Well, between your donations, our farm's match, and sales at the farm stand this past weekend - we all together raised $1890.00 for the Somali Bantu Community Association's efforts to purchase farm land! If you missed our fundraiser, you can still donate directly here: http://agrariantrust.org/agrariancommons/little-jubba/
The most summer-y of our summer crops are being a little shy and slowly starting to creep in. It's been a cloudy and slightly cool week on the farm, and heat and sun light (as expected) have an amazing impact on the ripening speed of peppers, tomatoes, and more, so we're hopeful that the heat wave coming will kick start the flood of all that is heat-loving and sweet.
Despite the heatwave, we're deep in planning and executing seeding for fall and winter. We just planted nearly an acre of fall carrots, a boat load of beets, and Sarah our greenhouse manager just seeded trays and trays of fall greens, kohlrabi, rutabaga, and more. Our winter cabbage has been in the ground for about a month, but it's looking A+, and in the next few weeks, we'll seed a few rounds of storage radishes and turnips. The high tunnels will be dedicated to tomatoes until the middle of the fall, but then we'll swap them over to spinach and greens to keeps us in salads for a lot of the winter. If eating your way through a New England fall sounds good to you, now is the time to sign-up for our Fall CSA, which runs from the first week of October, to the week before Thanksgiving. It includes the last of summer veggies, and all the amazingness of the fall - it's my favorite time of year to eat from the farm, especially when the days are still warm, but the nights call for soup, and the leaves are just starting to turn. You can sign-up here: https://www.harvie.farm/signup/harvest-tide-organics
*We will be limiting the number of shares and sales will be first come first serve, so don't wait too long!*
Here's a picture of our suuuuper long carrot and beet beds getting "stalebedded" where we kill the weeds in advance, or try too.....
In "Melon Watch 2020" we have some great and some bad news. Our cantaloupe crop looks amazing, the plants are loaded with beautiful heavy fruit, the plants look healthy, and will respond well to the coming heat. Our fist watermelon crop, however, is toast. We think it was lost to Fusarium Wilt, which is a soil or seed born disease that destroys the vascular system of the plant, and causes widespread wilt and death, which is what we've seen. We're investigating so it doesn't happen again, but it's still a little bit of a mystery at this point as we have never planted melons or anything in that family where we have them planted, and none of our other crops have been affected. The other good news is that we have a second planting, that is staggered with the first and while it will be ready later, as of now, it looks good.
This week we are a little thin on greens, due to heat and deer pressure, but we'll be back in spinach and other crisp goodness next week :)
Thank you all for your continued support of the farm! We've enjoyed meeting so many of you at our drop sites - thank you for being part of our farm during this especially trying time.
-Bethany and Eric
