Farm Report August 6, 2012

Spray Issue Update

• We sent in samples to test for the four chemicals sprayed on our farm.  Testing results are supposed to be ready by August 16.  Cost is $1600.  Because we have support from our CSA Farm Share subscribers we were able to do this.  Trifloxystrobin, Chlorpyrifos, Bifenthrin, Prothioconazole are the chemicals being tested for.
• Rob picked about 185 eggplant for approximately 150 pounds of compost.  We continue to irrigate the area and plan to pick the plants and keep records until we get test results back.  If the results come back clean (unlikely) we will have kept the plants healthy so we can actually get something from them.  If they come back 'dirty' we'll have records we can use to show that the crop was looking good and was cared for.  A typical eggplant year sees us pulling in about 1400 eggplant - this picking shows we're on target.  A typical sweet pepper year has us pulling in 4000+ sweet peppers and 2000+ hot peppers.
• We have meetings with a couple of prospective lawyers for our case set up.  We are hopeful that this will be decided soon.
• We've moved the turkeys and their building to the east in an effort to get them off of sprayed pasture.  They're not all the way off, but most of the way.
• We've moved the hen pasture so that it also stretches east.  Again, it is not all the way off, but it's the intermediate step we can handle at this point.

Crop Report

•  Tomatoes - plants look good.  Tomato set was behind because of warmer weather - so the heavy harvest may be a bit later for us than it often is.  
•  cucumbers - the second succession is getting ready to set fruit.  We keep getting them water so they should keep going.  
• summer squash & zucchini - plants lived through the worst of the heat and dry.  They appear to want to make up for lax production, but we're not counting on it until they actually do it.  First succession has mostly died off.  second looks reasonable.  Third was largely destroyed by cucumber beetles and squash bugs before they started.  Fourth is in trays and will be put in soon.
• green beans - it is typical for the beans to give a peak, take a break and peak again.  They may be approaching a break.  We continue to irrigate to keep them as happy as we can have them.  Our planting we intended to fill the break is in the sprayed area, so we cannot harvest and share those beans.  So far, we are at about 400 lbs of beans harvested for the season.  Pretty happy with that.
• Potatoes - plants continue to look reasonably good.  We anticipate harvesting towards the end of August.  This is followed by a curing period before we distribute any.
• Winter squash is officially a loss.  We have some pie pumpkins that look good.  Unfortunately, the winter squash are in our worst field and they did not handle the drought. 
• Watermelons - look great.  Melons - pretty good.
• Onions - fair.  There will be some, but it will be a bit yet.

That's all for the report for now.  We'll try to be more thorough next time.