No time to write a whole new newsletter.. so sorry for any redundancy with last week.
Your weekend CSA boxes are coming! We still have special permission to get to the farm to tend crops and animals even though Cloverdale Rd is still in the evacuated zone.
While the mornings continue to blanket the farm in a dark thick cover of smoke, the Coastal breeze manages to blow it off by early afternoon and the crops aren't waiting for CalFire to finish up! Today we checked the fields while helicopters pulled water from a nearby ag reservoir. The fire got/is very close and CalFire is still putting out flare ups and doing back burning from the large fire breaks they've created. Now it's a whole different set of issues- how to get supplies to the farm when delivery trucks can't come here.. making sure we have enough n95 masks and that the crew is actually wearing them during the toxic smoke hours of the morning, trying to figure out what to let go and what to try to salvage of crops.
It's been a slow process to try to pick and throw all the produce and flowers that are past and in some cases we've had to call it lost cause, but many crops held ok. We're making progress.. but over a week of work missed by 25 people, is no small task to make up for. There are transplantings that were missed and the ones on schedule still have to happen.. greenhouse sowings that didn't happen, tractor work that should have been done. Don't get us wrong- we are filled with gratitude that we didn't lose more- just wanting to share with all of you what the impacts are.
We appreciate your patience as we try to sort out the mess that was our last delivery and the weekend that was missed. If you have a specific question or issue that we haven't responded to, we won't be offended if you remind us, we are wading through 100's of questions and things can get lost.
What's new?
Lots of yummy items to chose from this week, so many that it's getting a bit unwieldy ;) Italian Sweet peppers are on, as are beefsteak and a few other tomatoes, a few more varieties of apples are ready, this will likely be the last of the canteloupes- sadly most of them ripened the week we were gone.. Many of the Bartlett pears dropped on the ground :( but we still managed to pick a bunch- just eat them soon as they should be ripe or ripe within a day or two on the counter. Still have heaps of artichokes right too.
