Farm Report

Farm Report (written 7/28)

• The cucumbers are happy. It's nice that something is happy!
• Most peppers are still with us. However, the first batch of fruit have problems, so we have removed most from the plants. We are hopeful that they will recover and produce again. At this point, we don't see much coming for peppers until mid August or later. Maybe we'll be surprised as we continue to cultivate and weed those plants.
• Summer squash and zucchini just keep teasing us. But, they also haven't enjoyed sitting in water, so we can't really blame them. some nice sunshine and drier weather may give us a big push here in a week or two. Or...it will just keep trickling in until the next planting catches up (they are looking good).
• Green beans gave us a picking, now they are trying to recover from wet feet (etc). Plants generally look fine and we continue to free more of each row by weeding and mulching.
• Tomatoes generally look good - they continue to give us scouts. They look to be in line for the typical peak starting in mid/late August and lasting to mid/late September.
• Kale is struggling to make a comeback. Planting #2 may have a better shot at getting harvested sooner than #1 returns to form. About 1/4 of the plants have been removed from planting #1.
• The white onions have been picked in their entirety, so Thus distribution is the last time you will see them this year. The count should be somewhere in the 800-1000 area.
• The time between batches of meat chickens is actually a somewhat pleasant period of time on the farm. But, we'll exit that time period this Friday when chicks arrive.
• The spring peas couldn't stand the heat after all that wet - so we'll give fall peas a shot again this year.
• chard, beet and turnip seedlings have sprouted.
• Some of the lettuce is maturing as expected. Some isn't as happy as we are used to seeing it. Looks like Bronze Arrowhead or Australian Yellow Leaf may make an appearance in shares next week.
• We took advantage of the availability of a small tractor at an auction close to home. It is a Ford 8-N. We will talk of it at some later point in more detail. For now, suffice it to say that we have it on our farm, in part, to honor Kent Harms. We'll keep the organic growing fires burning for you, Kent.