Note to our Cheboygan walk-in trailer pickup members:
You should have received an email this morning about a change in pickup schedule to alleviate some of the congestion that's been happening in the trailer. Long story short, if your last name begins with A-K you will now be able to pick up your box on Wednesdays (which is why some of you are receiving this customization email early); if your last name begins with L-Z, you'll remain on the Friday schedule.
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Now that we got that squared away; we hope everyone had an enjoyable 4th!
Hot and dry still seems to be the running theme around here! Even pumping 60 gallons a minute, we're still a bit stretched to get everything watered at the rate we should, as we have to work the irrigation schedule around our field work and harvesting. Despite what it may seem, even on the hottest days, getting hit with 45 degree irrigation water is more of a shock to the system than it is refreshing. Fortunately, we're running more drip irrigation this year, which allows for more efficient use of water, but there are still plenty of crops like carrots and broccoli that need overhead irrigation. At this point, we need to pump around 120,000 gallons a week onto the fields (for a likely useless fact in everyday life, it takes 27,154 gallons to cover an acre in an inch of water).
Most crops are pulling through the heat just fine. To say just a month and a half ago we were dealing with below freezing weather and slow-growing crops, you wouldn't know it now! Other than the cool-loving radishes and broccoli (which is still trying to hold its own out there - though, we're really testing the variety's heat tolerance claim at this point), most crops we have planted right now are loving this warm weather; though losing 5-10 degrees would be ideal, as fruiting crops like tomatoes have a hard time getting properly pollinated at these temperatures. It looks like we'll get there after another hot week coming up.
Everyone's still powering through around here, albeit at what I'd assume is a slower pace (if we're all working slower, I guess nobody will really notice, right?). While it may be perfect boating weather, crawling around on hot sand weeding 300' beds of carrots is a whole different story! We always joke that we moved from Knoxville, TN to here to avoid this warm of weather and the weather lately is virtually identical despite us being 800 miles north - go figure! Luckily we had some hot days back in May to get us a bit acclimated.
This upcoming week, we'll be diving into a lot of our fall planting for the season. Despite being solidly in the midst of summer, fall, in our minds, is right around the corner. Crops grow slower as the days shorten and the temperatures fade, so it's important for us to get crops planted on time for fall harvest because missing by a mere week can be the difference between a solid crop and no crop. Plus, after the crazy weather so far this season, who knows what fall will be bringing with it!
Well, off to make another weekly plan and start getting some things checked off it!
-Brendan & Greta
