Certified Organic Vegetables, Fruit, Flowers & Wool Since 1985
This Friday is the first day of summer and we’re (almost) ready. The gang’s all here (almost). Last week, right on cue, several of the summer classics were ready to start harvesting. Too many to document but it gives a glimpse of what you can find this week at one of our Farmers Markets and hopefully soon, we’ll have enough to put in our CSA boxes!
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Whew – another week in the summer sprint done!
Some notable moments from last week included:
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Somehow, we have reached the end of August. The mornings last week were brisk; it only hit 87 degrees on Friday, and we all scratched our heads on Saturday as a light rain sprinkled down on our valley and left the fields and trees slightly less dusty than they were before.
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Farming requires being very aware of the current conditions (weather, crops ready for harvest, etc.) all while thinking about the next day, week, month, season, and year. In August, we start pivoting to fall. We’re undeniably still in summer, even with cooler temperatures over the weekend and continuing into this week, but autumnal elements are starting to creep in. Here’re a few examples from the past week:
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July is always a very busy month, when seemingly everything is ready to harvest. Plus there’s the heat. Last week and the week before have included many long, hot days.
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I think there’s only one word to describe last week: HOT. The coolest high temperature was Monday when it still got above 100, and it only got hotter as the week went on. Being outside when it’s 110 or above feels similar to the blast of hot, dry air you get when you open the door of an oven. Except that you can’t close the oven door, and you still have to work and get things done at home (including cooking), and for us, our work is outside. 100 is a standard summer temperature for us, and it’s also fairly normal that we’ll have heat waves for a week or two (here’s a chronicle of a few past heat waves), but that doesn’t mean that it’s comfortable or easy.
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The solstice was last Thursday so now it’s officially summer. But even without looking at a calendar, we knew it – it tastes, looks, feels, and sounds, and smells like summer.
[Read more…]August is the busiest month on the farm with a never-ending list of things to do. What was keeping us busy last week?
LOTS of harvesting, packing, sorting:
It’s been nonstop, especially for our biggest crops of the summer: melons, tomatoes, and flowers. Our heirloom tomatoes are starting to slow down, but the heirloom harvesting crew still has been hard at work harvesting, and the work won’t be winding down for a while for the crews that harvest “regular” (Early Girls, Romas, and slicers) and cherry tomatoes. [Read more…]
Among the seemingly endless fields of melons, tomatoes, winter squash, and other warm-weather crops, we currently have several fields of cover crops going strong. Yes – that photo of the lush green above was taken this morning (August 21, 2023) on an unseasonably cool, cloudy, and drizzly day; it’s not a photo from earlier this year. Cover crops aren’t just for the cooler seasons, even though that’s when we tend to talk about them most (like this deep dive into cover crops last November)! The work of feeding and caring for the soil and “growing” healthy soil never ends, so when we have the water and field space to grow summer cover crops, we do. It seems counterintuitive to take land out of production during our peak harvest time to grow a non-sellable crop, but it’s an excellent opportunity to grow a fast-growing, healthy cover crop and invest in our soil and bountiful future harvests. [Read more…]
I love looking through the years of archived Beet newsletters. They document wet years, dry years, the experiences of many interns who’ve long left the farm, important milestones (like our transition to the plastic boxes, as well as weddings, births, trips, deaths), and events that have come and gone, and bigger issues that we still deal with today (water, labor availability, organic regulations). This isn’t just a resources I have at my disposal; the archives going back to October 2012 are all available online! Not the entire Beet, but the News from the Farm portion.
For those, like me, who are relatively newer to the farm, it’s a great window into what has and hasn’t changed, and puts everything in context. Often, when I think I have an original idea for the Beet, a quick search in archives shows that someone probably has talked about that topic before, albeit in a slightly different way, probably even on that same date, just years (or decades) before. [Read more…]
It’s August, which means it’s time to start prepping for fall. It can be difficult to think about the next season and its crops when it’s so hot and we’re so busy harvesting and packing summer produce. However, all of those peppers, tomatoes, and melons will eventually wind down and we need to have the cooler season crops ready to take over at that point. [Read more…]
What’s the news from the last week (or so)? [Read more…]
The last line of peaches, Autumn Flames — small but tasty —
It seemed to me that all of a sudden the gentler light, a cool breeze and a bluest of blue sky were announcing a change in the season. After another remarkably hot week, the nights are cooling down. As you walk through the walnut orchard, you have to make an effort to avoid stepping on the walnuts that have fallen from the branches and if you listen for a moment you will hear more of them falling to the ground. Fig leaves are piling up in my garden and soon the peaches will be showing some fall color. Persimmons and pomegranates are starting to look pretty ripe. The heat of the sun doesn’t seem quite as intense. [Read more…]
We’ve reached that time of the summer: Almost everything and everyone is pretty hot, tired, dusty, and ready for the end of summer, but we aren’t there yet. September is a very busy month that bridges summer and fall. We continue summer harvesting activities and get prepared for the cooler months by clearing old fields and planting new crops. Members of our summer crew who are students have headed back to the classroom, so our workforce has shrunk while the workload still is high. We had a bit of a reprieve from the heat and smoke last week, with blue skies and maximum temperatures in the upper 80s, and days are getting shorter and nights a little cooler, but it’s just a tease of what’s to come; we’re back in the 100s this week and have more summer ahead. [Read more…]
How to eat a Full Belly Watermelon —
The fall at Full Belly Farm for more than 30 seasons has been a time when more of our attention reaches outward, as planning for various events, including our Hoes Down Harvest Festival, reaches a crescendo. We have cancelled the Hoes Down for the last two years because hosting thousands of people at the farm during the pandemic seemed like a bad idea. Nevertheless, the work of the Ecological Farming Association one of the beneficiaries of the Hoes Down Harvest Festival, continued. EcoFarm, as it says on their home page, “nurtures just and ecologically sustainable farms and food systems through education, alliance building, celebration and advocacy.” [Read more…]
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