This is the right time for farmers to go on vacation -- we are in this small window of time where we are just weeding and waiting. All but one of the tomato patches are planted, all the stakes are in, we are up to the second or third string (it takes about five horizontal strings to hold up a tomato plant), all the aisles are mulched. We are just watching these bushy plants grow. Not so different from waiting for water to boil.
Meanwhile, the potatoes are ready to dig, even though the plants are still upright and vigorous. If you want the skins to get a little thicker and tougher so the potatoes will last longer, you have to wait until the plants die and start to melt into the ground. But this is the season of the new potato, with the gossamer skin that just disappears if you hit the potato with a stream of water. We dig the new potatoes on our hands and knees, without a machine to loosen the soil. It is like digging for buried treasure, but the potatoes are not very well hidden.
The end of June/early July is usually the time of year when we look most prepared to host a wedding. All the plants are healthy and beautiful, the grass is mowed, things are mighty tidy. As soon as our days get filled with daily picking, we start to lose our weeding focus and the grass grows faster and faster between the plants. By the end of July our fields look like they need a good haircut.
July is the one month out of twelve that is Brassica Free. We have no cabbage, broccoli, kale, radishes, turnips in the ground for a whole four weeks. It's not much, but we hope that it helps to break the cycle of bugs and disease. It gives some punctuation to the summer, marking the end of the spring crops.
...but while the vegetables are safely in the ground here, our meat and poultry producer, Whiffletree Farm, just experienced a wild storm that flipped over their chicken tractors and broke down their fences, allowing the cows to wander out. Their neighbors mobilized to help them get everything back in place and no one was hurt. But these sudden storms seem to be striking Warrenton, VA with unusual ferocity. We shiver as we remember the derecho of 2012, when we were similarly up-ended by wind and weather. Climate change is affecting all of us, and it is scary.
