The other night I was looking at my Instagram feed, which consists mostly of other vegetable farms, so that I can see what they're up to, and I started to be plagued with feelings of self doubt and inadequacy-- those pictures showed one gorgeous farm and perfect harvest after another! Then I realized that they're probably not posting their failures and shortcomings on instagram. I used to do the same thing, back when I was posting on Instagram. There's a tendency among us farmers to believe the public is more interested in having their romantic notions about the rustic life confirmed rather than actually learning about agriculture. That may be true for some people, but it is a form of lying, and so, as part of my sporadic efforts at total honesty, here it is-- the unvarnished truth.
The opening photo was of our pepper field as it actually is-- plants sprawled all over the ground, weeds growing between the isles, three days late to harvest--a barely managed chaos. And here is a picture of a tomato plant with the blight:
This form of fungal disease, commonly known as "late blight", although it has an unpronouncable Latin name as well, is the same fungus that caused the Irish potato crop to fail during the Great Famine. It is exacerbated by rainy, cloudy drizzly weather. I expect these tomatoes to be wholly dead in a few days. Luckily we had a huge harvest just before they got diseased, so we should have tomatoes for a few more weeks, depending on how they store. Judging by what I've been seeing at farmers' market, we're not the only farm with this issue.
Finally, here's a picture of a field of fall carrots. This one looks pretty good-- I expect a good harvest-- but even here you can spot some weedy patches.
And this is the best carrot field on the farm!
I'm not even going to show you a picture of the zucchini plants that died from too much rain and damp. I'm beginning to think I should have planted watercress.
Well, there it is-- the real deal. I hope you're happy.
I can't think of any other news right now, and I'm out of pictures to post, so goodbye for now.
John
