Farmer Kurt’s Field Notes August 10, 2024

The Elmore cooler was finally moved to its new site in Toledo.

We said good-bye to our old Elmore site cooler this week. Sonya from Tatum Park has been wanting to buy it for months now, so they have a place to store their veggies from their urban garden project. It felt really good to load it up onto a truck and drop it off at her place. It’s going to a good home who will use it well. Corinna and her Elmore CSA site hosts will now pull Elmore shares from the cooler I just created in the red barn. Unfortunately the downside is that they’ll be looking right into the sun as they wait inside the barn doors for customers. Maybe we’ll set up a tent to see if that helps.

NEW cooler project is DONE! The spray foam guys were out on Monday to FINALLY finish insulating our new DIY cooler in the barn. If you recall, I framed out two spaces in our barn. One area is an “L” shape and it’s our tomato “cool room.” I keep this cooled to around 50 degrees Fahrenheit — which is just how our tomatoes like it (not too cold, but cold enough to keep them lasting). I now have a place to store all these tomatoes as they come in from the field. The corner space of the barn space is a second cooler. This one is big enough to hold all the Elmore site boxes, as well as our fruit share delivery each week. I got both spaces hooked up with A/C units and Cool-bots, and they are cooling like a charm.

Last weekend, I took my H2A guys swimming on the lake! I have a buddy Jack with a boat, and we spent a good 4 hours swimming, relaxing, and laughing off the shores of Maumee Bay park. They loved it. It’s important for me to do things like this with our crew, to make sure they feel appreciated and like family. It’s one of the reasons they like working for us, and I could tell this made a big impression.

You’re getting potatoes this week! Our potatoes come from Mile Creek Farm outside of Dayton, Ohio. We haven’t grown our own potatoes in over 5 years now. We used to grow them, but after our first year, the Colorado potato beetles were so bad, they would just decimate the crop. Since those beetles burrow down and overwinter, it’s very hard to get rid of them. They find your potatoes no matter where you plant them. I finally just gave up and outsourced this crop to one of the members of our Food Co-op Great River Organics (of which we are a co-owner). Ben and Emily Jaekle do a great job, and they will be our potato farmers all season.

Green beans are being grown on a trellis system in this high tunnel

You’re also getting beans in your box this week. The variety name is “dragon langerie” which is French for “dragon tongue.” The first year we grew them, Corinna read my handwriting wrong, and she told everyone in the CSA that they were “dragon lingerie.” I believe it was CSA member Paula Ross who discretely corrected her. She and I still laugh about that.

These beans aren’t actually green in color, though. They’re more of a light yellow, flat bean with purple stripes, which disappear when cooked. You can eat the pods, too. Beans, peas, and cherry tomatoes are my most time-consuming crops to harvest. We don’t have a mechanical harvester like the giant farms do — which is why you see beans priced at $1/lb in some grocery stores). We could never afford to grow them at that price, since we hand pick them. If they ever show up in the online store, you’ll see a higher price tag, to cover our harvest costs. So enjoy these beans. They’re a lot of work! Speaking of beans, John and Noah planted a second planting of beans in one of our high tunnels. But their crop is trellised. They tried this for the first time last year and it went so well, they wanted to do it again.

Juan harvests eggplant

Eggplant is now in full swing. I was able to sneak some into the box for Perrysburg LAST week as a surprise bonus, so I’m doing it this week for the first half of the week (Elmore and Sylvania only). Tomato harvest has also begun. Guys picked the first cherry tomatoes last week, and I now have enough yield to put them in your box. This will now become a regular rhythm of our week — seems like there are always tomatoes to pick.

Thanks to the Smolenskis for volunteering to bag corn this week. They actually used a system that was faster than the one I use with my own crew! If you want to volunteer bagging corn on Monday or Wednesday, please reach out to Corinna. She has 5 spots open.

I’ve had to put my Lift Gate on hold for this year. Corinna and I are watching the budget, and this month is always the tightest month for us cash-flow wise. And that truck accident set us back. But we’ve found a work-around to load up our truck each week with bins that is saving us about 30 minutes of back-breaking work. We’re loading up the carts right onto our U-boats now, and then Josiah forklifts the U-boats right onto the box truck. I leave them on the carts and drive them to the site that way. It’s working okay for now. We’ve had one week where we tipped a U-boat and cracked 4 bins, but I’m crossing my fingers that we can make it thru the season, and we’ll get that Lift Gate next year with our capital improvement budget.

We got some rain last week. I always appreciate when it rains because that’s really the only thing that forces me to stop and rest and take a day off. I took a multi hour nap. Of course rain also brings up the weeds. I try not to make my guys weed all day long — it’s pretty tough on the body. But we chip away a little every day. The tomatoes got a nice mowing between rows. The cilantro and dill were rescued yesterday. This week, we’ll tackle the next carrot beds, the kale, and fall crops.

We have a new kitten on the farm. It showed up last week during the thunderstorm. Corinna heard it meowing at the top of the huge catalpa tree. I’m still not sure how it ended up there, but after getting a ladder, we were able to coax it down the branches until it jumped to the ground. Then we fed it. And as you know, that’s pretty much the end. We’ll never get rid of it now. But it’s really cute and friendly. It reminds me of Dragon, who was the ultimate lover cat.

Corinna continues to get better little by little. I know some of you keep asking about her. She’s working with a functional doctor now, “healing her gut,” because apparently the unhealthy gut is what’s causing the acid reflux. I confess I’m not very educated about that sort of thing, but she certainly is becoming quite the expert in the gut micro-biome. She has stopped the low acid diet and is now following a “low FODMAP diet,” which is all Greek to me, but I know it means she temporarily can’t eat a lot of the food I’m growing — things like watermelon, peppers, broccoli, garlic, onions, and tomatoes — until her inflammation goes down. But it’s not forever. And this diet (along with a lot of supplements) are finally  moving the needle for her. I’m so proud of her for leading the way and not giving up. It’s been a hard season for her, but the worst is now behind her. So keep praying for us! It’s