Most of the delicata squash has now been harvested into crates and stored in the lower level of the barn where temperatures are somewhat moderate.  The remainder will be harvested on Monday.  Then the  drip tape will be removed from the field and the vines from the squash plants will be chopped so they can start to decompose in the field.  It looks like the spaghetti squash is ready so it will be harvested next.  The pumpkins are also ready so we are considering getting them out of the field and dipping them in an organically approved solution of hydrogen peroxide so they will hopefully store until later in September.  Greenhouse #1 is nearly ready for the crates of butternut squash that will be harvested soon.  Tables were removed from one side of the  greenhouse and wood flooring was placed on the ground so we can move the crates of squash around with a pallet jack.  It looks like the yield from  the butternut will be similar to last year’s harvest, which amounted to several thousand pounds, so we will again offer good pricing on  the butternut squash to our customers.  Another of our fall crops is potatoes and it looks like they are sizing up.   Last week we dug several hills of potatoes and they averaged about 10 to 15 tubers per hill.  Many are at the size of a golf ball now and we expect that  they will more than double in size over the next couple of weeks.  Potatoes at this stage need a lot of water so we are hoping for rain this week.  We also dug up some of the sweet potatoes and they were quite big already with a lot of tubers under each plant.  The sweet potatoes need to be dug before a frost so we will be watching the temperature forecasts.  A couple of salsify plants were dug to see how they are doing and it seems that the roots are already ¾ inch in diameter.  Salsify still has a couple of months to go before it needs to come out of the ground so it should  size up considerably more before then.  Onions should be ready for sale this week and there is plenty of garlic still available.  We have started the planning process for next year’s  bedding plants.  We will be ordering some supplies soon and sourcing seeds for next year.  We were pleased to hear that we should be able to get seed for our most popular tomato varieties – the sun sugar and sun gold tomatoes.  Some of our  customers requested that we grow strawberry plants and we had a lot of requests last year for poblano peppers so we will grow those for next spring.   

 George Kohn, West Star Farm 

Nearly all the crops are early and big this year due to the timely rain and warm weather. Even the popcorn is nearly 8 feet tall and forming ears and silks.  The raspberries are nearly ready to produce a second  crop for the season as the branches are now loaded with green buds.  The potatoes are forming hooks underground.  The hooks are formed on the root structure of the plant and each hook represents a potential potato. We started applying an organic fish fertilizer to the potato plants  to help set the hooks on the plant so they do not abort.  A few of the plants that we dug up last week had 15 to 16 hooks.  The blue potatoes were planted this year without cutting the seed.  As a result, the rows are heavily populated with potato plants and it looks like we could have a lot of blue potatoes available this fall if they all mature.  With the organic fish fertilizer, we incorporated an organic product that will hopefully help the plants resist the late blight.  Late blight has been confirmed in both potatoes and tomatoes in several counties in Wisconsin.  The tomatoes are starting to ripen fairly fast now so we should see a good crop in the next few weeks.  As always, the sun sugar cherry tomatoes are sweet and the plants have lots of tomatoes.  It is hard to walk by the plants and not pick off a tomato to eat.  The small greenhouse was planted earlier  this year with tomatoes, okra and ghost peppers.  A lot of okra has already been harvested from the plants and it looks like a lot more may be ripening soon.  The ghost peppers are the world’s hottest pepper at 1 million scoville units.  They are also known as the bhut jolokia  pepper.  The plants have lots of green, wrinkly looking peppers on them so we will leave them on the plants for a while to see if they turn color when they ripen.  We began harvesting corn last week and expect to have more this week.  There is a difference in ear size depending on the variety of corn.  The trade off is that the variety with smaller ears seems to have a sweeter flavor than the larger ear variety but all the varieties harvested so far this year have a very nice sweet corn flavor.  A lot of attention last week was directed toward cleaning up some small areas of weeds between rows and around the perimeter of the fields.  Some weeds are forming seed heads so we do not want to see them go to seed.  We will probably not see a lot of new weed growth any more this year but the seeds from the weeds would still be around next year to cause problems.  The fields look very nice when they are free of weeds so it makes us all feel good about working at the farm.

