Newsletter: Harvest Day In the Life

Pie pumpkins are great for roasting and pureeing.

Part of the excitement of stretching the growing season is never knowing when the other shoe is going to drop. As nice as it is having computers in our pockets to check forecasts multiple times per hour, sometimes tomorrow's forecast is as reliable as the Vikings' end-of-half defense. We'll go to bed with a harvest plan in mind and wake up to find said plan already three sheets to the wind (pun very much intended). Yesterday was definitely one of those days.

Our goal is always to get the freshest possible greens to you. This means that we hold off on harvesting until the last possible day, which for the Fall share means Sundays. We knew that temperatures were going to fall during the day, but leading up to Sunday we had seen that drop starting in the mid-afternoon. Yesterday, temperatures dipped below freezing by noon, and kept dropping. While the sun kept the hoop houses positively balmy, there was nothing we could do about the outdoor temperatures, or, more importantly, our uninsulated wash shed.

The wash shed is the oldest building on property, pre-dating even our brick house which was built in 1897. In fact, there wouldn't be a house if that building wasn't there. In the late 1800s, the Engelhardt family owned the property that is now Foxtail Farm, as well as much of the surrounding area that became Standing Cedars nature preserve. They didn't initially farm, but they definitely worked the land. Our soil is incredibly dense and clay heavy, and the Engelhardts decided to dredge the clay and make bricks! Much of original downtown Marine on St Croix is made from Engelhardt bricks, as is our farm house. The building we now use to wash our produce was originally where the bricks were cured. Last year when our well needed service, we called Vern, the local 80 year old well pump technician. He continuously referred to our spread as "The Brickyard Farm".

Getting back to the harvest, once greens were out of the ground, we formed a fire line. One person inside the hoop house handed a bin full of lettuce to the next person just outside the door, who passed it to a third person next to the warm delivery van. A fourth person opened the door and shut it as soon as the bin was inside. Lettuce is incredibly sensitive to cold. If the leaves are exposed to freezing temperatures for as little as a minute, the cell walls begin to break down. Leaves turn translucent and quickly rot.

We repeated the process at the wash shed (we have a small, insulated storage area in there). Instead of washing all of the lettuce at once like we usually do, we only washed one bin at a time. Once the lettuce had a quick dunk in the 35 degree water, we spun it and put it back in the warm room. Rinse and repeat for all 15 bins of lettuce and 12 bins of Kickin'. Our normal process involves a thorough agitation of the leaves inside the large wash tub. We then dunk the lettuce in a second tub of clean water before spinning and packaging. In order to keep the leaves from freezing, we had to skip those steps, so I again encourage you to give the lettuce and Kickin' Mixes a rinse before serving.

Barring a minor miracle, this box will have the last of the fresh greens for the year. We put three layers of row cover over the remaining spinach and Kickin' beds in our hoop houses, but the overnight temperatures Sunday night got down to about 12 degrees. It's no small feat growing leafy greens well into the fall, and after yesterday I feel justified in giving our crew and myself a big pat on the back. Look for more goods from our kitchen in the last two boxes to compliment the carrots, root veggies, squash and potatoes.

Enjoy the bounty, and Happy Thanksgiving!

-Cody

Newsletter: Harvest Day In the Life

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