If Terra Firma chose to farm this way, we would end our winter season CSA boxes around the first of April, and then start deliveries again in mid-June.  Instead, we have committed ourselves to producing vegetables and fruit during this period.  These crops — peas, strawberries, salad greens — are extremely sensitive to heat.  But it has become almost a certainty  in the last five years that we will have an extreme, record-breaking heatwave during April or May.  The effects will depend on the duration of the weather event and its timing, but range from complete crop loss to severe reduction in yield or quality of the crops.

Five days of 105 degree heat will render lettuce inedible, cook strawberry plants along with their fruit, and shrivel pea plants and pods both.  That’s why, when last week’s forecast called for a major heatwave, we assumed the worst and tried to harvest some lettuce before it burned up.  In order to do so, we picked it two days before your boxes were packed.  Instead, we should have simply let the weather play itself out.  The salad mix we picked for the Wednesday CSA boxes ended up breaking down quickly after we shipped it to you.  Meanwhile, the hot weather only lasted two days or so, and only some of the lettuce left in the field turned bitter.  Most of the salad greens pulled through, and we were able to harvest them in much cooler weather for the Thursday and Friday CSA boxes.

 In the strawberry field, the heat cooked thousands of berries that we had to pick and throw on the ground.  But there were also plenty of berries that appeared to have survived the heat, and tasted great.  Unfortunately, these berries clearly had an extremely short shelf-life, and several subscribers have informed us that they were mostly or totally unusable.  We maybe should have guessed that this might happen, and simply not have sent you berries last week.

 Heat damage to cherries, however, is a new one for us.  We are accustomed to losing cherries to rain — as we did a few weeks back at the start of the season.  However, it is now clear that 105 degrees is almost as bad.  The cherries we harvested Monday and Tuesday for your boxes looked and tasted fine when we packed them.  But after just a few days, they apparently got quite soft and some became moldy.

 Had the heatwave gone on for longer, or had we anticipated these problems and simply left the items out of your boxes, we would have been hard pressed to put together a box even close to the full value our customers are paying for.  We apologize to anyone and everyone who experienced any or all of the quality problems I outlined above.  We are including some extra fruit in all the boxes this week to make up for the loss of produce last week, and we are confident that both the strawberries and the cherries in this week’s boxes will meet the quality standards that we endeavor to maintain.

Harvesting the multiple crops we grow requires dozens of decisions every day:  what day and what time to harvest, how often and how much; what size, shape, color, ripeness.  Time is always an issue, and when it’s hot, we are running against not just the clock but the thermometer.  We start the day at 6 a.m. this time of year, but during a heatwave, it will be 90 degrees by 10 am — basically too late to harvest salad greens, for example, or strawberries.  On these days we wish we had 100 people working instead of 30, and that we could send them all home once the mercury hits 95 degrees.  There are few if any crops that should really be harvested when it is 100 degrees, but we don’t always have a choice.  We triage the situation as best we can.

 We will be spending some time this week going over all our quality standards with our harvesters as well as CSA box packers.  And we will be reminding ourselves that sometimes it is better to leave crops in the field then send them to our customers and let them down.  Again, we apologize for any disappointment you experienced last week.

STRAWBERRY PICKING…
If the weather cooperates this week, we may decide to have a U-Pick day on Saturday.  If you are interested in attending, go to http://terrafirmafarm.camp9.org and sign up as a member.  Wednesday or Thursday we will send out an email blast if conditions look promising.

IN YOUR BOXES
We are confident that both the Strawberries and Cherries in this week’s boxes will be high quality and not create any disappointments when you get them home.  If you don’t eat the strawberries immediately, they will store much better in a sealed plastic container than in either a paper or plastic bag.

 Spinach in your boxes today is the big-leafed kind for cooking.  We’ve sent a big bag, or bunch, that will cook down to be just two cups or so.  While spinach deals with hot weather better than lettuce, it is still delicate and perishable and should be used within two days of getting your box.  Also, bunched spinach is always dirtier than loose since it is bunched before washing.  Take care to soak the spinach two or three times in plenty of water, draining it each time.  If there’s still silt in the water, rinse it again.

 Cilantro is the Goldilocks of herbs — it doesn’t like it too hot, or too cold.  In fact, our cilantro season here is about two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the fall.  And even though we grow lots of tomatoes, we almost never have them at the same time as this classic salsa herb.  Good thing there are lots of other great ways to use cilantro, as in this week’s recipe.

 Our own Potatoes got planted late this year.  They are growing beautifully and will be ready to start harvesting in two or three more weeks, beginning with Yukon Golds.  In the meantime, we’ve brought in some from another farm.

Thanks,
     Pablito