George Kohn, West Star Farm           

The butternut squash plants are now so big that it looks like we will not be able to get through the fields any more to fertilize them without stepping on the vines.  We sprayed them last week with a mixture of organic fertilizer and an organic product that smells like cedar.  The cedar smell is designed to repel the cucumber beetle which was starting to invade the field.  The delicata squash field is full of blossoms and small fruit.  The fields are all fairly clean of weeds and many of the plants are big enough now that they will shade any further growth of weeds. The salsify crop is about 6” tall and the rows are full with plants.  We have about 3500 feet of salsify planted this year so we hope to have a good supply of salsify this fall.  Some of the first planting of sweet corn is tasseling so we will be watching the corn now for ear formation.  The raspberries are ripe and it looks like there are a lot of them so we will be picking them on Monday.  The potato planting was finished last week.  We received a lot of the all blue variety of potato seed earlier this year so we worked up an extra field to plant them.  There will possibly be a lot of blue potatoes available in September when we harvest them.  We didn’t need the entire extra field for the potatoes so the rest of the field was planted with a cover crop of buckwheat.  Buckwheat is a fast growing grain that forms a good vegetative mass which shades weed growth.  It will be chopped down before it goes to seed.  When buckwheat flowers, the honey bees at the farm find the buckwheat blossoms and resulting buckwheat honey is quite good.  Earlier this year a neighbor loaned their brush mower and tractor to us so we could cut down some winter rye that was about 5 foot tall.  It was too big for us to use our chopper to chop it down so the brush mower worked very well for doing that.  Last week we decided to purchase our own brush mower.  It is hooked up to the 3 point hitch on the John Deere tractor and operated by the PTO on the tractor.  We can now get into small areas and mow down weeds before they go to seed.  Some thistles were starting to go to seed so before we got the mower we had started cutting them by hand with a scythe.  Unfortunately, after we cut them, while the thistles were lying on the ground, the seed heads opened even more to the point where they were ready to blow around with a wind. So we flamed the seed heads first and then went into the field with the brush mower and mowed them down.  Thistles usually grow in patches in fields so they are somewhat controllable if they are continually cut down.  The brush mower will also permit us to mow around the edges of the fields which will help to keep the fields looking a lot nicer.  Because many of the crops are earlier than normal this year, we will be watching the garlic this week for dying of the leaves.  Each leaf on the plant represents a wrapper on the bulb so when a certain number of leaves die back, we will dig the garlic to preserve the maximum number of wrappers on the bulbs.  More wrappers on the bulb enhance the storage of the bulbs.  We dug some garlic last week and the bulbs are already big and the flavor is quite good.   

George Kohn
West Star Farm

Saturday, July 10, 2010

A day or so ago, our 10-year old daughter, Carley, told us she is now a vegetarian.  We weren't as shocked as she thought we might be - she's has spent the last 6 months asking a lot of questions about where the meat we sell to restaurants and include in our meat share come from, and we have answered her honestly.  We tell her that all of our meat producers are humane to the animals they raise and how they are raised, and we also tell her about the end of that animal's life.  While my husband and I and our 15-year old daughter, Rachel, remain omnivours, we have all agreed to try to share in Carley's preferred diet.

Today, I am making my first vegetarian meal which our entire family will share (however, the three of us will also parttake of grass-fed porterhouse on the grill with Carley's permission to eat it in front of her).  Understand, I am a good cook and a better baker, and since I was raised on a farm, vegetables have always played a huge part in my diet.  Making sure my daughter gets everything she needs as a vegetarian is another story.

Any advice you have for me, feel free to post it on our blog, or you can join us on Facebook at Simply Wisconsin, LLC, and advise me from there.

Tonight's menu (which Carley helped me plan with the help of some of my cookbooks and the internet)consists of:

Fresh shelling peas, cheese summer squash bake (which includes bread an an ingredient) with fresh parmesan, and kale sauteed in hickory smoked grapeseed oil with lemon-herb seasoning and sea salt.

I love kale, although Carley has never given it a fair shake, and everyone in our family loves peas and summer squash.  Let's hope that Carley enjoys her first official vegetarian meal - I will keep you posted!

Deb

We are happy to welcome you to the official registration for our 2010 CSA Winter Share season!

We are offering two different produce shares and egg shares, a cheese share, a meat share, and a pantry share for winter.  We offer a $45 discount on your total purchase which includes any produce share, meat share or pantry share (individual egg and cheese shares are not eligible for the discount).  To quality for the early sign-up discount, you must sign-up and pay in full no later than August 15, 2010.

Currently, we have sites available in Chicago proper (we will be adding Illinois North, Western Chicago suburbs, Madison, Monona, and Milwaukee within the next few days pending confirmation of sites).

