This week's newsletter, Farm Notes, is all about community and farming, farming as a community, and the community of our farm. Be sure to read the inspiring stories.
We are starting earlier in the day and ending before the peak heat of the late afternoon. The humidity has been intense, and the plants are looking happy in this tropical weather. In spite of all our best intentions--we planted small summer squash patches, well spaced apart--we are now picking five simultaneous plantings... and sending many pounds of beautiful zucchini to the food bank. It just happens in July, we are not the boss of the squash. It grows all night long.
Our next big push, looming on the horizon, is harvesting over a half an acre of onions. They look smaller than we had hoped for, probably because it was so chilly this spring, and they never really took off. But there are still tons of onions out there to be collected up and cured. Avi,a high school student in his third summer here, says the season goes like like this: "lettuce, garlic, onions." Then he goes back to school. We continue on: "winter squash, sweet potatoes, carrots..."
There is a difference between "picking" and "harvesting" that is lost on most people who don't pick/harvest. Picking is something that happens every day. We pick lettuce mix and squash and arugula and tomatoes and they grow back over and over. But harvesting happens just once per crop and it is a big project, involving large groups of people and lots of heavy containers or armloads. And it is the harvests that we remember because we work around the weather, trying to make sure that the crops will store well and last into the fall or through the winter.
For more recipe ideas, follow us on Pinterest!
