Lean August
August 18, 2024
What a difference a season makes. This time last year, we were drowning in summer fruit crops. The tomatoes, pepper, and eggplant were so prolific we didn’t have the labor, cooler space, or market to keep up with it all. It got to a point where we simply stopped harvesting half the eggplant; the remaining half was still more than we needed, plus we had to free up time to attend to the winter crops.
This year has been notably different. Even in the spring, when the greens were beautiful and abundant—remember all that spinach?—something felt off, with the perennials maturing weeks ahead of schedule. As early as May, I began wondering if we were in for an early winter. Then in June, when we pulled the row cover off the peppers and eggplant, we encountered plants dwarfed by the covercrop seeded in the pathways. It was almost as if they were saying sorry, this just isn't our year. Now we’ve come to late-August, and it’s apparent that this isn’t, in fact, their year. Far from the truckloads we harvested in 2023, we’re lucky to get a few crates a week. The tomatoes, on the other hand, did have an impressive 4-week run starting in July, but now the pipeline has slowed to a trickle. As the old saying goes, early to ripen, early to rot. Harvests have been so tight, in fact, that we’ve had to run interference on farm stand customers eying CSA items at pickup.
When harvests are light, pest pressure is more pronounced. There are flea beetles, cabbage moths, and harlequin bugs on the kale, squash vine borers killing off entire zucchini plants, and groundhogs chomping down on lettuce. Our best insurance against these pests is planting more than we need, and a diversity of it. Sometimes things go according to plan, with enough for both the humans and the pests, and a perfect matchup of workhours and labor. Other times there’s so much abundance you hardly notice the ever-present pests, swamped as you are trying to keep up with the harvests. And then there are years like this, when every pepper counts, when you wish the pests would take a sabbatical, and when you frequently find yourself scrambling to keep the staff in motion. Every year has its challenges, but the best part of growing older is being able to put each season in perspective. Some years are abundant, and others are lean. Not knowing what's coming keeps us on our toes. Perhaps it keeps us young.
Lean times make it all the more important to celebrate the victories when they happen. We’ve had plenty of rain, which has been mostly great, but when it comes to harvesting alliums (garlic, onions, and shallots), wet harvest conditions encourage mold, which can be devastating in storage. The garlic was safety harvested last month under sunny skies, but two weeks ago, when it was time to harvest the onions, the forecast called for days of rain. There was a small window of opportunity on a Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, but with Tuesdays devoted to CSA pickup, the window was tight. Nevertheless, it was all we had, so we went for it. In less than 24-hours, we brought in all of the shallots and storage onions, a task we normally spread over 2-3 weeks. We had the audacity to break for lunch without storing the final truckload, but when the rain made an early arrival, we dropped our lunch—literally—and raced to get the exposed onions safely stored. Later in the day, when CSA members asked if we were pleased with all the rain, all I could talk about was how pleased I was with the onion harvest.
We store the onions in the farm greenhouse, where a multitude of fans circulate air and aid the curing process. But before the onions arrived, the greenhouse was filled to capacity with garlic. I had planned to shift the garlic in August—and recruit volunteers to help with the cleaning process—but then a series of school board meetings interfered with plan, and I decided to bump the time-frame up. With everything else ahead of schedule, why not garlic cleaning, too? So on two consecutive Thursdays, a group of CSA volunteers gathered in the Tin House to trim and clean a season’s worth of garlic. We spilled the dirt and the tea—a welcome snippet of relaxation at a tough time of year.
Back to harvests—abundant, lean, and otherwise—here’s Adam with the final say. Hope you enjoy!
—Caroline
Baseball Bat Zucchini
by Adam Li
If you’ve ventured into the bathroom of Restoration Farm, you would have noticed the chronological CSA shares displayed in alternating brown and green frames. I instinctively compare the recent harvest and weekly shares to the past 2021 examples, trying to relate the patterns. Each season has its quirks, favoring certain crops and distaining others. This summer has been characterized by surplus tomatoes and squash, which were early in the season, and struggling okra. With the accelerated growth, there is almost an expected production drop-off, especially after consecutive days of heavy rain and lower temperatures. After a noticeable hit, the plants seem to have recovered and will continue to fruit, less vigorously but steadily.
The natural continuation of the crop's lifespan leads to a transition—a passing of the baton, you can say—of the old, earlier-season plantings to the new. The next generation of fennel, zucchini, lettuce, radishes, and brassicas has just entered the ground and shows promising potential to sustain us into the fall and winter. The first two rows of squash have been tilled under, but the remaining five nonetheless harbor plenty of life.
Once you duck down to scout for zucchinis, you enter another world: the buzzing of the bees diligently collecting nectar, squash beetles flying in your face, frogs trying their best to camouflage, and the crackling of prickly leaves. After precisely cutting the desired squash off, avoiding unnecessary incisions to the plant, you stand up with harvest in hand… It suddenly becomes calmer until you notice the beeps and tires of the human world. The moment the squash hits the wheelbarrow, the hunt for the next commences, reentering into a new but familiar ecosystem.
Through time spent in squash harvest, I’ve developed a complicated relationship with “baseball bat"-sized zucchini, which were particularly present this year. The squash stimulus after the heat waves and the rain showers made it even more difficult to stay on top of. Every week, squash is harvested three times to extend its production and plant lifespan. The more you pick, the more it encourages the plant to spur new growth and fruit. But in the situation of the “baseball bat” zucchini, it has been overlooked, hiding at just the right angle to blend in. Although the overly large zukes are discouraged for their uneven resource allocation and pipeline disruption, I can’t help but be filled with a sense of discovery and excitement whenever one is found. The almost innate pride that comes with growing something vast surfaces. But the shame of the squash escaping all these harvests lingers in my mind, igniting me to look for the next stowaway zuke. Although the “baseball bat” is not as tender and sweet as an average-sized squash, its potential utilization is evident: muffins, bread, soup, or barbecued. Thus, intensifying the duality of baseball bat-sized zucchinis. Everything is done to prevent it, but once harvested, its weight is prized and placed on its own shelf.
To me, farming can be summarized through squash harvest: lots of bending over, altercations with leaves, constant observation, inevitable oversight, and rewards full of unintended benefits. You immerse yourself in another world, trying to avoid distraction until you find the squash. And do it all over again.
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