It’s the last full week of summer – the autumnal equinox is next week! What’s happening as we wrap up summer?
Harvesting! Lots of things, including lots of gorgeous eggplant which went in last week’s CSA boxes. Look how tall some of those plants are! Some varieties have thorns too, making long sleeves and gloves a must!
We’re still going strong with melons. We have one more planting to harvest. Last year, that field was our summer flower field and you can see a few volunteer plants among the melons, like the amaranth in this photo.
It’s not just us enjoying the melons, the sheep are too! They clean up the field after we’re done harvesting and they make fast work of any remaining fruit in the field, plus the vines.
The other half of the sheep are munching away on one of the fields of summer cover crops. If you look closely, you can see a few non-sheep interlopers, including Churro, the newest addition to the Full Belly family, and his mom Canelé, in the background.
We’re also harvesting flowers. The fresh flower season wraps up at the end of September, so next week is the last week for most CSA members to order flowers. Tuesday CSA members have two more weeks. Then we’ll be switching to dried flowers and wreaths (see the announcement below!). The flower team is still harvesting so many beautiful flowers. For the varieties that’re done, we’re mowing, spreading compost, and prepping beds for more planting.
Carrots have germinated! There’s lots of weeding to do, and not just on the carrots. Some things get weeded by tractor, but the rest are done by hand.
This is just a smattering of what’s going on, the activities I was able to document on a perfect, not-too-hot morning. As always, there’s too much to document and recount! We also had some light sprinkles on Wednesday (and a power outage), more transplanting, taking down some of our tomato field, a farm dinner on Saturday, many Hoes Down planning meetings, fixing tractors, moving irrigation lines, and more. Such is the normal week at Full Belly Farm!
Elaine Swiedler, CSA Manager
