Squash Harvest

Kirsten holding our largest banana squash.

Oranghetti squash with frost damage.

Annamarie teaching the apprentices about frost damage and what to look for when we are harvesting.
Whitney taking a break in the squash bin.

Me harvesting carnival squash!

Fall is here. We have harvested 95% of the squash we planted in the spring, and have even cleaned up one of the fields. The end is near and it is both sad and exciting. I still can't believe that my job consists of harvesting pumpkins, for example, something that I used to pay money to go and do in my spare time.

The squash were one of the few crops that we grew from seed. Back in the spring we were racing to get the squash in the ground fast enough because there was a worry we were too late to beat the frost. Turns out that fear was partially correct. When harvesting, especially the spaghetti squash which aren't as hardy as some of the other varieties, it was apparent which ones had been hit by the frost - you could see dark spotted discoloration on the top of the vegetables.

The squash are still good to eat, they just won't keep as long as the others into the spring, so we had to make sure to separate them into their own bin to be sold or eaten first.

From memory, these are the variety of squash that we have on the farm: butternut, oranghetti, spaghetti, turban, carnival, delicata, sugar loaf, sweet meat, sugar pumpkin, acorn, blue hubbard, golden hubbard, banana, and red curry. Admittedly I have not prepared many of these varieties, but I look forward to doing so in the next few weeks.

We had our squash planted on three different fields. The field that was supposed to be the most productive, unfortunately was the least productive. The reason being that we tried to use landscaping cloth to discourage the bindweed from growing and inhibiting the squash from successful growth. In the end, the landscaping cloth, which is a black, permeable, nylon-like material prevented the squash from flourishing because it got so hot in the summer that it not only partially burned the plants but also allowed for all the water meant to hydrate the plants to evaporate. Long story short, the landscaping cloth will not be used again for the squash.

June 8 - 15, 2011: Weeding and Planting

This past week was filled with emergency weeding sessions and lots of planting. We started the week weeding the carrots and beets that we did not finish at the end of the previous week. Over the weekend when I was in Vancouver for the markets, there was a hot spell here in Cawston, so the weeds shot up very quickly in our absence!

I have learned that one of the good sides of weeding and thinning, is that most of what we weed and thin is edible. In fact, sometimes we bring lamb's quarters to market, which is a eaten most often as a salad green, but on the farm it is primarily a weed between our crops. Similarly, in order to grow full beets, the plants must be thinned when they are young. The baby beets are also edible as greens, so after one morning of thinning I came home at lunch time with a stuffed bag and armful stuffed with baby beet greens. Our fridge was very full for a good many days until I pureed the greens to make a delicious coconut curry beet green soup!
We also started last week planting squash. It was the first time I have planted something directly from seed. I learned that you generally want to plant the seed at a depth of three times the seed size. It doesn't matter what direction the seed is facing, but it was important to give it ample space within the mulch so that the seeds germinate and grow. I was fascinated that I didn't know a good number of the varieties of squash we planted and look forward to learning more about them when they grow.

In order to seed one of our fields that is pestered with bindweed, a weed that would tangle itself around our plants, we had to lay out huge rolls of black nylon sheets to mitigate the weed growth. Also, the reason that it has been so important to get the squash seeds into the ground is because we must make sure that the squash can reach their maturity before the first frost. At this point, we are supposedly close to that deadline based on the weather patterns from previous years.

On Wednesday we harvested for the market at Main Street in Vancouver. We had red and gold beets, green onions, kale, salad mix and eggs available for sale. We also harvested collards, which I didn't realize were the leaves of any plant from the collard family - collard is short for colewart which means 'cabbage plant'. The collard family includes broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale and brussel sprouts. This is just proof again that one can use everything a plant has to offer in some way.

Planting continued throughout the week. We have planted eggplants, melons, zucchini, lettuce, celery, celeriac, fennel, tomatoes, basil, parsley, tomatillos and peppers. Obviously, or maybe not so obviously, we have planted a plethora of varieties of each of these food types. The reason I say maybe not so obviously, is because though I again consider myself a foodie, I have been completely ignorant of so many of the cultivars of these plants, and I can see how this fact might be overlooked by readers.

We finally returned to the wind-swept tomato field to mitigate the damage done by the heavy windstorm in early May. Though the surviving plants are thriving, I would say that farmer Annamarie's 50% loss estimate was fairly accurate. Some rows were more than 50% lost while others maybe only 10% loss. Hopefully our later transplants are able to catch up and start producing.

The weeds also shot up in the chicken fields, so we got in there to mow down the brush to keep it under control. One of the added benefits is that you can also find hidden nests then too! Here you can see that a few chickens found a deep patch of grass to make their nest, but it was only revealed after the weeds were mowed.


The last bit of exciting news is that the field of garlic at the front of the house has just started to scape. This means we will have garlic scapes at the market soon!

Greenhouse Growing

The salad greens, wintered produce such as apples and squash, frozen produce and processed products are currently available to go to market. It was decided Friday morning that it was important to move these products this week, and so Klippers Organics decided last minute to make a presence at the Penticton Farmers' Market on Saturday. This means that Friday was harvest and preparation day.

My first task was to help Nadja and Manon harvest and box lettuce heads. There are a ton of different varieties available including butters, romaine, green oak leaf and red oak leaf. The lettuces have been growing rapidly in the greenhouses on the farm and are at risk of maturing too much in the next week before we go to the Vancouver market. You can tell if a lettuce head is too ripe by its center stalk - if it is woody and getting dense in the center, this means the plant is trying to seed and will be bitter tasting.

When in the green house, the humid air and extreme warmth you can feel on your skin certainly allows you to understand how these plants have been able to thrive so early in the season. Right now it is so hot that the greenhouse doors need to be opened during the day time so that the plants don't overheat.

Once we boxed 23 boxes with approximately 150 heads of lettuce, I moved on to organizing squash. First I had to sort through the crates of squash and prepare three to four boxes of each variety to take to market. We are certainly at the end of our squash supply, but I was still able to prepare boxes with spaghetti , kabocha, green hubbard and turban squash. In fact we have a lot of turban squash left, because it appears consumers are not as familiar with this product and consequently do not gravitate towards it at markets. Any squash that have started to mould will be fed to the chickens or if the rot is not too bad it will be fed to the apprentices!


The rest of the afternoon was spent peeling garlic - the fumes of garlic in the air and on my skin reminded me of a time when I was consuming raw garlic as a health experiment and I still love the odour as much as I did then. We were peeling garlice because in the 2009 season, Klippers sold out of garlic by February 2010 at the winter market. Therefore in the 2010 season additional garlic was planted given it was such a popular product in the hopes that it would last through the winter until this year's fresh garlic could be produced. Unfortunately, the garlic did not keep all the way through the winter as hoped, and so we are now salvaging the good garlic cloves from the expired ones to make frozen crushed garlic.

I think one of the key lessons I learned from my afternoon work is not to waste. It appears every item no matter how far gone it may appear, still has some life or some use. You just need to be creative to figure out how to get that remaining life to be profitable which, it appears, often means processing it into another form.