Fair September

September 19, 2024

Last weekend, on the other side of the Old Bethpage Village Restoration, we worked our booth at the 182nd Long Island Fair. And that’s no a typo—the fair really is 182 years old! Kinda makes our 17 years of participation seem like chump change. Nevertheless, we’ve been at it long enough to appreciate three days of perfect weather. Rain seldom breaks our stride in the fields—we simply don our boots and reorder the to-do list. Handweeding instead of hoeing, harvesting instead of planting, etc. If it’s really pouring, we trim onions and garlic in the Tin House. But there’s no pivoting at the fair. Our only task is to set up the tent and engage with crowd. When it rains, the crowd stays home, the garlic gets wet, and the farmers get cranky. When it’s sunny, everyone has a good time.

Even with perfect weather, the fair requires a lot of work. Getting our vegetable entries ready for the annual competition takes time, but we make it happen. Cancelling the Saturday CSA pickup and farm stand isn’t worth the price of disappointed customers, so we don’t break stride—the regular market continues even as our fair booth is running across the park. And this year, sponsored by the Agricultural Society of Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties, we led field tours each day of the fair. Friday’s tour was intimate—just 2 people. On Saturday, we toured reps from the NY Dept of Agriculture and Markets, the aforementioned Agricultural Society, NY Senator Steve Rhoads, and a dozen or more fair-goers. On Sunday, the tour was overrun kids, so we dug carrots. These tours were a great opportunity to introduce new people to the farm, and made possible only by our fair booth pinch hitters—Arturo Milla Gavida, Glenn Aldridge, and Jen Rabin. A big thank you to them, and to Jackie and Papa, who stepped it up so Dan and I could step out for a bit. All in all, the 2024 Long Island Fair was one for the books.

 

Now for the bad news. In the August newsletter, I wrote about lean summer harvests. Weeks later, we’re pretty confident we’ve identified the source—phytophthora. The cause of the regional tomato blight in 2009 and, more infamously, the Irish potato famine of the 1840-50s, phytophthora is an oomycete, a fungus-like water mold that spreads through water and soil. Our first sign of trouble was in the spaghetti and delicata squash in New Pond Field. The plants died weeks ahead of schedule, but at that time, we chalked it up to poor soil and new pests—something to be expected in a new field. But then the pepper and zucchini plants in Williams Field started wilting, and we became concerned.  When an inspection of our butternut in Lower Crooked Field revealed immature fruit rotting on the vine, I knew something unusual was going on. So I contacted the Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead, and they sent Cornell plant pathologist Daniel Winter Heck, who inspected the crops and took tissue samples. We discussed the options. Some were feasible, like planting a tillage radish cover crop ahead of susceptible cash crop. Others were not, like removing all of this year's infected plants and disposing off-site. When working with living organisms, containment is never easy. But before we worry ourselves too much with next steps, we need an accurate diagnosis. Once Daniel gets back to us with the lab results, we can plan our defense. 

With the fair in the rearview and our phytophthora losses more or less tallied—90% of the winter squash gone—our focus is now on the remaining winter harvests. We’re about 1/3 of the way through potato/sweet potato harvests, and the yields are on par with previous years. Woohoo! Today we harvested the first of daikon, and they’re huge! The beets are approaching a respectable size. The carrots look good from above, but we’re holding off from harvesting until after a few frosts sweeten them. Our fall greens could use some rain, so we’ve been irrigating every Monday and Thursday. Meanwhile, the flowers are showing spectacular color, thanks to the mid-fall drought. All in all, we’re caught up where we need to be, mindful of all the work that remains, and celebrating the silver lining where we find it.

 

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you soon.

—Caroline

PS Winter Shares are now available. Shares will NOT include winter squash in 2024. The price had been adjusted accordingly. Click here for info.