Farmer’s Eye View
Farmer’s Eye View –
Linda Halley, Oct. 26, 2011
LAST MARKET IS OCTOBER 28TH!
For Saturday’s
Market, Oct. 28:
Broccoli
Broccoli Romanesco - discover something new
Chard – sweet cooking greens for fall.
Green, Red and Red Savoy Cabbage
Cauliflower : Graffiti Purple, or standard White, or nutritious Orange Cheddar
GARLIC – Now selling One Sun Porcelain! Stock up, it keeps.
Seed Garlic - Prepped cloves of Asian Tempest or One Sun
Porcelain with planting instructions. October is garlic planting month!
Kales: Lacinato, Red and Green – the tender tops signal the end of the season is around the corner
Onions – Red or White
Strawberries – Yes, last of the season Seascape Everbearing!
Sweet Potatoes!! The only place to buy “fingerling” sweet potatoes, and the last oriental and white, too.
Final Farmer’s Eye View – Looking Ahead to
Winter
Even though we still are harvesting the hardiest crops, the season feels soooo over. With the gorgeous October weather we were able to get all of our fall work done before the ink on the “To Do” list dried. Cover crops have been sowed, machinery and totes cleaned and stored, records updated and supply inventories taken.
What will be left for winter, you ask? Winter holds three important rewards, assessment, planning and rejuvenation. Since farm work is so intense during the growing season, with 60 hour weeks for operators not so unusual, we’re lucky there is a Minnesota winter. Smart farmers rejuvenate, but save considerable time for assessing and planning, too. We are already crunching numbers to compare labor costs to last season. No secret, area crops in 2011 were poor and the frost free days were below average. So far, it doesn’t look like labor hours have a direct correlation to crop yields and sales. As you can imagine, much of what goes in to growing a crop is the same whether the crop produces a bounty or freezes off just before maturity. Surprising, too, is that it takes nearly as much time to harvest 500 pounds of tomatoes as 100 pounds, if you have to check the same 400 plants.
Our belief in crop diversity has been reinforced this year. As we calculate our income by crop we are thankful that not all crops were in their critical stage during the monsoon-like early season or during the 100 plus degree temperature spike. Some crops did take major hits with those weather extremes, a few others did better than usual.
Now we are making appointments with buyers to share expectations for next year. We will soon be attending market vendor meetings, too. It will be our chance to get some market wide sales data from the managers. By December we will have placed our seed orders and sourced hard to find supplies. We also start interviewing employees for next season in November.
As I describe what lies ahead, I’m getting pretty excited. Winter is most certainly a welcome, yet productive, season for us farmers.
Thank you for your patronage this season. We will be back growing in the greenhouse beginning in March and will bring our garden transplants to stores and markets the first of May.
Linda Halley and the GOE crew