Surviving the Arctic Blasts

We seem to have grown somewhat complacent with our balmy winter weather over the last few years.  Previously, we had a couple of light frosts do deal with.  This year we have had a different scenario, and it's only mid-January.  A few days of hard freezes have had an impact. 
We diligently protected the greenhouse and field with an all-hands-on-deck approach by Jenn, myself, and the kids.  We covered the warm weather crops including the zucchini, eggplants, and sweet potato with frost cloth that provides a few degrees of protection.  Think of this as a "snuggie"  for the veggies.  I assumed the cool season crops like cabbage, kale, bok choi, peas, etc. would be able to make it through unprotected.  Most of the veggies were fine; we did get some freeze damage on the tops.  The eggplant were winter pruned about three inches, any strawberry fruit turned black, and the cole crops sustained frost damage. Even the cabbage burned and I lost a new planting of them.  Next time I will cover everything.  It is always a mystery how the weather is going to affect our crops.  There are several tropical trees at my office (mango, lychee, starfruit)  that were not affected at all. 
We will need a little time to grow out of the damage.   When we have a week like the previous one, crops are either negatively affected or just sit idle until it gets warmer.  It's like hitting pause for a week.   Growth resumes later.  My hope is that we will have warmer temperatures, but the forecast suggests another cold blast is on its way.
The good news is that we still have sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers growing when neighboring crops froze.  Last week I picked the first ripe cherry tomato.  This week I picked four.  A few weeks from now we should be picking for all our farm members. 

Week 3, 2017-18

A bit chilly at Steed Farm this week.  We started the week with lows in the mid-30's.  On Monday morning, as I was taking the kids to school, we looked at frosty ice on the windshield and roofs of houses. I knew that we would have some damage at the farm. You can imagine that green beans, roselle, squash, sweet potato, and eggplants don't favor this kind of weather.  They all wound up with moderate frost damage to the plants.  Not killed to the ground, but wounded.  The beans, yellow squash and roselle were the most affected.  Thankfully, I was able to close up the greenhouse to protect the tomato and pepper plants and nothing bad happened there.  So a minor set back but, God willing, things will be progressing again soon.  The other crops really responded well; cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower look better.  This weekend I hope to plant more peppers, cabbage, mustard greens, diakon, red onions, and turnips.

Frost damaged squash and sweet potato plants.

Week 2, 2017-18

Our first pick up went very well.  It is always great to catch up with our members who we haven't seen since May and greet our new members.  Jenn made zucchini muffins as a sweet add-on for everyone. 
It is always a little hard for me to shift back into harvest mode from production mode, as the work is under a time crunch.  I thank our volunteer friend Issy and the rest of the Steed family who made things much easier this time.
One thing that always happens at our first pick up is the question "What is that and what do I do with it?"  It is always fun to talk about the fresh produce we bring to the pick up tables and our favorite recipes that we use to eat them.  I never considered us to be "foodies" but since we have all this unique produce it sort of happens over time and I am now warming up to that definition.
Daikon radish is one of those vegetables we had at our first pickup. 
For all the folks who have no idea what to do with a diakon radish I have included some links with  recipes...

Here are a bunch of yummy recipes from Saveur Mag  https://www.saveur.com/article/collection/daikon-recipes

daikon fries - http://cookingontheweekends.com/2014/01/spicy-roasted-daikon-french-fry-recipe/

and these from New Hampshire NPR - http://nhpr.org/post/what-do-daikon-radishes#stream/0

We like to eat them roasted, fried, and in salads.

I hope this helps!