Cucumber & Summer Squash enjoying the warmth under a temporary “greenhouse”.
planting some lettuce mix (usually done with a mechanical transplanter so the rows are a little more straight!)
We hope everyone has enjoyed last week’s box and are ready for this one!
We got a phone call from another farmer on Tuesday morning asking for advice. Unfortunately we couldn’t offer much help. Every season brings new challenges. Some are easier to deal with than others. This spring has been exceptionally cool and wet. As many of you have probably seen in the Citizen-Times, this spring is the third wettest since 1875. Water is a blessing and a curse to the farmer. There is almost never the correct amount freely given by mother nature. It’s either too much or too little and never timed to our liking. Our friend’s, other farmers, had called saying that nothing they had planted had grown much in the last few weeks and they had nothing to sell or offer their CSA members. We are a little more lucky, in that we have been able to take produce to market and put together two weeks worth of boxes for you all. However, we may be in the same boat as them in the coming weeks.
We were able to get a lot of early planting done because we made a few good decisions last fall. We had beds made up then, so we’d have them in the early spring when the ground is generally too wet to work with a tractor. We also covered much of the early planting with row covers to keep them warmer. But we had only so much space to plant into, and that was filled up weeks ago and we haven’t been able to get anything in since. Thankfully that did change on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. We were able to plant a LOT: a bed of sunflowers, broccoli, cabbage, chard, two beds of sweet corn, a mixed bed of lettuce mix, bok choi & kohlrabi, and a couple of beds of mixed flowers. We also sowed beets, carrots, soybeans, and snap beans. What a couple of days we’ve had. What we’re afraid of is a gap in production and some tough or unpleasant choices we may have to make concerning your boxes. Perhaps all will be fine, but being farmers, we worry.
Please return your CSA box next week. These boxes are waxed and are not recyclable, but we reuse them. So PLEASE remember to bring them back next week.