Week #13 Saturday, Sept 13th - Tuesday Sept 16th

Downloadable Word .doc for printing

In your bag
Potatoes - Purple Viking
Arugula – (give this a good wash)
Shallots
Plobano Peppers*
Sweet Red or Purple Bell Peppers
Beets
Eggplant
Garlic
Tomatoes (roma tomatoes & early girl & celebrity)
Melons or Sungold Cherry Tomatoes
Cilantro, Rosemary
*Poblano peppers are not as hot as jalapenos though they do have a little heat.  They are frequently roasted and peeled and used in Mexican/Southwestern style cooking.  

Coming Soon. 
It looks like we’ll get a couple of weeks out of the arugula patch.  We’ve got some cauliflower coming along – hopefully it will be ready next week.  Melons are done for this year.

Spring Hill Fall Work Day September 21st
Spring Hill’s Annual Fall Work Day is Sunday, September 21st, 11:00am-4:00pm this year.  Weather and vegetables permitting, we’ll dig potatoes, harvest squash, clean-up the hoop houses, make soup, press apples into cider and generally have a good time.  Bring some food to share, dishes to eat on, and your work gloves!
(We’ll eat at 3:00 so if you may want to bring some snacks.)  If you have thoughts about kids activities and want to help plan and carry them out, let me know.  We’ll also need volunteers to lead work projects, run the cider press, tend the fire and help with clean-up.  Let me know if you’re interested! 

Tomatoes
A number of you have asked about tomatoes for canning.  Our early girl and celebrity tomatoes have been coming in at a nice steady pace.  We haven’t had extras for canning and I don’t anticipate we will.  We may have extra romas – it just depends on frost.  At this point, I think I’ll just plan on sending extras to the pick-up sites in boxes as they are available and we have room in vehicles.  Help yourself.    

Farm News
What a shift in the weather we’ve had this week.  We went from summer to fall in just one day it seems.  On Monday when I went to watch David’s marching band in the Ridgeland parade and it was hot!  On Tuesday, I don’t think I took my sweatshirt off all day.
The garden is changing as well.  Zucchini and summer squash, steady producers for quite some time, are done for the season. We’re making the switch from cherry tomatoes (good for light salads)  to roma tomatoes which are good for rich tomato sauces.  We’ve now seen the last of the beans as well.  We were pleased with the beans this year, good amounts and again, a nice steady flow.  The cooler summer has been good for that.  Some years you get a hot stretch and everything comes in at once.  This year, it’s been slow and steady.  That has been nice – not to mention the cooler working conditions.  We have one planting of spinach in the field which has germinated well and now has its first true leaves.  Yesterday, Mike spent the day preparing our middle hoop house (which began the season full of beans) for a second fall planting of spinach.  He raked the soil into raised beds, added compost and sustane fertilizer, tamped it down and planted 1300’ of spinach.  We’ve got our old wobbler sprinklers lined up in there so we can keep it watered and hopefully we’ll have some nice spinach for you in October!  One experiment we tried this year which did not work was planting our Jack-o-Lantern and some pie pumpkins into rolled down winter rye and vetch.  I suspect it was some combination of the vigorous vetch and the dry season that kept the pumpkins from ever competing well.  No Jack-o-Lanterns this year.  We are excited about some of our fall crops.  We’ve got some cauliflower coming along, and rutabagas and turnips!  Lots more veggies to come!

Next Week’s Harvesters
Saturday, September 20th  – Alan & Ann Koehler, Christi & Tim Anderson,  Karin Goff & Reed McEwan, Merilee Light, Karen Ansbaugh & Barb Ryan, Angela & Andrew Barker
Tuesday, September 23rd   -  Claudia Egelhoff, Helen Torrens, Greg Neis, Carolyn Carr, John Schmid