No strawberries! Due to the wet weather we have all experienced, strawberries are done for the season (too much water equals too much rot and disease- so no berries this week) . Harvie is returning your money for the first week and this week - so those of you who have fruit shares will see a credit applied to your account this week. We are all looking forward to blueberries next week!
Also want to give you a heads up that a few veggies are a bit holey this week. Part of that is hail damage, part of it is caterpillars - the rain has made it difficult to maintain proper pest control! We like to think of it as tasted and approved :) There's also some research indicating that plants responds to pest damage by increaseing phytochemcials in the leaves - making holely leaves healthier for you...
Well that was wet! Tuesday and Thursday of last week we recieved almost 12 inches of rain... just for perspective, we usually get about 40" for the whole year! This was a bit much... The driveway funneled much of the water from the neighbors field into our basement, which functions as bedrooms, community kitchen, and farm meeting room. There is a drain at the bottom of the stairs into our basement, but the poor thing was overwhelmed, and so we have vacuumed water off the floor three times over the last three days. Meanwhile, the fields were awash with water everywhere you looked, like this picture of the kohlrabi barely above water. Fortunately, over the years we have converted more and more of our growing space to no-till beds, which means that our soil, not having been disturbed much this spring, mostly stayed in place. In fact, things are returning to normal very quickly, largely due to the very high organic matter and water holding capacity of our soils. So while things are a bit soggy, they are returning to normal quickly, and we'll soon be back at it. Unfortunately, this is not the case for the strawberries... all the strawberry patches in the Ozarks are suffering from an unusually wet year, which means a severe shortage of our favorite red berry... On the plus side, blueberries are looking great, and we should have those for the first week of June. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the sun and the warm weather.
Thanks,
Farmer Curtis
