Conditions were dire while harvesting leeks, and thank goodness Anna, Loyal, and Amy arrived to help out. The shared work and conversation helped block out the cold fingers!
As you can see in the background, we still have leeks remaining in the fields for fall shares.
As you can see, we have been bundling up for the October harvest and washing. It has been quite chilly in the mornings, so we're going to pack boxes in the heated green house tomorrow morning. Hooray for warm fingers! Besides harvesting for the second to last summer delivery, we also winterized a few more garden beds with an extra layer of compost.
We had our first frost last night, and autumn is in the crisp, sunny air. The farm is beautiful in all of its fall colors. In the photo above, tomatoes and basil are still producing in deer field but several of the beds have already been winterized...they have been shredded, disked, and compost and Preparation 500 have been added. In the photo below, the greenhouse is the focus of attention, as it will remain all winter long with our wintering greens.
Bob, a friend of the farm, grew this massive pumpkin for our Michaelmas decoration!
Several folks applied the fields with Biodynamic Preparation 500.
Mornings are foggier
Sunbeams are dramatically pronounced
Production in the fields is tapering down and Roland prepares them for winter
We started harvesting potatoes around 8:30 am when the rain tapered off. A few showers sprinkled during the first hour of harvest, followed by a rainbow. Roland took the tractor through with an improvised potato digger, and then everyone else followed behind picking up the exposed potatoes and digging with pitch forks to find the remaining ones.
Many hands make light work!
In total we harvested over 4,300 pounds of potatoes, finishing today what we didn't complete on Friday. Here's to potatoes for the fall and winter!
On Monday, students from the Paying it Forward Program in Barron, Wisconsin helped out in the fields. In the morning, they harvested green beans for the CSA shares. In the afternoon, they harvested the rest of our storage onions (see photo above) and placed them in the white barn for curing (see photo below). All of our onions are now safely curing in a dry place. Thank you for all the hard work!
Saturday is the last day for Youth Farm and Market Project's summer camp here at Philadelphia Community Farm. Pictured above is a group of students cultivating the pea bed in barn field. They were proud to finish weeding the bed after two groups had started the project earlier in the day. To celebrate, we gathered the harvested weeds and fed them to the sheep.
A strong rain fell during this Tuesday's harvest. Most of us were wet and cold, including the vegetables that seemed to thrive in the cool conditions. While we received a heavy rainfall, we still continued running the sprinkler irrigation for the remainder of the day because the fields have been so thirsty for water this year.
We've seen many early mornings this month, including this foggy morning pictured above. The farm crew is frequently out harvesting vegetables at 6 am before the vegetables get too warm. We're also working the fields diligently in the early mornings and late afternoons so that we can devote quality educational time with the Youth Farmers from the Youth Farm and Market Project who are enjoying a summer camp on the farm. So far we have run three summer camp sessions with approximately 25 participants each. The students range in age between 8-14 years old with varying degrees of farm experience before coming to camp. So far it has been a wonderful experience, and we have 6 sessions remaining.
One of the garden projects that we have been doing with students is rounding up our Colorado Potato Beetles before they eat too many leaves. We are finding them in all phases: eggs, larva, and adult, with the photo above showing a potato beetle molting. There have been many "teachable moments" in the potato field!
The photo above shows our packing station where we distribute the veggies. Notice that the tables are low enough for even the shortest of us to peer in the boxes!
