Field Update: Lightening, Wildlife and Winding Down
Week 30, Oct. 1-7, 2012, Week 40 of the Year
Last Tuesday proved rainy with much lightning. We had a tour with Riverbend Roots planned so we followed through with that, but no field work was done. With the promise (80-100%) of more similar weather on Wednesday I did cancel the Wednesday shift and CSA too. It turns out that on Wednesday the rain ended by 10 AM, which was frustrating to me, but Evan and I made the best call considering the information we had. Because of the cancellation, harvesting was done on Thursday and Friday to fulfill all CSA members on Friday/Saturday. Phew! I am making this point, because not much time was left for field work between harvest and bad weather.
I did end up harvesting squash on Wednesday for Central Elementary School. They were experimenting with squash for a larger order in the future. Their recipe got great reviews from the kids so I believe we will receive a larger order from them in the future. October is National Farm to School Month and October 17th is National Farm to School Salad Bar day. The Ferguson Florissant school district would also like to feature our produce in the cafeteria that week as well. Your hard work is impacting elementary children just walking distance from the farm! I am guessing, but probably close to 100 lbs. of summer squash and zucchini will be donated to homeless families within the Ferguson Florissant school district this week between last and this weeks unsold Saturday market left overs. Since the newest and last succession of summer squash is really taking off I would like to remove the old plants and cover crop this area.
We are only 13 days from the average first frost date for Northern Missouri and you can add another week on for Southern Missouri and St. Louis city’s heat island. There are only five full weeks left in the program (including this one). We are clearly in the home stretch.
There will be some new items in the CSA this week: red choi, romaine lettuce, and purple top turnips. Sweet potatoes can be harvested at any time, but we are waiting for them to get as big as possible. Yesterday I noticed a few heads of cabbage that are ready, but we may hold them in the field until we get enough to service the CSA. Cabbage being able to hold, without splitting is a desirable characteristic and it was something I looked for this year when I picked a new variety (which was also suggested by Kris and Stacey Larson of Riverbend Roots Farm). Japanese turnips are big enough to pick as baby turnips, but we will wait to give them out until next week so you guys don’t get turnip overload. I also saw baby broccoli heads forming in the field- a promise of delicious broccoli soon.
I, personally, am feeling overloaded with our ever abundant but disappointingly small ‘Early’ Jalapenos. Peppers can be frozen with no prep work or blanching. Onions are they same way. You can slice them up and freeze them together for a burrito or fajita in the future. It is better to freeze crops on a cookie sheet and then put them in a freeze bag so they do not clump together and you can easily grab the amount that you need, vs. a brick or peppers. You guys should be familiar with some choi recipes from the last couple weeks but here is another one and some for the purple top turnips:
Roasted Turnips with Maple and Cardamom
NY Times blog on Turnips with recipes
Feel free to send me recipes for anything in the CSA you have had success with. Happy Eating!
Wildlife of the Week- Caterpillars
This week we saw several different kinds of caterpillars, both symbiotic and pest. I will talk about a few here.
Monarch, Danaus plexippus– At my house I have an annual Asclepias or milkweed planted. I love the flowers and so do the monarch butterflies. Last month my little patch of 3 Asclepias were constantly being visited by monarchs and this week I see more was going on than I thought. A few days ago we discovered a fat healthy caterpillar munching down the milkweed – one of its favorite foods which also makes it taste bad to predators. There are generally four generations of monarch a year and this 4th and last generation is the one that will migrate to warmer weather in Mexico or California. In a few days the caterpillar will attach itself to a leaf or stem using silk and go through the ten day chrysalis stage before migrating. The other unique thing about this last generation is that it will not die after two to six weeks like the previous generations. Instead it will live for six to eight months in order to produce eggs next spring.
Hornworm, Manduca spp. – Our volunteer, Greg, found one of these nasty little guys in the ‘Sun Gold’ tomatoes this week. Tomato and tobacco hornworms are closely related, difficult to tell apart, and both feed on plants in the Solenacae family (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco, potatoes), primarily tomatoes or tobacco. For this purpose I will be speaking about them as one, since they are hard to identify. These big, big caterpillars can eat through an entire tomato in no time and strip branches of their leaves quickly too. At my house I also grow Moonflower, a relative to the sweet potato that blooms at night revealing deliciously scented 6″ round flowers that last only one night. This week we saw the tomato or tobacco hornworm moth visiting these flowers with its specialized proboscis (feeding tube) that reaches inside the deep flower.
Swallowtails, family Papilionidae- There are over 550 species in this family! In Missouri we have nine species. Here is a great website listing Missouri butterfly species (The Butterfly Site). Adults lay eggs on plants in the Umbeliferae/Apiacae family (carrot, parsley, cilantro, dill, Queen Anne’s Lace) and the larvae/ caterpillars eat only that plant species until they become a butterfly and their diet switches to nectar. The species we saw in the field this week in caterpillar and freshly hatched adult form was the Black Swallowtail, which I identified from the markings and more easily from the larvae host plant of Queen Anne’s Lace.
Celebration- Happy Birthday Desiree!!! We miss you!
Thank Yous- Several volunteers answered the call for extra help this week. A big thanks to all of you. This week’s CSA complication made Friday’s harvest much more work so the help was very appreciated. Thanks also to all of you CSA members, who were impacted, for being so flexible in picking up your CSA on a different day.