Everyday I’m Harvestin’

Small Shares

• Green Presto Cabbage
• Zeppo Beets
• Crunchy King Radish
• Red Oakleaf Lettuce
• Yellow Squash
• Zucchini

Full Shares

• Napa Cabbage
• Hakurei Turnips
• Crunchy King Radish
• Red Oakleaf Lettuce
• Yellow Squash
• Zucchini
• Mustard Greens

a day in the life

When you think of your friendly vegetable growers at work on the farm, what do you picture us doing?  As we have become more proficient as growers, we spend an increasing amount to time harvesting, washing and packing the produce that we have grown.  With the arrival of the summer squash and cucumbers, at least some harvesting takes places everyday.  Even on Sundays, my supposed “day off”.  Let me take you through a typical harvest day.  Today, for instance.

In the morning, Farmer Jo wakes up early, hopefully before 2-year-old Cooper, to make coffee.  Then it is off to do morning chores.  I feed and water the chickens, dogs and goats.  I water the greenhouse.  If I haven’t done it the night before, I write the harvest board which lists what crops we will harvest and in what quantities, and what we will pack in each CSA share.  Cooper is fed and dressed before he heads to daycare at 7 a.m.

On harvest days like today, Randy heads to the washing and packing area to fill the wash tubs and prepare to rinse, sort and pack all the vegetables that come in out of the field.  On any given harvest day, 3 or 4 more workers are here to assist.  We load crates and tools into trucks, check the all-important harvest board, and head into the field to pluck, dug, cut, bunch, load and carry all that vegetable goodness back to the wash-pack.

meanwhile, in the wash-pack…

Meanwhile, in the wash-pack, everything is rinsed and counted or weighed.  Root vegetables get sprayed off before a dunk in the bubbler.  Loose greens are rinsed, dried, and weighed into bags.  The wash-pack crews counts, labels and boxes everything up and puts it in the walk-in cooler.  Once all the vegetables for the CSA have been harvested and washed, they can begin packing shares.

Depending on how much harvest is on the docket, sometimes I can sneak away and do field work while Randy is leading the crew in the wash-pack.  I thought there would be more time for field work today, but one worker was out sick and we got a surprise delivery of 200 hales of straw mulch mid-morning.  Even so, I was able to spend about 45 minutes trellising tomatoes.  The tomatoes, especially the cherry tomatoes, are growing so quickly that it is hard to keep up with trellising them.

another lazy afternoon

At noon it is off to pick up Cooper from daycare.  After lunch, Cooper usually takes a nap and today I am writing the newsletter.  This is also when I wash eggs, do any computer work I need to do – like keeping up with the crop plan and harvest logs, prep food for dinner, do the absolute minimum degree of household cleaning, pay bills, and so on.

Hopefully this evening, I will have a chance to do some more field work.  The second planting of cucumbers and squash need to be weeded and sprayed with an organic insecticide to control the cucumber beetles which have seemingly come out of nowhere!  Spraying needs to be done in the early morning or evening to prevent damaging the leaves of the plants.  Obviously, this morning I was busy with harvest.  These are the beds that the crows have been attacking.  I have zucchini, squash and cucumber transplants waiting in the greenhouse to fill any empty spots out in the field where the crows have eaten the seeds and young plants.  Now that the weather is hot, cucumbers and squash really need to be transplanted in the evening to minimize stress on the plants.

I’d like to think I’ll be able to finish trellising tomatoes tomorrow morning, but I will be doing more harvesting.  I have lettuce to harvest, wash and pack for a wholesale order.