions and Answers

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – we’ll try to have this mix every week – new patch next week

Garlic – still drying!  

Radishes – One more wave of radishes maturing in the field!

Spinach (this week or next) – the last of spring

 

Lambert Cherries from 90 year old Lambert trees – ’90 years in the making’ –  cherries from First Fruits, Paonia CO

maybe one more week of cherries, then a short gap before peach season begins!

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

Onions – spring onions

Potatoes – all irrigated now, as soon as the hilling is done will dig some new potatoes, next 1-2 weeks;

Peppers – little purple hot peppers are ripening up next week

Collards – if i can find them!

More cilantro and dill

Flowers by the bundle, details soon

Basil for pesto (special order)

Beans – green, purple and yellow beans

Cucumbers, we’ll have a ton

Broccoli

Cauliflower 

Cabbage

Parsley – flat and curly

summer squash – zucchini 

tomatoes, corn, winter squash, eggplant, etc…

Turkey Hill CSA Newsletter – Week 5

Notes From the Farm

Artichokes – I usually don’t mention the artichokes. Although we grow them every year, its a rare year that we have enough of a crop to offer artichokes for sale or for the csa. This year may be one of the years we do have a good crop. If we have them, artichokes will show up in the late season boxes – september.

Basil – We have a beautiful basil crop that will be ready to start picking in just a few weeks. We’ll pick some early leaves in the next week or two, then have basil for the rest of the season.

Beans – We grow green, purple and yellow beans. Only one big planting this year, but beans should last a few weeks once we start harvesting them in 3-5 weeks.

Beets – The beets are coming on strong and we will continue to harvest them for several more weeks. If you want to can some beets, now is a great time to order – we can provide medium or large sized, topped beets by the pound, the cylindrical beets are bred to fill your jars!

Broccoli – The broccoli crop looks great. Still no buds, so harvest is at least four weeks off, but we should have a good succession varieties we will be harvesting through the fall.

Cabbage – We’ll have mini-sized cabbages in 4-5 weeks, then start harvest on the larger red & green cabbages in September. I haven’t found any napa cabbage in the field, these may have been a casualty of early pest damage.

Carrots – we have a few more weeks of the early carrots, then a large and long main season crop that will start a few weeks later.

Cilantro – almost done for the season, we may have this again in the fall

Collards – this or next week

Chard – The rainbow chard is coming on strong and we’ll have it through the summer.

Cauliflower – a good looking crop, should be ready in 5-6 weeks.

Chives – I didn’t forget about the chives – we’ll have these in the next week or two.

Corn – Our ‘Delectable’ sweet corn always comes in late, but we will try to purchase some Organic Olathe Sweet corn for the boxes when this becomes available in August.

Cucumbers – we have a great stand of cucumbers that are just starting to take off with the warmer weather. The 1st planting was slow to emerge, but the later planting tooks great and  we will have more cucumbers than we know what to do with when harvest peaks in september. We should have enough cucmbers for the boxes by mid august – 5 or 6 more weeks.

Dill – dinally enough dill (weed) to give everyone some this week; we have dill seed later – the seed heads are great for canning!

Eggplant – growing beautifully in the field hoop house, we should have eggplants by late August.

Fennel, bulb – coming in the next few weeks, a delicious, crunchy & unusual vegetable

Flowers – we will have flower bouquets as well as gladioli by the stem available soon. please email if you are interested in flowers.

Herbs – thyme, savory, parsley  & others – coming later in the summer

Hot peppers – we are starting to pick little hot perppers from the hoop house and hope to have some for the boxes in a few weeks.

Kale – all season long!

Kohlrabi – this week

Leeks – a nice planting for fall, end of september.

Lettuce – I know you all have been getting plenty of lettuce, and we will have more for the next 3-4 weeks – and thats all we will have this season for head lettuce.

