I don't know about you, but we're enjoying the little break in the heat we've been having lately! We've definitely had our fair share of heat so far this year, given it's not even the middle of July yet. It sure has things growing like crazy though!
We've been busy this past week building a new mobile chicken coop for chicks that'll be arriving by Tuesday or Wednesday - a little delayed due to some unforeseen trouble getting some of the lumber (who ever would have thought there'd be a lumber shortage), but it looks like we'll be getting it done just in time after all! Many of you know we offered eggs up until last year and we're excited to be bringing them back. Granted, it'll be a little while still - the day-old chicks have some serious growing to do and they won't be laying eggs until November. We took last year off, as the old coop is located at the old property, which would be a bit more of a hassle to deal with than it'd be worth. We're excited to get them into our production rotation for 2021.
This upcoming week, it's back to tackling the weeds again. Aside from building the coop, we spent a lot of the past week getting caught up on some field planting (hard to find a good time to plant nowadays with this weather!), as well as getting the tomato and cucumber hoophouses pruned and trellised. It looks like the slicing tomatoes will slowly be finding their way into boxes over the coming weeks, we're just starting to get a few ripening.
We were disappointed to find that it looks like we're having the same problem with nematodes in the carrots that we did last year, which was our first season growing them on this property. We had pulled a few sample carrots over the past few weeks that were looking pretty promising, but now that we're getting closer, it looks like they're going to put a pretty big dent in the carrot crop for the season. Unfortunately, short of fumigating with a chemical like methyl bromide (which we won't be doing, for obvious reasons), control options are very few and far between and most are only modestly effective, if at all. We know carrots are a member favorite and, when they grow right, they're one of our favorites as well, but the nematodes can render full plantings virtually worthless over a few short weeks, creating stubby, forked and just generally ugly, unmarketable carrots. With nearly 1/4 acre planted (nearly 2 miles of row feet, if that helps quantify just how many), it definitely wasn't something we wanted to find. We're hopeful the later batches may be better, as they were last year. Unfortunately, the nematodes utilize many plants as hosts, so short of leaving a patch of ground bare for a whole season (which is not only a large opportunity cost, but also incredibly unhealthy for the soil), we're not finding very many realistic options, so we'll be going back to the drawing board this winter.
Of course, some crops are looking better than they have in the past, so, perhaps it all balances out in the end.
Well, we have a pretty big to-do list today to take full advantage of a day with a high not in the 80's, so we'll leave it here. Hope everyone has a great week!
-Brendan & Greta
