Hello all,
The rain came to break the drought and super heat. It was so welcomed..especially the night before and the afternoon after we planted our 2021 strawberry crop, one thousand bare root plants! We planted 10 new thornless blackberries, 15 new blueberry bushes, 30 new red raspberries and 50 asparagus roots too. Fingers crossed. Each group of plants has very different needs. The blueberries need very acidic (pH4.5), well drained soil. The asparagus prefers a sweet soil at 7.2pH. I haven't had the best of luck with either blueberries or asparagus in the past; but I know it's what many of you want and you want it Certified Organic from Oak Spring so we are making the effort! Our goal is to provide more of our own organic fruit for future fruit shares and farm store and having more long term perennial plants to add to the sustainability of this farm.
Part of what I love about being a farmer is the challenge. Despite hours spent crop planning, bed preparing, raising seedlings & transplants, irrigation cultivating, pruning, etc...some years we have amazing bumper crops of crop X and the harlequin beetles demolish crop Y, other years I can't grow crop X to save my life and crop Y does stunningly.
Farming isn't for the faint at heart. Like going to pick the sweet corn today (picture above) for market tomorrow and find the deer have come through our fence and trampled and taken bites out of every last decent ear of corn. Ugh. So no corn for market. No corn for CSA. We have a second crop coming in. We're looking at how we can keep the deer at bay and get some corn in a couple of weeks. The crew is there now moving and mending the fences...sprinkling stinky smelling products at the edge of the field...
Bread share this week is multiseed, one of my personal favorites.
Goes great with chard dip, avocado and drippy eggs....so here's my favorite new recipe to complement your bunch of chard this week courtesy of Amy Wolfe, CSA member.