Chicago CSA Winter Share pick-up dates are on Tuesdays as follows:  Nov 2, Nov 9, Nov 16, Nov 30, Dec 7, Dec 14, Dec 21, Dec 28, Jan 4, and January 11, 2011

• 2418 W. Grace Street (4-8 pm)
• 5061 N. Claremont (Lincoln Square) (4-8 pm)
• Luther Memorial, 2500 W. Wilson (4-7 pm)
• Summerdale Cmty Church, 1700 W. Farragut (4-7 pm)
• 737 W. Gordon Terrace (4-8 pm)
• 5056 N. Ravenswood (4-8 pm)
• 6701 N. Rockwell (4-8 pm)
• 5604 N. Kenneth (4-8 pm)
• The Kid’s Table, 2337 W. North Ave (3-7 pm)
• 2432 N. Washtenaw (Logan Square) (4-8 pm)

Download a 2010 Chicago Area CSA Winter Share Brochure

If you wish to sign-up online and pay via Google Checkout or select the invoice option, follow the link below:

http://simplywisconsin.smallfarmcentral.com/members

If you wish to sign-up online through our online store and pay via PayPal, follow the link below:

http://www.simplywi.com/store/233

If you have questions, please don't hesitate to contact us at simplywisconsin@yahoo.com.

-Simply Wisconsin

Hi everyone!  Our first CSA delivery was yesterday, and one of our members E-mailed me about her CSA box - I thought I would share our conversation with you to give you a better idea of questions and concerns people have, and our response to those concerns:

Hi Lillian,

Thanks so much for the feedback - it's much appreciated!  Arugula is difficult to grow in hot weather, and flea beatles LOVE arugula, thus the holes.  The only way organic farmers can avoid that is to use row cover to keep them out, however, when row cover is used, you run the risk of having the arugula "bolt" (go to seed) because it gets too much heat, so we figure the holes, while they don't look great, doesn't affect the taste!

I understand the spinach quantity concern - this delivery of spinach was more to add to a salad or make a pesto or side dish, not the quantity you would need for cooked spinach.

Thanks again for giving us your input - it only helps make the CSA better each week!

 Deb

 -----Original Message-----

From: Lillian Li

Hi,

My lettuce and strawberries looked great yesterday.  I'm not expecting them to hold up like supermarket produce.   The arugula had some yellowed leaves and some with a lot of holes, but not a big deal since I probably won' t use it all.  My only "complaint" might be that the portion of the spinach seemed kind of small.  My kids won't eat it probably so it is just right for my family, but I can see that it might not be enough for some.

I appreciate all the communication around this first week.  The newsletter was very helpful.  I told myself yesterday I should have signed up years ago.  I am looking forward to my next box and being part of this csa in upcoming years.  I've also been telling friends about it.

Sincerely,  Lillian Hsu

-----Original Message-----

From: Simply Wisconsin  LLC <simplywisconsin@yahoo.com>

Date: Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:17:30

Subject: CSA - fun and delicious . . . and now for the education part!

Hi everyone,

With very few exceptions, it sounds like our first CSA delivery went very well - thanks to the combined efforts of our farmers, our staff, our site hosts, and you (our members)!  My thanks for everyone for making a concerted effort to help make the first week successful.   We have had quite a few compliments on the produce, and a few complaints.  Since an important part of the CSA is educating our members, I thought I would share a few items with you all . . .

First, while we always anticipate that produce will hold exceptionally well for the period listed in the newsletter, we have had rain every day for the past 7 days (and almost literally no sunshine (until this morning) for the last 6 days!  Because of the extra moisture, the holding quality of the lettuce and strawberries won't be what we hoped, and those items should be used first (for those of you who didn't eat all of your berries when you received them that is!). 

Second, my apologies to those of you who received sub-par strawberries or lettuce.  Our farmers do an exceptional job, and really know their stuff, and although everything may have looked terrific when it was picked and shipped to us, and subsequently when it was packed into CSA boxes, you may have received a product that was not the quality we intended.  Any time you have excessive rain, it leads to the possibility of more dirt or sand on the produce than expected, and overwashing on the farmer's end to give you a more appealing produce visually also makes the produce less viable on your end. 

Third, we are hoping that everyone can receive strawberries in next week's box, as the sun is shining here - an almost unfamiliar site, considering . . .

Last but not least, thanks to all of you who received and understood the E-mail request for my need for family time last night as we watched my daughter Rachel's varsity basketball summer league in three exciting games last night!  They won 2 games to 1!

As always, thanks for your support of local family farms - they're a fading breed, and it helps to know that you all want to keep them in the forefront of midwestern agriculture!

