Wasn't That Just Yesterday?

I took some time during a rainy day some weeks ago and grabbed a few photos from this season that depicted some of the progress certain parts of the farm made as the year went on.  I'm realizing that I could have done a better job with picking areas to focus on so I had a better 'journal,'  but this will serve well enough.

The North Fields
Yes, yes, I realize calling these 'fields' might seem a little pretentious to those who farm more than the 15 acres we manage.  But, since it is our blog, we'll call them fields.  So there!

The glacier that didn't want to leave

With a little bit of effort, you might recall that last Winter was particularly cold and things just did not want to warm up very quickly.  Our bush line in the North did the job it is supposed to do and it collected snow to the tune of a drift that measured about 14 feet deep and 25 feet wide.  That's going to take a while to melt in a normal Spring.  But, it just didn't want to go away this year.

The rabbit fence at work in the North fields

This caused us to change plans.  Initially, we were going to put up a new high tunnel, but we couldn't get an excavator in ... blah blah blah....  So, the net result is that we used the field only for a Fall crop of greens and brassica.  The advantage of this area for Fall crops is that there is wind protection on three sides.  It doesn't mean that much for the crops, but it does for the person doing the harvesting.

Mustard greens looking happy in the field.

The Southwest
The SouthWest field is always the first to dry out and the first to have the frost go out.  So, this year, we knew the peppers and eggplant would be in this field.  Our plan calls for some spinach and radish to be planted and harvested before the peppers.  Happily, the soil was workable enough in April for us to give it a shot.

The earth must have shifted a bit that day.

But, of course, the weather turned cold and wet soon after we planted into the field.  The net result?   Poor germination of the crops we planted.

Wasn't there supposed to be something in these rows?

In the end, we did what we knew was the right thing for the farm.  We tilled most of these crops in.  Germination rates were too low to justify leaving them in to fight the weeds that were developing.  We kept one row of radish and started planting peppers and bean rows around them.

One row of radish survived and was left for harvesting

Well, the cool summer resulted in smaller pepper plants, but they produced well enough for us.  It was, a bit irritating that we had to worry about a frost in early/mid September.  Out came the remay covers.  The most difficult part about these covers is the fact that it takes only a very little bit of wind to move them off of the plants.  We ended up finishing the job after the sun went down.

But, we were able to harvest or another few weeks this way!

The Eastfarthing
Yes, we do call it that.  Hey!  It's our farm, we can call it what we want.  Remember our discussion about the North fields?

One crop we got in the ground in a timely fashion were our tomatoes.   We were both very pleased by this.  But, then the weather conspired to slow us with the mulching and caging.  It's always something, isn't it?

Italian Heirloom on the left and German Pink on the right.

Once again, the cool summer played a part in plant sizes.  Many of the plants were far smaller than usual and tomatoes set in tight clusters near the base of the plant.  Sadly, this caused problems for us and reduced our yields dramatically.  The good news?  The tomatoes tasted great.  Others reported tomatoes that weren't as good as usual this year.  Happily, when we got a tomato that didn't have a split or other problem, it had very good taste.  We'll take it.

That field sure LOOKED good.

And, there you have it.  Some perspective on the growing season in words and pictures.