Sunday, June 27, 2010

2010 Season, Week Seven

June 26, 2010 newsletter

This week's harvest:

Green Beans
"Yellow Crookneck" Squash
Zucchini (medium shares)
Garlic
Onions
Basil
Swiss Chard
Beets & Greens
Red Cabbage or Broccoli or Lettuce

This week's farm news:

Well, we were worried we were going to miss out on all the rain that y'all seemed to be getting in Nashville but on Thursday we finally got a substantial rain! About 1.5 inches. It was welcome, too! Now lots of our crops are "laid by" (local lingo meaning your crop "has got it made" & requires very little attention until harvest). We are always amazed at how quickly the seasons turn. The summer solstice has passed for another year. For us, the earth is beginning to tilt away from the sun. Spring crops are fading & summer crops are ripening. We worked on starting lots of fall crops in soil blocks this week -- broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussels sprouts, etc. Eric planted one more variety of winter squash as well as pumpkins. He also sowed buckwheat in between the rows of winter squash as a cover crop that will later be rolled or scythed and left on the ground as a mulch for the vines to ramble across & to protect the soil. And the crew harvested more than half of our onion crop and beautifully laid them out to dry in our dual-purpose greenhouse which is now too hot for seedlings but just right for drying onions. It was a great week on the farm but we're looking forward to what's in store for next week -- sweet corn, eggplant, peppers, & our first few tomatoes... all those delicious pleasures of summertime!

Saturday, June 19, 2010

2010 Season, Week Six

June 19, 2010 newsletter

This week's harvest:

"Sweet Valentine" Lettuce
Green Beans
"Yellow Crookneck" Squash
Fresh Garlic
Basil
Broccoli
Beets & Greens
Swiss Chard

This week's farm news:

The crew had a super busy & productive week - despite the heat & everyone's desires to sit in the creek & sip kombucha! (Our current fetish!) Not only did they cultivate the entire two acres of gardens to keep the moisture from the last rain in the ground & knock out any weeds, they put up about 400 feet of trellis for the yellow pole beans; they staked & trellised all of the pepper plants (a few hundred of them); they kept the tomatoes tucked in their cages; they kept all of the farm critters moved daily (or twice daily!) to fresh green grass; they harvested the remaining 3/4's of the garlic crop & neatly stored it in the barn for curing; and they composted & planted another patch of winter squash! Whew! We even took a field trip to another farm one day this week that got us all excited about the possibilities of growing ginger in our high tunnel! Oh, there's so much to do on a farm in the height of summer! These long summer days are really helpful for getting all of our many projects completed! Happy Summer Solstice!

Saturday, June 12, 2010

2010 Season, Week Five

June 12, 2010 newsletter

This week's harvest:

Carrots
Lettuce ("Buttercrunch" for medium shares & "Sweet Valentine" for small shares)
Swiss Chard
Beets & Greens
"Yellow Crookneck" Squash
Very Fresh Garlic
Basil
Flowering Onions

This week's farm news:

The temperatures were hot again this week but, unlike last week, we had some very lovely & timely rain showers. The crew planted our butternut squash patch this week. Every year we select & store several baskets of squash from last fall's harvest to save for seed. Then when it's time to plant, we cut open the squash, harvest the seeds, & go straight to the garden to plant them. We get excellent germination this way because the squash keep the seeds in the perfect storage environment. That also means our seed stock is coming from squash that actually stored for the entire winter, therefore (hopefully!) improving the overall keeping quality of the squash from year to year. We also planted our sweet potato patch this week & with Eric & four interns working together it was a pretty quick job. The sweet potato slips got watered-in by a fabulous rolling thunderstorm. We rejoice when our timing works out like that!

The crew also yanked out the spent pea vines & spinach to make room for our late planting of tomatoes & they began the garlic harvest - you're getting some of this juicy uncured goodness in your baskets this week! Enjoy it while it's so fresh!

During rainy spells throughout the week, both Beth & Ben worked on Beth's room in the barn & got the majority of it completed! Now Beth can finally get settled in!

Thursday, June 10, 2010

2010 Season, Week Four

June 5, 2010 newsletter

This week's harvest:

"Buttercrunch" Lettuce
"Speckled Amish" Lettuce
Swiss Chard
Shelling Peas
Carrots
Beets & Beet Greens
"Yellow Crookneck" Squash
"Hakurei" Salad Turnips
"Easter Egg" Radishes
Garlic Scapes

This week's farm news:

It was another hot week in Bugtussle! We had a few light rain showers that maybe totalled 1/20"... so not much rain this week. But, I can hear distant rumblings of thunder as I write this so we are hopeful for a good rain this (Friday) evening. Our crops are doing well aside from a pretty intense infestation of cabbage worms on the spring brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, etc.). The crew dutifully (& laboriously) hand-picked worms from the plants this week but the little boogers are so camouflaged that many are inevitably overlooked which likely means another worm-picking will be on next week's "to do" list!

Our turkey poults arrived on the farm this week (via the post office). This is our first experience with day old turkeys (as last year we got them at 4-8 weeks old from a local breeder). We also chose to raise broad-breasted bronze & white turkeys instead of the heritage breeds we raised last year to hopefully avoid the near fiasco of the mature birds flying away! We figure that the broad-breasted turkeys will be able to forage more freely on pasture (since they can't fly) than we could allow the heritage breeds to do.