I hope we don't sound like a broken record but it is a real joy to help feed your family. We feel so blessed to live a fulfilling life of producing healthy food for so many people! We're enjoying our short moments together as we learn your kids names and what kind of dog you have (lots of dogs riding along on CSA pickups lately)!
Count yourself lucky if Harvie gave you cherry tomatoes or cucumbers or squash. These are just now coming into production. Just a tiny bit at first, with a little warmth and sun and we'll be having these in abundance in a few more weeks. The harvest builds for several weeks before we get to steady state production on these crowd favorites. If you haven't received any of these yet, you will. Harvie is quite fair in how the algorithm distributes these items based on your preferences and a randomizer. Pretty cool, really.
The fields are looking really good now. So far we are staying ahead of the weeds! Green beans are up! And the beets....Oh how the beets are growing...And we've got many beds of carrots that are still too tiny but growing fast.
We had a really bad infestation of stripped cucumber beetles that did some quick damage to the outdoor squash before we noticed them. We keep them covered with hoops and row cover specifically to keep them out. All we can figure is they emerged from the soil beneath!!! First time we've seen that! We had to resort to a kaolin clay slurry to spray on the plants that turns them white and makes them unappetizing to the bugs. We don't normally need to do that under cover. We hope the plants can recover. The second round of outdoor squash are just tiny seedlings so we really hope this first round isn't a bust. Because we grow using organic practices, we plant several rounds of squash because the cucumber beetles and squash bugs eventually kill them. We are normally able to keep them off for a while and get a harvest. If the bugs hit them too early, sometimes we lose the whole planting, so keep your fingers crossed.
I go into all that to tell you that with the wide variety of crops we grow, we have crop failures from time to time (hoping this round of squash isn't one of them), but part of organic farming is knowing when to cut your losses, mow down a crop and start over. Better to rip out a struggling crop than spend the time weeding an caring for it if it isn't going to produce. We keep a constant stock of transplants and seeds ready so that when this happens, we roll with the punches and keep moving. Some farmers have really set crop plans; ours is pretty fluid. This allows us to make adjustments mid-course. So for instance, if demand is high for a certain crop, we can plant more of that crop. Of course, the farm doesn't turn on a dime and there is still a growing process but we try to be flexible.
We've got a long growing season and a long CSA, so you'll get to see first hand the changes of the seasons and the crops that "appear" in your box each week. Thanks for being part of making local food possible, and understanding that a whole lot goes into each veggie that magically appears each week.
Thanks for trusting us with your food!
Dave and Sheri
