Harvest

Tiny fall cauliflower tastes good

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Harvested a few tiny (tennis ball to softball-sized, like, orange to grapefruit…little ones!) cauliflower from the last-planted section of brassicas that also has kale and broccoli. It’s still producing in home-consumption quantities, but with the exception of some strap kale, they entirely missed sizing up in time for CSA or the farmers’ market at the end of October. This is the normal. I usually take a chance on a final, extra-late planting—sometimes they make it, sometimes they don’t. Now, growth is so slow, the field is really just convenient live storage.

Not ideal storage, though. These plants are hardy, but the cold—many sub-zero nights—does take its toll on the parts you want to eat. Kale fares the best, broccoli is quickly savaged, and exposed heads of cauliflower get cold-burned to an unappetizing, mushy in spots, brown. BUT, with self-blanching varieties (this one is Minuteman), the leaves curl close to cover the heads, protecting them from sun discoloration (so our white cauliflower can be…snowy white), and this works fine against cold as well.

Then there’s the eating. The summer’s abundance of fresh-picked veggies has been over for a while, and every little taste of what remains becomes more of a treat as winter approaches, supplies dwindle, memories fade. The wheel keeps on turning…! :)

Spinach finale

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Last spinach harvest of the year

So this is it for the season’s spinach, a last 18lbs (8kg) of Spargo, unfazed by many subzero nights and all sorts of up-and-down weather antics. Spinach is one of the great ones for cold-climate tiny farming, easy-going once it gets started, tough under freezing conditions, and always in demand… The deer that’ve been lurking and circling the field all year have started to come in for an exploratory nibble here and there, working their way in from the edges. At this point, it’s slim pickings! They discovered one edge of this final, late-planted, slowly-growing spinach patch a couple of days ago, so we (Lynn, Steve, and I) grabbed the rest this morning.  Between us and them (mostly us!), the spinach is done!

This year’s pumpkin haul

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Assorted pumpkins

This season didn’t see too much pumpkin action in the garden, with less planted than in the past (although we’ve never planted A LOT).  Mixed with winter squash in a couple of locations, the spread-out pumpkin patch added up to somewhere around 50’x50′ (15x15m), about half of the usual, enough for 3 weeks of CSA, plus some for the farmers’ market. The selection was to-the-point as well, with lots of the freakishly fast-growing Neon (60-80 days!), a few Connecticut Field, and some compact Small Sugar for pie and Snackjack for seeds, all basic mildly-ribbed-and-orange, without the  unusual extras of most other years. True to past form, the hybrid Neons, even the ones transplanted quite late in June, completely ignored the mysteriously weird conditions this summer that slowed down just about everything else. Here, loaded on the trailer, is about half of the overall harvest. No intriguing pumpkin surprises, still, EVERY successful harvest is ALWAYS worth a high-five, therefore, officially fun… :)

Yes, carrots!

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Just-rinsed carrots in the soft light of an overcast day: beautiful every time! Some veggies look particularly good without trying… These are freshly pulled Nelson, at a pretty fair size but not yet fully mature, from our fourth planting of the season. Every year so far, I’ve put in at least four, sometimes five plantings in succession, and we rarely see really fat, full-sized carrots. This has worked well for CSA and farmers’ market: our carrots are freshly harvested every week, never from storage, and at a versatile size, always perfect for eating raw and usually big enough for convenient cooking as well. Today’s haul, bundled and laid out for rinsing on the long screen table, will be heading into CSA share bags in just a minute, for pick-up this afternoon…

Harvesting Jerusalem artichoke

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For tomorrow’s farmers’ market, Lynn, Andie and Jordan harvested more of this year’s Jerusalem artichoke. The tubers have gotten noticeably bigger since pulling some just a couple of weeks ago… Chokes are a really simple, satisfying harvest, at least, when you pull up the plants in their first year. These guys are spaced at 12″ (30cm), so we just grab the usually multiple stems at each spot and tug. The main root ball is shallow and contains most of the tubers: pull ’em off, and bang the root clump a bit to get at the ones in the middle. You also have to scrabble around for maybe a hand’s width or two past the little root crater to find a few extra outlying tubers—guess that’s where the “invasive” part of choke lore begins, they do try to spread. Overall, though, it’s quick and easy, especially when the fall weather is mild like today. Nice!

Harvest board revisited

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As the afternoon shadows get longer, Michelle checks out the harvest board to see what’s left to do for tomorrow’s farmers’ market. This same whiteboard is now in its third season of service, a little worse for the wear, with the surface no longer coming clean, and one edge of the frame fallen off (it’s lying there, right behind, waiting for repair), but fully functional. As long as I remember to keep it out of the rain and too much sun, it could have a few years in it yet. And I’ve grown to really like it. The shiny WHITENESS is a little glaring and kinda office-like—I considered switching to a chalkboard—but the printing stands out so well… It makes things clear, which is always good!

Perfect (market garden) squash!

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Early Crookneck summer squash

In the market garden, summer squash can’t get much better than this. These guys, part of the second planting for the season, have it all.

Leaves looking really healthy: green, uneaten, and so far free of the powdery mildew that inflicts itself on many squash varieties and eventually kills some off before their time.

Perfectly ready for picking: These Early Crooknecks are a nice size, there’s a few per plant, and they’re quite easy to get at. All the summer squash were multiplanted, 2-3 plants growing together, so things could get pretty overgrown and hidden. This second planting set fruit fast (unlike the first round!), and the plants are still nice and open for easy reaching in.

More to come: In the small-scale market garden, you’re always thinking quantity and COUNTING. How many pieces do we need for today’s CSA shares, how many bunches for tomorrow’s  farmers’ market, and so forth. You’re thinking for now, and also for Next Week, and then, more weeks ahead. In that order. Today, there are plenty of tiny squash that’ll size up in a week no problem!

Bonus specialty selection: Squash flowers! Lots of veggies have cool options, like broccoli flowers and side shoots, squash blossoms (aka zucchini blossoms), beet greens, pea leaves, and generally, harvesting very small and young (I tend to like things to grow to a nice, solid size). So if you dropped in looking for a few squash blossoms (as seen on Food Network :), we could hook you up!

So there it is, my idea of practically perfect market garden summer squash for the tiny farm harvest. There’s ALWAYS room to improve…but here, how?


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