(CSA Newsletter: Week 38)
Meet this week’s vegetables:
Although we still have seven more CSA harvests for 2009, the season is most definitely winding down on the farm now. Our work around here has become much quieter and slower paced over the last few weeks. We’re still working outside, but there’s very little urgency (except at times to finish a task before the next rain burst arrives).
This week, some of our quiet work included cleaning out and rearranging our shed, which is an annual task. Even though this is the end of our third season farming here, we’re still figuring out exactly where and how we want to store all our stuff: hoes, amendments, shovels, gloves, firewood, irrigation risers, etc. Each time we expand our storage ability (which has also been an annual task), we have to rethink it all again. This was the first year that we didn’t add significantly to our covered spaces, so we’re realizing we can finally find some permanent homes for stuff without having to rearrange it again in just a few months. It’s a slow process though, so the cleaning continues this week …
Daniel and Erika also did a major clean out of our many greenhouses. They pulled out the dead tomato plants in our field hoop house to begin the process of taking the houses apart for the winter. They also tackled the weeds that had invaded our smaller greenhouses where we grow our vegetable starts. After removing the weeds, they laid down a fresh layer of ground cloth, so now the greenhouses look clean and new again!
During a rainier period on Friday, Casey and I sat down and began the slow process of evaluating this year’s plantings and thinking about what we’ll do differently next year. We like to spread this task out over several weeks so that we can give it lots of thought (and make good productive use of especially cold and wet mornings). We also use this process to evaluate our recordkeeping systems (which are invaluable in reflecting and planning), and this year we’ve decided to consolidate three different record systems into one. We realized that we had some redundancy in our paperwork that was keeping us from using it as efficiently as possible. Changing all our computer documents will be a slow process, but will hopefully save us time in the future.
So, as you can see, it’s not terribly exciting out here these days. But we love this time of year. The food is delicious; the pace is humane; the mood is mellow … By the end of the long winter, we’ll be more than ready to pick up the pace again, but for now we’re relishing our simple unhurried tasks.
I hope that you too take time to slow down and appreciate this final week of October. Have a safe and fun Halloween and enjoy this week’s vegetables!
Your farmers, Katie & Casey Kulla
