Farm day 2007 Faqs

What’s Growing This Week:   Carrots  Salad mix Potatoes Basil Apples—-# Garlic Tomatoes Sweet peppers Onions Cooking Spinach (M, L) Eggplant (M, L)—-% Asian pears (L)            All items are in all box sizes, unless marked

Pablito .... 

When we first started our CSA back in the 1990s, we experimented with planting many different crops in the fall, as did other organic CSA vegetable farms in the area.  In doing so, we didn’t have many examples to follow.  Most farmers in the Sacramento Valley plant their crops in the spring and harvest in the summer and fall.  Fields are then prepared for their next spring crop and kept fallow and weedless all winter with herbicides.  Wheat and Alfalfa are the only real exceptions — both are fall-planted and then harvested in early summer.  We were looking for a way to expand the variety of vegetables that we offer in the winter, i.e., crops that could be planted in late summer or fall and harvested just a few months later.

Over ten years later, we have a few insights into why agriculture in this area has not focused more on fall planted vegetables.

Temperature.  While summer here is hot and winter is usually cold and rainy, fall and spring are both less predictable.  Fall in the Sacramento Valley can be beautiful and pleasant, as it has been this year, with warm days and chilly nights.  But it can also be a brutal extension of a seemingly  never-ending summer.  Today was one of the warmest days we’ve had in weeks — 89 degrees — but the same date in 1996 the high temperature was 102.  Meanwhile, the mercury today bottomed out at 40 degrees.

Rain.  Rainfall in the fall here can seem almost completely random.  Two weeks ago, an isolated storm dropped two inches of rain and hail on some of our fields in three hours.  Tiny baby carrot seedlings were broken off at the soil level.  In newly planted fields of chard and beets, big raindrops battered the soil so hard that the seedlings were unable to penetrate the hardened crust that resulted.

Wind.  Probably the most reliable component of the weather here in the fall is the dry North wind, which pours through the valley after every storm that hits the west coast, whether in the Northwest, here, or Southern California.  If all we get from the storm is clouds, the wind afterwards leaves us with a deficit of moisture that we have to make up with irrigation water.  In early fall, the wind is hot, which can damage tender vegetables.  Later in the fall, it is very cold, and can do almost as much damage.

Short days.  Planting winter crops in Northern California, unlike in the deserts of Southern California and Arizona, means that each day the crop is growing, it gets less sunlight.  This translates into slower growth as winter approaches.  The accompanying drop in temperatures means the crops we grow take much longer to reach maturity in the winter than they do in places closer to the equator — where it is warmer and the days are longer in the winter.
Combine these four factors and others, and the only certain thing about fall-planted crops is uncertainty.  Some years, a certain year has done well, but then the next year, miserably.  Or sometimes, it does well for several years in a row, then fails completely for two or three years in a row and we abandon growing it.

 Over the years, we have identified a few crops that seem to produce reliably here when planted in the fall.  With some, such as broccoli and spinach, the key has been finding the correct varieties.  Even then, though, it is difficult to predict when those crops will be ready for harvest, and what the yield will be.  It all depends on sometimes subtle differences in the weather.

 Other vegetable crops are much less reliable, but we have decided they are important enough in our CSA that we at least have to try to grow them.  Carrots, for example, will fail if the temperature during their germination period exceeds 100 degrees for more than a day or two — not an uncommon experience here in August and September when they must be planted.  Cauliflower grows wonderfully in the fall here, even when it is hot, but the heads basically disintegrate before harvest if it rains for more than a few days in a row.

 This fall is as different as all the others we’ve had:  heatwaves at the wrong time followed by pounding rain.  But overall, we are getting numerous indications that winter is coming early.  Nights are chilly and many fall crops are growing slowly after being stunted first by a late August heatwave.  So here we are, after ten plus years of growing fall vegetable crops in the Sacramento Valley, and we still haven’t gotten it figured out.  Maybe, just maybe, there’s  a good reason more farmers here don’t do it.

It’s looking like it’s going to be a short season for Peppers this year.  However, right now the field is chock full of beautiful, ripe fruit — especially yellow and red bells.  We normally don’t send more than a pound of peppers in each week’s CSA box, but today we are going to increase the amount.  Remember that roasted peppers can easily be frozen for later use, and can be packed tightly into a small container that doesn’t take up much space in your freezer.

Roasting peppers is easy.  Simply place them on a cookie sheet, whole, and place under the broiler in your oven.  As the top of the peppers roast and turn brown,  turn them a quarter turn.  When all three or four sides are browned, remove from the oven put them in a plastic bag and seal it loosely.  Allow the peppers to steam for 10 minutes or so.  Remove from the bag and peel off the skins and remove the seeds.  Doing this under running water or in a bowl of water makes it easier and keeps you from burning your fingers, although you will lose a bit of the flavor.  Once the peppers are peeled, you can store them in the fridge for a week or so, or pack into a plastic container and freeze.

Our first planting of spinach got a little bigger than we expected over the weekend; it is now probably best used for cooking or at least “wilted”.  Meanwhile, the second planting was about the right size to combine with the first lettuce and arugula for our first Salad Mix of the fall.  Please see the note to the right regarding our bagged greens.

With the near-complete failure of our 200 apple trees to produce fruit this year, we have now begun purchasing apples from another organic grower.  For the next month or so, we will also continue to have Asian Pears and Grapes.  Our Fuyu Persimmons have begun to ripen and we will start harvesting soon.  And by mid-November, we hope to see the earliest Satsuma Mandarins ripen.

Thanks,
    Pablito
 

Please make sure to include your account name, the one on the sign off sheet & on the box, in every correspondance to Valerie

Recipes............................

CSA membership fees ~payment due day is first of month.~~ Quarterly discounts are given for any 3 month period only if paid in advance.
They are given as an extra credit when the payment is applied, you won't see your monthly rate change.

For mid-month changes,  Up/downgrades are $5 per week per increment.  Small to large is $10.

Vacations & Billing Inquiries
We need seven days notice before a vacation hold or other change of service.
Contact Valerie through voicemail at (530) 756-2800, or e-mail Goldenbell@aol.com.  Include your account name in full (what's on the sign off sheet).

Account Balance Inquiries The account sheet is hiding under the sign off sheet each week with your account balance on it.  Mid month I've been e-mailing statments, so if you're not getting it send me an e-mail requesting to be added to the list. To be able to read the statements you need to be logged in as an administrator on a PC, and virus programs may corrupt the file. Some Mac operating systems do allow the file to be viewed.  We can't resend them, and it wouldn't work any better the second time anyway.

MAILING ADDRESS:
Terra Firma Farms, Inc
P.O. Box 836
Winters, CA 95694
(530) 756-2800
www.terrafirmafarm.com
Goldenbell@aol.com

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