October 25, 2020
October's Final Week
by Farmer Derek

A relatively warm and moist week has ended and transitioned to a chilly and moist Sunday. The forecast for this week looks more seasonal (and moist) and may be followed by the coldest night yet as temperatures are predicted to dip near freezing. A return of dry and sunny weather may be the frosty sparkle silver lining. We've had a couple light frosts so far but those upcoming low temperatures may result in a widespread heavy frost and could force us to harvest or cover any susceptible crops beforehand. A low of 30-32 shouldn't cause too much damage but could burn the tips of some of the tender lettuces. Covering mature field greens is one of my least favorite farming activities and we mostly try to avoid it. For crop cover to be effective it needs to rest on hoops so that there is a buffer of air between the cold frozen fabric and the crops underneath. Normally when temperatures drop in the fall, wind accompanies the event turning crop cover into large billowing kites. Sandbags are used to anchor it and work well most of the time. Either way we'll try our best to avoid covering anything with some prior strategic harvesting as well as put our trust in the cold tolerance of the remaining plants. It will be very satisfying when most of our harvesting will be in the protected tunnels but that won't be until mid-November.

Last week we transplanted the final crop of the 2020 harvest season - lettuce mix into the greenhouse. Watering trays of plants has been an almost daily activity of mine since late February, something that can take between 15 and 60 minutes, depending on the time of season and the number of trays. Now, and for the next month or so, I'll turn the irrigation on in our six tunnels with a turn of a few ball valves about once a week and run it for 2-3 hours. Once temperatures really drop and water in pipes could freeze (mid-20s or so) I'll probably drain the system and hopefully be able to leave it off until next year.

Now that we're about to exit October our farming footprint has really shrunk. The crops we're harvesting are confined to portions of two of our fields. We only have a few more storage crops to retrieve (last of the carrots, green and red and napa cabbage, radicchio). If we had more time, more help, more space, and more containers these items would probably be in storage but we have to be strategic as we harvest storage crops. Most of what is left should tolerate field conditions a bit longer but we'd really like to harvest the rest of the carrots this week. Join us for a workshift if you can!