Happy First Week of Summer! What a whirlwind of a season this has been so far! One week we are in the 90's and then the next week it cools off into the upper 70s. This morning (6/23) we were wearing jackets while harvesting your Sugar Snap Peas!
I'm sure a lot of you are feeling the same way, but 2020 has been a pretty overwhelming year for me so far. For those of you that don't know already, I'm a "one person show" running the Farm business but I do have a great Farm Crew that helps do the field work. The season started out like "normal" with greenhouse seedings and everything seemed to be on schedule. Then the pandemic hit and instead of having our annual Transplant Sales like "normal" on the Farm I chose to try and create an online store (in just a couple of weeks while also doing greenhouse work) and do all home deliveries. This was all very time consuming and stressful as I am not a tech savvy person but needed to get it done quickly. While the Farm did lose a considerable amount of income from lack of sales (the online store I created was not the best, many folks like to shop in person, etc.) we still made it work.
With the considerable amount of rain we got in April field plantings got behind as we waited for the ground to dry out. The soils at the Farm are very healthy and have a high amount of Organic Matter in them. This is great for soil microbial activity (leading to healthy plants) retaining moisture in times of droughts, but it also means it takes quite awhile to dry out after a rain. Then, the excessive heat (plus late cold snap) we got in May caused many of the crops to bolt (produce flower stalks like you saw on your radishes) and ended harvests of them earlier than expected. I had my hunches, but after talking with other experienced growers around the State I decided to not plant Cabbage and Broccoli because they, along with myself, had already noticed signs of them bolting while still in the cell packs (little pots). My experience made me think it wasn't going to be worth the time and expense to plant them when I didn't think they were really going to produce. In hindsight, maybe we should have planted them just to see what we could harvest but I still think I made the right decision to not plant.
What we are thinking right now is there is going to be some shortages in the intended crops that would normally be in the Shares this time of year but we are trying to mitigate this by planting micro greens (same great flavors/nutrition just in a smaller package), purchasing food from other Farmer Friends (like the Kale Bunches this week from Root to Rise Certified Organic Farm) and continuing to plant at the Farm.
I don't mean this email to sound like a pity party as I know everyone is experiencing all different sorts of hardships this season! There are some real positive things happening at the Farm though! One great example (as you can see from the photo) is because of my gut feeling the weather was going to be "different' this year I decided to plant out one of our high tunnels with tomatoes. They look great right now and we will begin harvesting the Sungold Cherry Tomatoes earlier than ever before! The onion and garlic crops look to be some of the nicest I've ever grown!
Have a great week,
Farmer Ben and the Crew
