Month: October 2016

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

Week of October 24th – CSA Newsletter

So, October had a little bit of an identity crisis last week. We had some incredibly gorgeous weather early in the week to cold and rainy at the end. We removed our rain gauge from the field sometime in September but from what I’m hearing from others in the area, we got more rain in 3 days then we did the entire summer. Kinda crazy to think about. We had standing water in some spots in our field today! All this rain isn’t going to do too much for our remaining crops but it will definitely help to raise the water table. We are at such a deficit right now that we can use as much as we can get. So, even though cold rainy days in the fall aren’t the best to work in, they are definitely a welcome sight. I’m also keeping my fingers crossed for a snowy winter to help with next year.

hoophouse spinach and chard
Newly planted spinach and chard

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Around the TC3 Farm – Student Post

Around the TC3 Farm Update – A Student Post by Steve

Well howdy there folks, just wanted to give you a little update on some things that are going on around the TC3 Farm lately. The tomatoes in the green house have pretty much run their course and we are now clearing out the plants to get the houses cleaned up and ready for winter plantings. Mostly thanks to our new Meadow Creature broadfork, we greatly increased our tomato yield this year compared to last, and we are still harvesting green tomatoes for the CSA and for the farm stand on campus. We also make sure we take the old plants away from the greenhouse to decay simply because we don’t want them around any other plants in case they have some sort of disease on them, playing it safe.

clearing greenhouse

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Week of October 17th – CSA Newsletter

october sunriseHowdy folks! So, we’ve made it to the home stretch of the CSA season. Only three more weeks left after this week. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on the season in depth over the next few weeks but I will say that with all we endured over the course of the growing season, this has been a very successful third farm season.

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Week of October 10th – CSA Newsletter

Those Leaves, they are a changing! I truly love living in the Northeast and getting the chance to experience all the seasons. Working outside just about every day of the year gives you a great appreciation for all of Nature’s beauty and fall is always my favorite. Watching this hillsides change from afar is an amazing sight.

The farm is still busy with lots of activity. The harvest keeps coming in and preparing for the winter months and next season continues. Last week we began renovating the strawberries.

Strawberries - pre renovation
Strawberries – pre renovation

That entails removing all the “runners” or side shoots off the plants and just leaving the “mothers”, which are the main plants where we get the fruit from. Before the plants go into a dormant state for the winter, we’ll mow them down and fertilize them. Something that we experimented last year was to save some of the runners and put them in pots and keep them in the greenhouse for the winter. Come springtime we replanted them out in gaps in our beds. This year we are going to save a lot more to hopefully plant a whole new bed and have some plants for sale. We also planted one of our hoophouse areas with winter greens to have available for our farm stand and restaurants. In the coming weeks, we’ll plant the other hoophouse and greenhouse so we can produce food year round.

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Week of October 3rd – CSA Newsletter

Greetings folks,

So, what exactly happened to September? I swear it was just Labor Day. But here we are at the beginning of October. The season is moving right along as the impending cold weather seems to be approaching quickly. Even with the harvest continuing to come in, we are still progressing with getting the farm ready for the winter months. Our early cover crop of peas and oats is beautifully established.

Oats and peas cover crop in October
Oats and peas cover crop in October

I’m really looking forward to the benefits of this green manure. This past week, we continued to prepare the ground where next year’s garlic is going to be planted and got more cover crops in. This time we planted a deep-rooted tillage radish that will help to aerate the soil and add nitrogen. The hoophouse areas are ready for their winter plantings, which will happen in the next week or so. Having the hoophouses planted in the winter will allow us to continue our farm stand later in the season and have some produce to sell to Coltivare and other area restaurants.

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