Summer CSA Newsletter: October 8th, 2024 (Week 20)
The spectacular view of the Northern Lights over the hoop houses.
Hi Folks,
Week XX.
The Autumn crunch of leaves and time has begun. The fading light makes game planning and a quick step necessary as fall harvests come in by the wagon load. Butternut squash, and sweet potatoes were harvested this week, as well as our first fall carrot planting. The Butternut squash and Sweet Potatoes are curing in the greenhouse! Here their wounds from harvest or bug bites fill with a sap that oozes to the surface of the wound healing over like a scab protecting the fruit from any foreign bodies that could cause infection. Pretty cool that they innately do this similarly to our bodies.
We have had several cool nights, or shall I say cold. We finally got a freeze! 30.9º! So the cherry tomatoes that you may get are the last of the season. We also say a final farewell to eggplant, husk cherries and Aguaymanto. The artisan tomatoes are being ripened off the vine, since they were pulled from the hoophouse. This makes their skin a little thicker and they are a little more tender, but still very edible. This is what most supermarket tomatoes are, ripened off vine! Of course the artisans are a little more pathetic looking in this state as they are showing their heirloom heritage at this stage. We will have some storage tomatoes for a little bit, a variety that is a great performer for ripening off the vine without getting a thicker skin, and these are a red slicer type.
Peppers can take a little bit of a cold temperatures, and we also are able to cover them to keep them from getting too too cold on these chilly nights. So they will be around for a couple of more weeks. We encourage you to freeze cut peppers for the winter! This is an awesome treat. We have these available on the online market in bulk. Also if you aren’t continuing into the fall with our Fall CSA then we encourage you to stock up on butternut squash, sweet potatoes, onions and potatoes. The potatoes need to be kept in the dark in a cool somewhat moist climate, and then the Butternut, can live happily in a 60º cupboard. Sweet Potatoes and onions prefer to be a little cooler around 50º, so if you have a cooler basement these could live there. Also know that we should have sweet potatoes and butternut well into December.
The northern lights were visible in the farm last night! WOW! Amazing shades of red and green appeared out of nowhere. It felt like a trick on the eyes. The images in this newsletter are a little more exaggerated than the actual experience, but they sure do create the wow that we saw! Hopefully some of you also got to see this.
Chris’ birthday is on Saturday, October 12th! On this day a 2 mile wide comet, C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan- ATLAS discovered last year will become visible in the western sky. A quote from NPR about when to see “the comet will initially appear low on the western horizon in the glow of twilight about 45 minutes after the sunset each day starting Saturday Oct. 12 through the end of the month…seen without special equipment but the best view will be through a pair of binoculars.” NPR Rare comet to streak across night sky. Here’s how you can see it. OCT. 10 by Chandelis Duster. These celestial events are pretty amazing to see from out here, if we have a clear night, which is usually not the case, but since this comet will be visiting us for the rest of the month, maybe we all can get a chance to get a glimpse of it!
Your Farmers,
Chris, Aeros & The Who Crew