What Does Cold Weather Mean on the Farm?

The sudden change to colder weather even surprised the trees. Have you noticed that a number of trees that were covered with leaves just a few days ago are bare? Without even changing from green to another color first!

The change in the weather alters our working order on the farm dramatically. For example, R begins to pick pepper rows completely rather than figuring out what is needed for a distribution and selecting for that need.

Another thing that requires adjustment is how CSA distribution days are handled. If you add a cold rain and wind to the mix, it gets even more interesting. First, the cooler weather means picked items (such as peppers) will keep nicely in the outbuildings and be quite fresh even if picked the previous day. So, if Monday is relatively nice and predictions for Tuesday show wet weather, R will pick as much as can be picked on Monday.

We try to work around the rain a bit more when temps are lower. It is one thing to get drenched in August and quite another to be soaked with temps in the 40's. It can still happen, but we try to keep workers out of it until it is absolutely necessary. There are many other things that can be done under some shelter - cleaning onions, loading containers with squash or potatoes, trimming the (not so) greens off of turnips, etc. And, if people must get wet, we try to have that happen as close to the point they can get inside and dried off as we can.

The recent dip into the low 20's required even more work that we usually anticipate for early to mid October. We don't always have all of the squash pulled in by now. Most of our potatoes are in the truck barn, the harvested squash are usually just outside that building. Onions are still in the truck barn, as is garlic. The truck barn does not hold alot of heat - especially with the wide open east door.

I expect you might see where all of this is going?

Ya, we had to pull in all of the winter squash to avoid them freezing in the field. We did that Friday night. We also pulled in the squash to the truck barn for Friday night. We tried to pull in other things that needed bringing in, but felt pretty good about how we would handle a low of 28... even though it hit 26 that night.

Maybe you see the next thing?

Yeah. Saturday night's prediction for a low around 20. That means the truck barn is no longer sufficient shelter for all of the squash, potatoes, etc etc. So we moved all of that bulk into our garage. If you don't quite appreciate this. Consider the fact that our harvest of squash was in the neighborhood of 1000 squash. Yes, some have been distributed. But, not that many. We also had in the neighborhood of 500 lbs of potatoes to move (probably a bit more).

Oh - and then there was the matter of crops we felt were ok with Friday's low - but we were nervous about Saturday's low. So, we pulled in more onions, some turnips, rutabegas, etc. They had to go somewhere too... How about the garage? Right.

Never a dull moment on the farm!

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