CSA – Page 3 – SouthWinds Farm

Farm Update April 1, 2017

April 1, 2017April 15, 2017swfupdatesLeave a comment

Today is a busy one at the farm. One crew is harvesting, another is making a new asparagus bed and we are also working on installing fixtures in the tiny house.

Yesterday was cool and blustery most of the day. A full rainbow was visible to the west for over an hour as the rain was moving through the area while the harvest progressed.

We started delivering to the Sierra Vista Food Co-op again after a hiatus since last September. Yesterday I delivered red and green salad mix and large leaf spinach in 5 oz. deli boxes. This packaging is made from bioplastic and is compostable.

I also made an early evening delivery to The Quarry in Bisbee. If you are in southeastern AZ, check out our produce at either of these two places.

This week at the markets we continue to reserve spots and accept payments for the spring/summer CSA program. The forms are available at the markets, and in the CSA box on the right sidebar of this website, and here. We will stick with a 50-share program this round, so please let us know if you are interested in a spot. The summer shares will include potatoes, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, chiles, flowers, cucumbers, melons, okra, squash, salad mixes, among many other tasty ingredients.

Farm Update March 25, 2017

March 25, 2017March 25, 2017swfupdatesLeave a comment

This week at the markets we will be reserving spots and accepting payments for the spring/summer CSA program. The forms are also available on our website, in the CSA box on the right sidebar of the site, and here. We will stick with a 50-share program this round, so please let us know if you are interested in a spot. The summer shares will include potatoes, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, chiles, flowers, cucumbers, melons, okra, squash, salad mixes, among many other tasty ingredients.

We now have a full crew of interns – 4 total. We will have this crew for 3 more weeks and then the number will decrease to 3 for the duration of the summer. You will be seeing these hardworking people at the markets throughout the summer.

We are excited to announce we will be supplying ingredients to CafÈ Roka in Bisbee starting this Friday, so if you are in Bisbee, please stop by CafÈ Roka for a delicious meal.

We’ll see you at the markets!

farm interns Ian and Bobby preparing Iitoi’s onions for the restaurants

Farm Update March 18, 2017

March 18, 2017March 19, 2017swfupdatesLeave a comment

Next week at the markets we will start to reserve spots and accept payments for the spring/summer CSA program. We will stick with a 50-share program this round, so please let us know if you are interested in a spot. The summer shares will include potatoes, blackberries, tomatoes, peppers, chiles, flowers, cucumbers, melons, okra, squash, salad mixes, among many other tasty ingredients.

As you have also likely experienced this week, it continues to be warmer than normal for this time of year. This is mainly a good thing for our crops, but certain ones are sending up seed stalks – primarily the greens beds that we use for our salad mixes. Fortunately the spinach and baby romaine haven’t bolted, but it won’t take many more 90 degree plus days to precipitate it. Our collard greens think it is summer and the plants in the newer bed are bolting. Stay tuned for more wild weather! It isn’t even spring yet.

We’ll see you at the markets!

These carrots will be ready to pull in about 3 weeks!

Farm Update January 21, 2017

January 21, 2017January 21, 2017swfupdatesLeave a comment

Another weekend and another winter storm. The wind blew through here at gale force around 2am this morning. Some minor damage occurred in our field, a few broccoli leaves broke off, some of the rowcovers blew off and many of the supporting hoops are bent a little, but nothing major. We had a little snow blowing around late in the evening mixed in with the rain, but no snow accumulated.

As a reminder, the delivery this weekend marks the beginning of the second half of our winter CSA season and the second half payment is due for those shareholders who chose to pay in 2 installments. Thank you for the half-season payments already received.

We’ll see you at the markets!

img_1092_winterstormclosinginonthewhetstones-copy — Winter storm closing in on the Whetstones

Farm Update November 5, 2016

November 5, 2016November 12, 2016swfupdatesLeave a comment

We are finally feeling some cool fall temperatures in the early morning. The afternoons the last few days have yielded some very pleasant working conditions.

Our fall crops are growing nicely in these conditions. As you can see in the image, the Hakurei turnips are ready for harvesting. We will have them in the markets for months now.

The spinach seedlings are up; our hardworking interns thinned them yesterday afternoon. The parsnips and rutabaga plants have sprouted; we completed the thinning and infill planting yesterday as well. The carrots have some very small, pale and thin roots starting to develop. The largest beet tops are about 8in tall and some of the beetroots are at the baby size.

Seasonality is also taking away some of the tastes we have been enjoying as the summer crops slowly fade. There will be no more of the Suyo Long Cucumbers that we have been eating for months. We’ll see them again next summer. The chiles are finally slowing down, too.

We will have the Tohono O’Odham yellow watermelons for awhile, though. When the frosts come, we will do a salvage harvest and keep the ripe ones until they sell out. The okra plants are still cranking, as are the sweet peppers, tomatoes, eggplant and mousemelons.

I hope the frost holds off a little while longer, although I won’t be sad to see the end of the grasshoppers, harlequin bugs and cucumber beetles after the first few hard freezes. The last two years the first hard freeze happened on November 2 and then it was warm for a few more weeks.

We have room for a few more CSA shareholders. If you would like to sign up for the next season, we will continue taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the middle of November and run through the middle of March 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries.

We will have the forms at the markets this weekend, and they are also available on our website, here.