Melons – melons are a marginal and tempermental crop in the North Fork, and this spring’s cool wet weather didn’t help at all. There is still a chance that the field melons will recover, but I wouldn;t coun’t on a big melon harvest. We do have a few melon plans in the hoop house that look fantastic, so we will have melon at the farm harvest & feast day, coming up august 24th, details below.

Onions – the summer and fall crops are in the ground, not huge, but plenty to add onions to the boxes every week or two starting in 5 or 6 weeks.

Pepers – the peppers in the hoop house look great. the field crop is crowing very slowly, despite being covered with remay for added warmth. we need some warm weather to bring on the peppers, so expect these late this year.

Potatoes – We have a fantastic potato planting this year. It went in early and has been weeded and hilled twice already. We sampled some of the rows last week and the potatoes were fantastic – creamy and delicious, plus already pretty large. We will start picking new potatoes in around 3-4 weeks, and have them on and off through the fall. The big harvest comes at the end, expect lots of potatoes for the last few weeks this year.

Salad Mix – we’ll have this all seasomn with a week or two off here and there. Salad is the one thing I am still planting in the field!

Scallions – a nice but smallish planting, we should have scallions in 3 or 4 weeks, they will last just a week or two.

Spinach – the final bed of spinach is still small, it doesn;t like the heat – so depending on the heat we’ll either have no more spinach or a couple more weeks.

Squash, Summer – we have some in the hoop house that will start producing in a few weeks, but the main season crop will be later. the first planting was slow to emerge from the cold wet soil, be plenty of the plants look great now. the squash bugs are out in force this year, so we’ll have to fight those off to get a strong crop.

Squash, Winter & pumpkins – these were also slow getting started and had to fight the weeds. Still, we have a great looking planting covering two acres, so I expect a good crop of winter squash this fall. We usually start picking the early squash – delecata types & acorns – by mid september. The rest will come during the last two weeks – early October.

Tomatoes – The cool weather hasn’t been great for tomatoes – the field planting is in stasis, but the ones we planted in our hoop house look fantastic. We expect to have some tomatoes for the boxes in about 4 weeks. we’ll also try to add more tomatoes than we have by buying some from other local organic growers – if we can find them!

 

 

More Notes:

 

We welcome to the farm this week our past intern, french agricultural student Valentin and his girlfriend lizzie who arrive this week to work on the farm for the next two months. We are planning a special day-long farming/learning/eating event with Valentin on Sat. Aug. 22nd. – mark your calendars! You won’t want to miss this day long series of events, harvesting and preparing delicious, fresh, french food from the field. Its a great opportunity to come down to visit the farm, and savor some of the delicious food as local as it gets. The day will include farm tours, harvesting & processing classes as well as french cooking classes and delicious meals (we’ll cook and then eat brunch and later dinner) – come to all or part of the event. CSA members get a discounted price for any of the paid events (the tours are free) mark your calendar now – August 22nd – I’ll forward more details about the event as we finalize them!

A word on the gap between spring and summer crops

As you can tell from the list above, we have PLENTY of produce coming in this season, but we are experiencing an extended lull this season i feel compelled to explain. our early plantings were earlier than ever – almost a month before we usually get seeds in the ground, and the early carrots and beets were weeks ahead of the usual timing. at the same time, our main season direct seeded crops – summer crops like corn, summer & winter squash, cucumbers and others – were very slow to grow in the coolest, wettest may & june in a long, long time. this means we have to wait a bit longer than usual between the early and main season crops. 

 

Questions and Answers

This Week’s Box

Salad Mix – we’ll try to have this mix every week

Garlic – still drying! We picked ALL the garlic this week & will have fully cured, dried garlic in a few weeks. i’m going to give you a little bit of this not quite dry garlic so you have something to cook with until the garlic is really ready.

 

cherries ‘Summerset Bing’ (red) and ‘Rainier’ (yellow) cherries from First Fruits, Paonia CO

just one more week of cherries, then a short gap before peach season begins!

Coming Soon (1-3 weeks)

head lettuce, more varieties

rainbow swiss chard, bunched

kohlrabi

chives

peas – sugar snaps, shelling

scallions