September 25, 2022 This last Thursday marked the first official day of fall, and rarely does the weather so perfectly match the calendar transition of the seasons. After a chillier than anticipated Thursday market, we woke up Friday morning to frost on the ground. It didn’t catch us completely unawares. The forecast of overnight 2ºC was enough to get us scrambling to get the squash in and greenhouse windows closed up. Nathan also spent a bit of time to test all the greenhouse furnaces and make minor repairs. There wasn’t time to get the tomatoes picked so we had to take our chances on them. Well the frost was light enough that we mostly won on that gamble. The plants are mostly dead, but the fruit survived well enough that we were still able to get them picked on Saturday.
On the one hand we’ll miss the income that the tomato plants could have represented, but on the other hand we are so ready for this transition in the season. Time to move on to squash and rutabagas and start planning for bringing in the storage crops.
This week in CSA we have Galexy Cherry, Plum Tomatoes, Buttercup Squash, Carrots, Beets, Rutabegas, and Cilantro.
If you are looking for a Turkey for Thanksgiving, we just found out our friends at Little Fields farm still have some available. Raised on Pasture, Non GMO feed. If you are local to the Kitchener or London areas you can contact them directly, or if it is more convenient for you to pick up through us, get in touch with us and we can bring them to the Stop’s market on Saturday the 8th. Fresh, $7 per pound. Expecting weights between 14 and 22 lbs if there is a specific size you would like to aim for.
Somewhere between all the harvesting we are trying to make time for some of our fall projects. The most important this year is making some upgrades to one greenhouse. This year the plastic needs to be replaced. If we went by the book, it should have been done last year, but one extra year seems to be reasonable before it tends to develop holes faster than we can patch them. Six years ago when we built this greenhouse we planned to upgrade the end-walls to ridged polycarbonate when we replaced the top plastic. Funny how those far off deadlines sneak up on you before you know it. Over the last six years we’ve also learned a few things about how we like doing greenhouse ends so there will be a few upgrades from how we would have done them when we built the greenhouse. Anyway, today we are picking up supplies for that project. Then we just need to find time to chip away at the installation
Our summer CSA season is almost at a close so if you are interested in continuing for the winter this would be a good time to start thinking about that. This week is the last pickup of the season for our bi weekly shares, and second last for weekly shares. The next block is now live on the online store and runs until the end of January. Well that’s all for this week
Happy ordering!
Nathan and Aleta Klassen
https://www.localline.ca/nith-valley-organics
