hoophouse

Week of July 24th – CSA Newsletter

Potato field!

Week 7 of the TC3 Farm CSA is here! That means we’re about 1/3 of the way through the season. I’m not exactly sure where the time has gone but I can’t believe that it’s almost August. And guess what? It rained a bunch again. I’ve been able to sneak in some tractor work here and there to prep some fields but we still have a field that we haven’t been able to get in all season because of how wet it’s been. And even though the weeds are growing at an epic pace, this wet weather makes them easy to pull. We slowly but surely continue to make our way through the fields. Last week we made it through our potatoes and were able to “hill” them. “Hilling” potatoes is when we mound soil around the base of the potato plants. This allows them to grow more potatoes per foot and protect them from sun exposure. After our potatoes, we started our field peppers. Hopefully, we’ll get through them this week.

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Week of July 10th – CSA Newsletter

Greenhouse tomatoes growing, growing and growing!

Week 5 of the TC3 Farm CSA is here and we had an entire week without any significant rain events. This time last year, I was in total freak out mode with the lack of rain. This past week was a welcome relief but looking ahead, it looks like the rain is returning. We kept plugging away at our weekly plantings by getting in lettuce, basil, carrots, beets, kale, collards, chinese cabbage, cucumbers and fennel. Our greenhouse tomatoes are finally all tied and are really starting to take off, as well as the hoophouse tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.

Hoophouse eggplants
Hoophouse peppers

It shouldn’t be too long until we can start harvesting these crops and filling your bellies with summer goodness!

This week’s share has a bunch of new items in it. There will be the first chard of the season. It’s not too big and can easily be eaten raw or lightly sautéed. There will also be fresh garlic. This isn’t the biggest garlic but the plants are telling me that it’s time to start harvesting them. Fresh garlic isn’t cured like you see in the store and it’s flavor is slightly mild but can be used just as you’d use garlic that is cured. Another new crop this week is sorrel. Sorrel has a lemony/sour flavor and is a nice addition to salads. I also like to add it to pasta dishes by pouring the boiling water over the chopped sorrel when draining the pasta. There won’t be any snow peas in the share this week (I think) but there will be sugar snap peas. The last new addition this week will be cucumbers.

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Week of July 3rd – CSA Newsletter

Monarch caterpillar snacking on some milkweed

Happy 4th of July!

I’m not exactly sure what happened to June but here we are. Things are rocking and rolling on the farm; transplanting, weeding and harvesting. This past week, we started planting our fall brassicas. It never ceases to amaze me that we plant our fall broccoli and cabbage before we start harvesting our spring plantings. We continued our weekly maintenance of our hoophouse and greenhouse tomatoes. The signs of summer are here because fruits are starting to form on the plants.

Heirloom tomatoes beginning to form!

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Week of June 26th – CSA Newsletter

A covered field of summer squash, cucumbers, melons and winter squash

Well, the rain drops are falling once again as I type this. As dry as last season was, the theme this year seems to be wet, wet, wet! A couple of bright spots with all this rain is that for the most part the rain has been happening in the evenings and over the weekend, right after we transplant and there have been some killer rainbows.

Last week we were busy getting about 4000 transplants in the ground. We got in a second planting of fennel, the first planting of basil, another round of lettuce, rutabagas, the first of the fall broccoli, another round of cucumbers and summer squash, the watermelons and cantaloupes, pumpkins and all of our winter squash. It was a busy few days around harvesting and field trips! 

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Week of June 19th – CSA Newsletter

Howdy everyone! I hope that the first CSA pickup went well for folks and that you enjoyed your share.

The past week on the farm was busy as always and we powered through a lot of planting. We are almost all caught up to where we need to be. I like to think if we’re only a week or so behind, then we are in good shape. The rest of the field peppers along with our potatoes finally got in the ground. I was also able to squeeze in enough field prep in between the rain to set us up nicely for our fall plantings. This week will be another big push to get plants in the ground. In addition to all of the planting we’ve been doing, we’ve been spending time staying on top of the crops that have been already planted. An important part of our crop mix are the plants that are in our hoophouses. For the summer we like to plant heat loving crops, so we have eggplant, peppers and heirloom tomatoes in those spots. They have been doubling in size each week.

Heirloom tomatoes planted on 5/30
Heirloom tomatoes on 6/19

This season we are growing 14! different varieties of heirloom tomatoes and I am very excited about them! As a small-scale vegetable farm, I like to say the one thing that we specialize is diversity. This season we are growing about 150 different varieties of vegetables!

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Week of October 31st – CSA Newsletter

Happy Halloween!! Well folks, we’ve made it to the penultimate week of the CSA season. I’m going to keep this week short but I’ll definitely dive into some detail next week with my recap of the growing season. In the meantime, last week was a continuation of all of the farm’s fall projects. I love … Read more