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The weather continues to dictate the end of the season. We ended up with a couple of hard frosts up here over the end of the week. Some advantages to these frosts are that they take care of some of the weeds we haven't been able to pull, as well as sweetening the brassicas. 

We continued with our fall-to-winter farm transition by clearing out beds for late fall/early winter plantings. Currently, these beds are outdoors, but we have two moveable hoophouses. Before the semester ends, we will move the hoophouse over those beds for indoor winter production. We plant cold hardy crops that can handle some light freezing and thawing. Additionally, we continued to transition our greenhouse beds for winter production. Since we can control the nighttime temperatures in the greenhouse, we can plant some less cold tolerant crops. Our last planting of cucumbers was removed and replaced with rainbow chard. So that means that the cucumbers are sadly done for the season. Planting them indoors was a new method for us this season and we are definitely happy with the results. We were also able to plant a bed of arugula and some other greens. The main reason for these plantings is to support the Farm to Bistro academic programs at ¿ì²¥ÊÓƵ Cortland and tie the Sustainable Farming and Food Systems together with the Culinary Arts program. Students in these two degree programs have required and elective courses that they take together, but this is an opportunity for students in each of their degree programs to contribute to the end of the semester event that takes place at Coltivare. This year's event is taking place on November 22nd and is a great way for our students to connect the food system together.

As the end of the CSA season nears, we will start getting into some late season crops for the share. This week's choice will feature more potatoes, with some gold skins joining the red skins. There will also be some big old onions this week. We were only able to do a small number of plantings, so our yield is much lower this season. This week will most likely be the last week of the Chesnok Red garlic variety that has been available for the bulk of the fall. We will be moving on to the Music variety, which we had earlier in the season as fresh garlic. There will still be the remnants of summer with tomatoes, bell/frying peppers, hot peppers, and the specialty pepper mix available. In addition, there will be kale, fennel, and radishes to choose from. There will be a few hakurei turnups mixed in with the radishes. We will also have a brand new crop for the TC3 Farm available this week only. We will have fresh, aka baby, turmeric. This was a crop that the students were interested in trying this season, so we gave it a whirl. The yield was lower than I expected, but we did get it planted much later than it probably should have. I think it is something to work with in the future and I am happy that we can share a small amount with you. This turmeric will be a little different than what you see in the store. We harvest it while the plant is still alive, and the skin hasn't "set" yet. This means that instead of having a dark hard skin, it is bright and tender and should be stored in the refrigerator in a plastic bag or frozen (whole or in chunks). If keeping it fresh, you should try and use within 10-14 days. 

Have a great week!

-Farmer Todd