It’s June and there are several signs that summer is approaching:
- all our summer staple crops (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) have been transplanted, and the direct seeded crops like corn and cucumbers are growing well! We’ve harvested the first few baskets of cherry tomatoes and first bit of green beans, which went to the farmers market last week.
- most of our onions have been harvested and are curing in the field. One week of curing dries out the top of the onions and outer layers which protects them from going bad. The onions are sitting out in burlap bags right now and we’ll take them out of the field this week for storage.
- we’ve got our garlic harvest coming up this week! Garlic is one of the few crops that we harvest all at once. The same can be said for onions, shallots, nuts, and winter squash. But we harvest most other crops as needed.
- our workday is starting earlier. Our start time moved up last week to 6:30 am and we’re ending at 3:30. We’ll move even earlier in the near future to minimize the amount of time out in the sun and heat.
BUT – summer isn’t here yet, according to the calendar (June 21) and the contents of our CSA boxes. Summer crops will continue to trickle in, like the summer squash in last week’s (and this week’s) box, but it’ll be a while before your box looks like summer. We’re entering the June transition period (a “shoulder season”) from our cool weather crops, like leafy greens, brassicas, and lettuce, to our summer crops. Despite our best planning, every year there is a shoulder season which inevitably results in a few weeks with less variety in your boxes. We do our best to speed up the arrival of summer crops, using row cover, transplants, and mulches, and to extend the season for the cool weather crops. And we add new, exciting, crops when we can. We’re always looking for new ways to deal with this adjustment but haven’t figured out yet how to avoid it. So thank you in advance for understanding.
In other news:
- the power went out again this past Thursday and the Thursday before, for a few hours each time. That’s four outages in the past three weeks.
- the sheep have munched their way through the cover crop in the walnut orchard, some rows of fennel, broccoli, and lettuce that we’re done harvesting, and are now on a new patch of cover crop.
- Hannah, Dru and Paul’s youngest daughter and our resident farmer florist, got married! Hannah and her now husband Elliot, were married among the flowers in a small ceremony on Saturday morning (officiated by Becca) and celebrated afterwards with friends and family, and of course, lots of flowers. There was a light sprinkling of rain during their ceremony and reception with actual rain on Sunday. Certainly an auspicious sign! Congratulations to Hannah and Elliot!
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
