Many of the dry bean varieties have been pulled up in the field. In the past we have planted 2 acres of dry beans and this year we planted 5! Once the plants are pulled they finish drying out on large pieces of landscape cloth. We then thresh, sort and clean mostly by hand. Getting beans from the field into those cute little hand-stamped bags of ours takes a lot of labor and love. We are excited to offer our beans to the CSA each month and soon you’ll find them back on the market tables too.
Here is a picture of just one of the dozens of tarps of beans drying in the field and another pic of some of the varieties I checked in on a couple weeks ago. You can see Mitla Black Tepary, Blue Moro, Tiger Eye, King City Pink, & Jacob’s Cattle. Can you figure out which ones are which?
Other news, our pepper season is on as I’m sure you’ve noticed as well as our tomato varieties. The green zebra tomatoes have petered out and the Sungolds have slowed down a bit but we still have a lot of the Beefsteak and some Early Girl plants producing a lot. I know your boxes have been consistently loaded with the Solanum family so I’m giving you a break on the peppers this week. Coming up in your shares you’ll see purple wax beans appear! We grow the yellow beans earlier in the year especially for the CSA and the purple variety in the fall for all of you.
Our strawberries are no longer being harvested. The last picking was at our Field Day event. It is a bit early in the year for us to till in the strawberries but we had a bad year with the Drysophila fly and our crew was picking out more bad ones than good so it didn’t make sense to harvest them any more. I hope you all got your fill and were able to freeze some!
You’ll also see winter squash in the next 2-3 weeks. They have been cut off from the vines and are curing in the fields. This allows the rind to harden, for immature fruits to mature, for wounds to heal and to sweeten up its flavor. The crew will bring them into the pack out soon for storing and packing.
The pictures of the squash are from a week or so ago when Teresa and I checked on the crop to see how close they were to being ready to cutting off from the plant. What are we looking for? We look to see that most of the vine has died back, that the stems are brown and mostly woody, and for the discolored spot on the side that has contact with the soil. These plants were close but not ready at the time I took the pictures. The crew cut some of the varieties off the following week. Can you name these varieties?