A lot is happening on the farm now (is it ever not?)! We just began garlic harvest pulling thousands of heads from the ground, but still have thousand more to go. All the garlic, once pulled, gets laid out in the greenhouse on tables with the roots exposed for maximum drying and airflow. Once dried, it will get cleaned, all the dirty outer papers removed, and sorted into garlic for shares and seed garlic. Last fall and winter were hard on us and the garlic. I was nearly seven months pregnant at garlic planting time (no transplanter for me, ugh the nausea), and if you remember last November, we got TWO unexpected snow storms that froze the ground before expected. We also had a hard winter of freezes and thaws, which can be hard on anything overwintering - perennials, fruit trees, cane fruit, berries, and garlic.
So our garlic is smaller than we would like, and there is a little less of it, but we've still got a solid crop for members, we just will have to buy in more seed than anticipated for next year's crop. Luckily, we've got some excellent garlic seed growers right in our neighborhood!
RASPBERRIES - in the coming years, we'll have raspberries in the U-pick for you to come enjoy, but for now we have wonderful fresh berries directly from our neighbors at Fairwinds Farm, some of the best berry growers in the state (though I am biased - they are like family to us:) These berries are conventionally grown, but delicious and wonderful and part of our local food system. Did you know that raspberries are VERY hard to keep pest free? IN recent years the introduction of the invasive pest the spotted wing drosophila has been hard on local growers. They are like fruit flies, but instead of only eating over-ripe fruit, they can cut into fruit not yet ripe to lay their eggs, meaning that under-ripe berries are susceptible to large losses. Like fruit flies they multiply quickly and have very short reproductive life spans so they can do lots of damage.
Not to be a downer- but enjoy those berries while you can! I know I am - raspberries are a personal fav! And please appreciate all the hard work and risk that farmers take on to bring them to your table! You can order by selecting "Add extras" from your customization email.
