Peaches for another week! More apples to try! And a huge list of summer veggies to fill your fridges this week! Also - don't forget to reschedule those shares that you may have put on "hold" way back when. You've got 4 weeks left to get them scheduled!
We made it through another hot week here on the farm. The heat an humidity finally break tomorrow, and not to wish summer away, but I'm crossing my fingers that it's for good. I've spoken here about how hard the heat is on our staff, and I should give them all another huuuuge shout-out for making it through this week with smiles intact, because I, for one, feel completely faded.
I've been confronting some of the more plant-centric issues with the humidity this week too. We lost a whole broccoli planting (second major broccoli loss this year) to the humidity as the moisture in the air and the warm temps led to rapid spread of alternaria in the planting that we were hoping to serve up this coming week. It can be heartbreaking to watch a beautiful looking planting of something we've seeded, planted, weeded and tended for months just melt as spores spread into it, seemingly overnight. I have cried in broccoli plantings more than once in years past as income and produce we were planning on disintegrated before it fully matured. This year broccoli, spinach, and tomatoes have been the hardest hit by the humidity as the moisture on the plants and in the air has lead to significantly increased spreading of disease. Some of our newer farm staff got to see this as the planting of spinach they weeded last week (that was looking A+) was seriously struggling with anthracnose by Monday. Luckily, as a diverse farm, we are never reliant (by design) on any one crop, and while I used to spend more time crying in plantings lost, now we're more inclined to sigh deeply, mow it, and move on, but man it can be a bummer. Anyway - we're hopefully heading into some seriously fantastic summer weather, so fingers-crossed for better broccoli weather on the way!
Baby broccoli gone too soon :(
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