Update for July 30th

Dear CSA members,

Too cool, too hot, too dry and too wet! It has been a crazy year. Generally we have one pattern or another, but this year it has been a little of everything. We really needed the rain, but over three inches in about three days was a lot. It has been nice to finally have “average” temperatures.

The rain allowed us to plant our some of our fall crops into the fields. It is much nicer to transplant in moist ground than dry ground. Beans, carrots, broccoli, cabbage are all planted. We still have more to do, but we should get most of it wrapped up by next week. We are also getting fields ready for cover cropping. We are already planning for next year.

The corn has been severely damaged by house sparrows and raccoons, so unfortunately we won’t have enough to put into shares this year. Last year they damaged over 1/3 of our corn crop. We also saw significant raccoon damage on the border of the cornfield this year too. We could set up an electric fence for the raccoons, but we don’t see a good solution for the house sparrows. After two years of experiencing these problems, it looks like it won’t make economic sense for us to grow corn on the farm.

We have fennel in the shares this week. It is smaller than the other variety we grow Orion, but just as tasty. Steam or roast it along with a few of the other vegetables in the share this week. We also have Peter Wilcox potatoes. They have purple skin and a yellow interior. Green peppers make their first appearance in your basket this season.