Hope everyone had a good holiday! It was a busy one for us, but we sure couldn't have asked for nicer weather - although it did get to 93 at the farm, which is a bit too warm for us!
We're still learning how to estimate some of the more difficult crops like peas, which is why only some of you got them in your box this past week - it's difficult to look at a crop that's just starting to mature on Sunday and figure out how much will be ready to pick on Wednesday. Turns our we underestimated this past week, but the good news is - we'll have lots for this week and probably next, so you all should get plenty. Cherry tomatoes are just starting to ramp up; we picked 7 pints the first half of the week and 30 the second half - soon enough that'll be in the hundreds. The slicing tomatoes can't possibly grow much larger without turning color, so now we're just waiting for that first hint of color. We're still waiting patiently for many other crops, though the list is slowly growing. Last week was the final week of spinach for the spring - warm, sunny weather and long days are the enemy of spinach, so we usually stop trying to fight the battle for the summer months. With any luck, we'll be back up in full force in September when conditions favor our side of the fight a bit more.
Weeding is still consuming much of our time - we opened up another acre for production this year on the new property, only to find it had a much larger seed bank than other portions of the farm - something we sure didn't expect, or we wouldn't have planted small, tedious crops like carrots there. The long days this time of year give the weeds the advantage; but we're winning most of the battles. We're in the process of evaluating purchasing a cultivating tractor to help speed up the weeding process - not only would it make it quicker, but it would probably improve the work environment a bit; a full 8 hour day of manual weeding isn't exactly fun. Unfortunately, we're at a weird size; four acres is a bit too small to really justify a highly specialized $30,000 tractor, but too large to effectively manage by hand at a reasonable cost. Everything we've ever read says that farms between three and seven acres are one of the most difficult to manage because there is no proper equipment for the scale. Thus, we need to either suck up the high cost, shrink or grow. Right now, all three are possibilities, so we're working through the benefits and drawbacks of each in our spare time!
Over the next few weeks, we'll be planting our final crops for the season. It always seems to be crazy to be thinking about the end of fall already, but now's the time. As the days get shorter, crops grow slower and once we hit 10 hours of daylight, plants stop growing altogether, so needless to say, we have to be prepared. All of our fall crops take 20-50% longer to grow in the fall than the same crop in the peak of summer and missing a planting date by just a week can be the difference between a good crop and no crop at all. Luckily, planting is about one of the quickest tasks on the farm, so it's not too difficult to get it into the schedule to keep things moving on schedule.
Well, back to trellising tomatoes!
Brendan & Greta
