We just got back (late!) from a sweet potluck next door with friends and neighbors (David), and from the Farmer's Market (Kayta), and we are both brimming with an afterglow of high-summer gratitude for you all, and for the amazing extended community that has supported and held us and the farm through another turn through the Spring and early Summer madness of planting.
For some reason this week feels like a milestone in the season. This time year is a complex time of year on the farm. Summer is here in full force, but Fall is everywhere. Even next season is in the works.
I looked back at the newsletter from this time last year, and, it is remarkable how rhythmically applicable the 2017 Farmer's Log is to this week, one turn around the sun later.
By early August, most of our planting work (half a years worth of planning, seed starting and plant tending) is already fruiting, or starting to reach maturity. We are all enjoying the set pieces of summer; the slow developing nightshades (tomatoes, eggplant, peppers) and their cucurbit comrades (melons, cucumbers, squash). We are in that special time of year where one can make fresh salsa straight from the farm (jalapeños, onions, tomatoes, and perennial or annual cilantro from the garden). The corn is high, all tassels and silks and ears forming. And, our potatoes, especially our red potatoes, are in flower... 6 or so inches below the surface of the soil those starchy tubers are filling out.
But in the the greenhouses and increasingly in the fields, it is all Fall. Our Fall brassica plantings (kales, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussells sprouts and the broccoli we will be picking off of on into December) are all coming into their own in their seeding trays and ready to go in the ground. We planted the Fall storage carrots a couple of weeks ago. Certain beds, you will notice this week, are bare and ready to be planted into or are in the process of being prepared for what's next. These beds provided our earliest farm meals (spring lettuces, mustard greens, turnips and radishes, the first carrots, beets, and first cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage) and, depending on what was in them before, these beds will see a second crop before being put to cover crop bed in the Fall or will be planted into a late summer cover crop now (note the tiny Buckwheat sprouts).
2019 is even in the works, as we are slowly transitioning the beds that will host next year's garlic.
Thank you for all your smiles and sweet encouragement on the farm over the last few weeks. We hope you are enjoying the summer bounty coming out of the fields and this season of transition on the farm.
See you in the fields,
David & Kayta
