If You Go What: Second annual Fall Fest Where: Blue Earth County Community Farm, 20612 Indian Lake Road When: 1-4 p.m., Sept. 23 Cost: Free More information: Living Earth Center and community farm members invite the public to celebrate the first day of fall. Activities include crafts, caramel apple dipping and games. Additional parking available across the road at Weagel Park.
Clarice Esslinger and Madison Vandersee reflected on Blue Earth County Community Farm’s 2023 growing season while they hosed off soil from the beets and carrots they’d harvested early Monday morning.
A small garden wagon filled with ripe melons was parked nearby.
“The vegetables were a little bit smaller than last year’s crop, but overall, the crops are looking good,” said Vandersee, who is manager for the garden near Indian Lake Road.
Weather had been wacky throughout the growing season: First it was very wet, then too windy, then it was very, very hot.
“Damage from insects has been the biggest challenge. In June, an infestation of beetles wreaked havoc on the cucumber patches,” Vandersee said.
The farm’s tall fencing discouraged deer and other critters from sampling the vast variety of vegetables growing in the site’s fertile ground.
Produce harvested from the site, home to the nonprofit Living Earth Center’s food donation program, is distributed to community partners. Those nonprofits pass the fresh vegetables and fruits on to people in the Mankato area who are food insecure.
“I bike the trails around here and I’ve always watched with interest what’s been going on here,” said Esslinger, of Mankato.
Apparently curiosity got the best of the first-year volunteer and the farm got a pair of hands to help with the weeding and watering.
When heat advisories were in effect for Mankato, the farm’s scheduled volunteer hours were canceled.
Vandersee discovered that weed patches the volunteers didn’t have time to clear out had served as wind breaks, shielding tender crops during storms.
Esslinger plans to be at the farm regularly throughout the harvest season. However, there won’t be many apples or pears to pick from the saplings growing near the edge of the farm’s vegetable plots.
The trees are too young to produce large yields, Vandersee said. Several other crops, such as the patch of pumpkins, are thriving. An irrigation system helps ensure adequate moisture during growing seasons with little rain, and the acreage near the Le Sueur River is in terrain that forms a water basin.
“That can be both a blessing and a curse,” Vandersee said.
The farm’s soil has a good percentage of clay. The heavy rains that fell early in the growing season drained slowly from the ground. That was a hinderance to the farm’s gardeners.
“Things were not looking real good,” said Joseph Nyakebaka, who this spring planted several vegetable varieties next to his long rows of millet and sorghum.
Joseph said he and his wife, Peninah Nyakundi Nyakebaka, struggled with insects that feasted on their plants in early summer. However, by the end of August, Peninah was bringing home baskets filled with tasty greens to cook for her family’s evening meals.
Since 2022, the farm has been home to Living Earth Center’s emerging farmers program. Immigrants partner with the community farm so they can have space to grow culturally significant plants native to their home countries.
The center’s vision for the farm is to cultivate a community-growing space where people come together from all walks of life and to engage volunteers and community members to play an active role in increasing the contribution of organic produce to its local community partners.
This year’s growing season was Nyakebakas’ first at the community farm. They planted seeds saved from previous harvests of their backyard garden.
Several years ago, when he first emigrated to the United States, Joseph carried small, precious cargo in his baggage — seeds for growing the vegetables and grains necessary for dishes that have been part of his diet since he was a child growing up in the highlands of Kenya.
“It’s usually warm and there’s plenty of rain … It doesn’t get as hot there as it does here,” Nyakebaka said, then added he was concerned some of the produce he planted at the community farm won’t have enough time to mature before frost hits.
Field corn yields
Harvest season also has begun for area corn growers, including David Tauer, of Hanska.
“We’re about half-way complete,” he said during a Friday afternoon break from cutting corn silage.
The University of Minnesota’s Southern Research and Outreach Center in Waseca described field corn’s maturity as being in the dent stage on Wednesday. That means stress to the crop at this time will not reduce kernel numbers but may reduce kernel weight.
Tauer expects yields will be down from last year, but he’s surprised at how good his 2023 corn crop looks.
“It rained too much and then it didn’t rain … and we had hail. There was more insect pressure this year, so we had to spray the crops,” he said.
This summer, smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed parts of the state numerous times, prompting some agronomists to lower their expectations for corn yields. They believed the wind-borne particulates would hamper corn tassel pollination.
Not all crop scientists offered the same prediction.
“I don’t think the smoke had as big of a negative effect on corn as some people thought it would,” said U of M agronomist Jeff Coulter.
He said it’s true that air pollution caused by the particulates did decrease the amount of solar radiation that was able to reach plants.
“That reduced the amount of photosynthesis, and that is not good.
“A countering effect is that all that pollution helped diffuse the solar radiation …. What does come in is all penetrating deeper than normal,” Coulter said.
“The bigger thing was the dry and unusually warm weather this summer. Corn crops were not able to reach their potential … The ears are a little shorter than usual. Fields may look good from the road, but when you get close, you can see that kernels are missing,” he said.
“To have a good corn crop, we will need a stretch of ideal weather. Hot weather in September will speed up the maturation process for a corn cob, which will result in lesser quality kernels,” Coulter said.
Soybeans are now in the full seed stage and early maturing varieties are beginning to show leaf yellowing.
Some area soybean fields are showing signs of stress. That’s an indication the soil moisture from the region’s excess May rainfall has run out, said Southern Research and Outreach Center staff.