Farm Update October 29, 2016

October 29, 2016November 12, 2016swfupdatesLeave a comment

This week we finally removed the shade cloth and the bird netting from the blackberry bed. We will be doing a final weeding and mulching of the bed in preparation for the winter. Our blackberry harvest last summer was a bit disappointing, mostly due to the unseasonable and extremely hot 3 days right at the peak of the bloom. Next year we will use a heavier shadecloth maybe 40% or 50% and will also install an overhead watering line to help lower the temperature and increase the humidity around the blackberry bushes. That should help to substantially increase the yield.

We are also preparing two beds for planting garlic. Our plan is to triple the amount of garlic we plant because it was so popular last summer with our CSA shareholders and in the markets. We will likely plant the cloves next week. This is about as late as we can plant it, but the unseasonably warm temperatures in the long-term forecast should allow the plants to be established before it gets too cold.

If you signed up for a fall/winter CSA share, you will receive an email this weekend with the revised starting dates (starting 13Nov at Rillito and 16Nov at Green Valley) and other pertinent information.

We are still signing up CSA shareholders. If you would like to sign up for the next season, we will continue taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the middle of November and run through the middle of March 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries.

We will have the forms at the markets this weekend, and they are also available on our website, here.

img_0913-copy — the beets are growing quickly!

Farm Update October 22, 2016

October 22, 2016October 22, 2016swfupdatesLeave a comment

It has been so warm lately, but we’re not complaining. The lingering end of the warm temperatures is allowing our summer crops to keep producing.

We gambled with some late season slicer tomatoes and it looks like the fates will allow us to harvest some tasty large tomatoes. The vines are loaded with green ones that are just starting to turn, so we’ll happily take the hot weather as long as it lasts.

The warm temperatures are also hastening the ripening of the butternut squash. We have three beds that were planted a week or two apart. The butternuts from the earliest planting are almost ready to pick; the skin is turning from green to tan and is hardening. In the latest bed, the squash are still medium-sized and green. If we don’t get a frost for another month, we will have a much larger harvest of the butternut.

The sweet potatoes that we harvested last week are curing in the pumphouse in high humidity and relatively high temperatures. We had a heater going in the pumphouse most of last night and will run the heater all night tonight. We have some very tasty sweet potatoes on the way!

We will have the forms at the markets this weekend, and they are also available on our website, here.

img_0887-copy — the butternut squash are almost ready to pick !

img_0884-copy — our late-season slicing tomatoes are also almost ready to pick

Farm Update October 15, 2016

October 15, 2016October 15, 2016swfupdatesLeave a comment

We had a 42°F low temperature this morning and a high of 85° yesterday – a 45 degree diurnal temperature difference. It is definitely fall in southeast Arizona.

Today we are harvesting the sweet potatoes. They have been growing since May. The process involves first soaking the bed to soften up the soil (which we did yesterday), then clipping off all the vines at ground level (after this week, no more sweet potato greens until next summer), then digging up the sweet potatoes. The potatoes have to be dug carefully because they are brittle. The skins are also fragile, so they have to be handled pretty gently to avoid damage. We will then brush off the soil and put them in crates for curing.

The curing process optimally occurs at 85 to 90°F and at 90% relative humidity for 5 to 10 days. This heals the cuts and abrasions plus it initiates the creation of the enzymes that sweeten the potatoes. After the initial warm period of the curing process, the potatoes are then stored at about 60° for another six weeks or so which further develops the sugars.

We will have the uncured potatoes for sale in the market. These taste fine and can be used for cooking, but for the sweetest potatoes we will have to wait another couple of months.

We will have the forms at the markets this weekend, and they are also available on our website, here.

We’ll see you at the markets!

Farm Update October 8, 2016

October 8, 2016October 15, 2016swfupdatesLeave a comment

We are transitioning to our fall crops, planting apace all kinds of roots (turnips, radishes, beets, rutabagas, parsnips, carrots), cole crops(broccoli, cauliflower) and, of course, greens such as arugula, mizuna, tatsoi, various mustards, spinach, lettuces, kales and collard greens. None of these are ready yet; the first will be some of the greens, then the radishes and turnips. The last fall planting to be ready will be the parsnips in late January.

We will also soon be harvesting two popular fall vegetables that are planted in the summer: sweet potatoes and butternut squash. We will dig a few tens of pounds of sweet potatoes today and take them to the markets this weekend. They will be uncured, but still very good. The bulk of the sweet potato harvest will be cured in the coming weeks and then stored for our CSA and for the fall/winter markets.

We will have the forms at the markets this weekend and they are also available on our website, here.

Thank you for supporting organic, sustainable agriculture in southern Arizona.

Farm Update October 1, 2016

October 1, 2016September 30, 2016swfupdates2 Comments

The end of the monsoon delivered nearly an inch of rain at the farm – 0.85″ in the last week. The total rainfall at the farm since late June is 8.01″ – a pretty good rainy season this year.

Lately we have planted two types of beets, onions, carrots, lettuce mix, salad mix and radishes. Today and tomorrow we will get in the parsnips, rutabagas, kales and various greens.

We have started removing the shadecloth from the growing beds in preparation for the fall and winter growing season.

If you have signed up for the fall/winter CSA season, your email address will be added to the next CSA newsletter email distribution list and you will start receiving emails in a few weeks.

As mentioned in earlier newsletters, if you would like to sign up for our next CSA season, we will continue taking payments/reservations for our 16-week fall/winter CSA share program, deliveries for which will begin the middle of November and run through the middle of March 2017. Shares will cost $250 for 16 weekly deliveries. We will have the forms at the markets this weekend and they are also available on our website, here.