Deb

Our focus at the beginning of last week was on watering and weeding.  Then rain started on Wednesday so it alleviated the need to water the crops.  Heavy rains on Saturday again provided a much needed quantity of water to the crops.  When we can get back into the fields, we will again focus on cleaning up some of the remaining weeds. Most of the winter squash is up now so we were able to cultivate the field with the tractor.  We followed that with a hand weeding to eliminate some of the weeds that were in the row.  We also cultivated the corn.  Another planting of corn was done on Thursday and we may try to get one more planting in this week if the soil dries out. We started making raised beds for the melons and cucumbers and will try to get them planted early this week.  Only a few other smaller crops remain to be planted.  The first planting of lettuce is big enough to harvest and all the other crops look good.  The tomato plants are growing fast so we pounded in metal T posts between the plants this week and started stringing the support system for the tomatoes. The peas are flowering and vining out so they should be ready in a few weeks. The cabbages, broccoli, kale, and chard plants are over 12” in diameter and some of the kohlrabi are ready for harvest.  The arugula was covered with row cover shortly after it was planted to prevent the flea beetle from eating the leaves.  We pulled up a corner of the row cover last week and there appeared to be little damage from the flea beetle .  The flea beetles are especially destructive of the eggplant leaves but the plant usually grows out of the damage.  The flea beetles should be nearing the end of their cycle.  We also noticed some minimal damage from the cucumber beetle on the squash leaves.  When we can get back into the field, we will spray some organically approved cedar spray to deter them.  The garlic has not yet formed scapes. We talked to a couple of other growers in the area who also noted that some varieties have not yet formed scapes.  We would expect to see scapes this week.  Scapes have a mild garlic flavor and are quite delicious when diced and fried in butter or oil.

 George Kohn, West Star Farm

The raspberries are blooming profusely and the bees are very busy pollinating!  It looks like a bumper crop coming on this season!

Rhubarb is extra nice and plentiful.  So far, we have been harvesting only from the perennial herbs.  The herbs we have started from seed are being transplanted into the field as they are ready.  Dill is coming up - looking good!  A new herb for us this year is sweet marjoram.

Celery is ready to be transplanted!  More later . . .

Lena and LeRoy Yoder, L & L Greenhouse

Many of our outdoor crops are now planted and the weather for this week looks like we should be able to finish much of the spring planting.  We started planting tomatoes last week.  The holes for the tomato plants are all dug and we added compost and some gypsum to each hole.  The gypsum is a good source of calcium and helps to prevent blossom end rot on the tomatoes.  Our goal for this week is to plant the rest of the tomatoes, peppers, popcorn, the spaghetti squash, pumpkins, okra, and the remainder of the parsley that we did not get in last week.  We have several rows of flat leaf parsley already planted but stopped doing any more transplanting last week so we could take care of the plants that were already in the fields.  The soil was very dry so we focused on getting water to the plants.  But then on Friday we got about ½ inch of rain so that helped all the new plants get off to a good start.  Once we get our planting done, we will concentrate on putting drip irrigation down for many of the crops.  The first planting of sweet corn  is about 3 inches tall and the second planting is starting to poke through the ground.  We did the third planting on Thursday night.  Since we had the corn planter out of the shed and hooked up to the tractor, we also planted all of the acorn and butternut squash with the corn planter.  The corn planter uses a vacuum pump to suck individual seeds up against predrilled holes on a flat plate.  The plate rotates around and when the hole with the seed sucked up against it reaches a drop down point, the vacuum is released from that hole and the seed drops down the chute and into the ground.  Because the squash seed is much different than corn seed, we had a special plate made to accommodate the squash seed.  Even the squash seeds vary in size depending on the variety of squash so we have to adjust the vacuum setting for each variety.  Using the planter saves us a lot of time in planting.  We were able to plant about 3 acres of squash in  approximately 2 hours.  For delicata squash, we started the plants from seed in the greenhouse about 3 weeks ago and put those plants into the field as transplants.  We have had better results with the delicata transplants than with direct seeding into the field.  Our greenhouses are starting to show signs of emptiness.  This week we will move the 4^th and final planting of tomatoes outside to harden them off.  Many of the pepper varieties are nearly sold out.  Within the next few weeks, we will evaluate the sales of each variety of plants for this year and make adjustments for next year.  We have had a lot of requests for poblana peppers so we will definitely add those to our pepper varieties for next  year.      

 George Kohn, West Star Farm

The spring planting full moon is coming up this Thursday, and we will be getting in the last of the vegetable seeds for the season. We have seen the influence of the moon on our crops, having done a very unscientific study with side by side plots. It was impressive enough to convince us to plant according to the schedule of the moon instead of the schedule of the farm!

Lambs are growing, chickens are happy, and so far we've seen no sign of the cougar who has been wandering the neighborhood.

Leslie Kolkmeier