Friday will be the last pickup for the winter CSA and the last winter market. See you there!

Choose 7 items:
spicy greens mix
garlic
carrots
beets
onions (red)
leeks
winter squash - carnival, tetsukabuto (big, gnarly and green)
celery root i.e. celeriac
parsnips
salad turnips (red)
watermelon radishes and black radishes
rutabegas

Frozen field, with ski tracks around

Remember we are having a double-share this week to make up for missing last week so choose 14. Except for those from corning who got their shares last week despite the forecase of snow!

salad greens - We will try to harvest enough for CSA, but I'm not sure what you'll get. It could be lettuce mix, spicy mix or spinach.
garlic
carrots
kale
beets
onions (red)
leeks
winter squash - carnival, tetsukabuto (big, gnarly and green)
celery root i.e. celeriac
parsnips
cabbage
salad turnips (red)
watermelon radishes
rutabegas

No Farmers' Market/CSA today

We have cancelled the winter farmers' market in Watkins Glen for today and the Local Food Fest in Corning was also postponed. No CSA pickup for today. We regret the inconvenience and confusion.
We'll see you next week.We'll offer a double share next week.
Matthew

Well, I know some of you were disappointed by the minimal amount of greens we had available last week. We have already cut the beds of greens in our hoophouse once this fall and winter and they just have not grown back yet. We have another bed that has not grown enough to harvest yet and hopefully the other beds will start regrowing soon as the sun is returning. Otherwise we hope you can be patient and appreciate that we are still learning to grow for winter and we have limited hoophouse space. Our perennial decision is when to clear the summer crops out of the 2 hoophouses. To have greens that are mature enough to harvest in the winter, they need to be sown in September or early October. At that time we still have tomatoes, eggplant and peppers thriving in the hoophouses. So it is hard to choose to rip them out when they can keep bearing for another month. And it is also physically difficult to remove these plants before they are killed by frost as the tomato plants are about 15 feet tall. So this year we cleared out one of the hoophouses for winter production to plant greens for the winter. The spicy and lettuce mixes we planted did great and we have been harvesting them all fall and winter. The bed of spinach was mostly a failure though (not sure why).

For Corning members:
Either Liz or I will be at the Local Foods Fest Friday evening.

 

Locally-Grown Food Festival in Corning

February 8. Free! Cornell Cooperative Extension will present their 4th Locally-Grown Food Festival on Friday, February 8, 2013 from 5-8 p.m. at Union Hall, 100 Civic Center Plaza, Corning. The event features tasting of meats, vegetables, cheese, fruits, breads, preserves, wines and more! Come sample dishes created with local products, meet dozens of local farmers, and purchase locally grown products on site. Growers interested in participating should call 607-664-2300 for more information! Visit the website atwww.putknowledgetowork.com for the latest details.

 

If you would like to pick up your share at the Local Food Fest please email us a list of what you would like and we will bag it and bring it with us.

salad greens - We will try to harvest enough for CSA, but I'm not sure what you'll get. It could be        lettuce mix, spicy mix or spinach.
garlic
carrots
kale
beets
onions (red)
leeks
winter squash - carnival, tetsukaubuto (big, gnarly and green)
celery root i.e. celeriac
parsnips
cabbage
salad turnips (red)
watermelon radishes
rutabegas

potatoes are gone! We will hope for more rain next summer!

Sorry - I harvested this morning and I was unable to get any lettuce mix. I did get a little spinach and a little spicy mix. Plus kale bunches. Will save for CSA! Wow it sure was wet out there this morning - standing water in the hoophouse.

We had a great weekend at the NOFA-NY conference (Northeast Organic Farmers Association). We attended many interesting conferences, some of them more related to our own operations than others. Among the workshops we attended: "Streamlining Your CSA System", "Soil Health and Advanced Organics", "Hosting Apprentices" (we are thinking of having paid workers on the farm this year), "The Rebirth of Agriculture in Native American Communities: Haudenosaunee Corn, "Worksongs on Diversified Small Farms", and "A Close Look at Teikei: The Japanese Version of CSA". I was able to attend three workshops on seed saving and breeding organic vegetable varieties and am getting very excited to learn even more about the "other side" of growing vegetables: growing the seeds! It is a fascinating part of the sytem and I am amazed at how little I know about growing vegetable seeds though I am a vegetable farmer! Its a completely different farming world. For example, the biennial vegetables (like carrots and beets) would be unrecognizable to many vegetable farmers and gardeners in their second year of growth! But I am getting very excited by the prospect and opportunity of possibly growing one variety of vegetable seed for commercial sales this year. If we are able to do that it would be an adventure and a great learning opportunity.
Plus we got to travel there and back and stay with our friends and fellow farmers Sharon and Dean. And we also got to visit with our Vermont farmer-friends Kara and Ryan of Evening Song Farm who lost their farmland to a devastating flood caused by Hurricane Irene in August 2011. When we arrived Thursday evening they announced that they had closed the deal earlier that day on a piece of property they had been renting this past year. This land is far above the creek that ruined their previous land and they are very excited to be starting anew, although it certainly is a daunting task. Hooray for their courageous spirit! We can't wait to see what wonderful things they will achieve there (they've already built a barn, two hoophouses and the foundation for a home!!!).

Choose 7:
lettuce mix
spicy mix
garlic
carrots
kale
beets
onions (red and yellow)
leeks
winter squash - butternut, carnival, tetsukaubuto (big, gnarly and green)
celery root i.e. celeriac
parsnips
cabbage
salad turnips - hakurei and red
potatoes
watermelon radishes
rutabegas

Remember no market and no CSA pickup tomorrow. We are off to the NOFA-NY conference this afternoon!