There were turkeys in the pumpkin patch yesterday — a “gang” of about twenty birds. (Gang or rafter are the appropriate words for a group of turkeys.) We don’t usually have wild turkeys around here, though we’ve seen a couple on nearby properties during the past year.  

We’ve had an excellent response to the WorthWild campaign to fund the reusable crates.  We’re already a third of the way to our goal! We appreciate all your supportive comments as well. I think this is a good direction to go in.

For awhile now we’ve been exploring ways to become more environmentally sound in our packaging. The waxed cardboard boxes we use to deliver CSA produce can be used several times, but the fact is, the boxes are not recyclable because of the wax coating and end up comprising a large portion of our landfill bulk from the farm.

We are entering the final stretch for this season. The seeds I am setting out to be planted in the greenhouse will be the last we plant until we start up again in November and December for next season’s transplants.

Our restoration volunteer day last Saturday was very productive and fun. Thanks to those of you who came out to help! We got a lot of mulch spread in a short amount of time. Laura Kummerer turned her spotting scope on the osprey nest, so we got a great view of the 2 chicks and their parents, and took a walk through the grassland to identify the different native and invasive species.

Wanted: several willing people to help spread mulch in our habitat restoration area by Harkins Slough. The ospreys and turkey vultures will be supervising this fun work day event from 10 am to 1 pm this Saturday.

It’s hard to believe it’s the middle of July already! We have a couple opportunities for you to come out to the farm this summer. First, we’ll hold Strawberry U-Picks the next three Saturdays – July 18^th, July 25^th, and August 1^st. Picking time is between 10 AM and 2 PM, so please try to arrive on time to finish up your picking by 2. Now’s the time to make that jam or stock up the freezer with berries for smoothies! Berries cost $2 per pound. Bring your own containers if you can.

The initial spring frenzy has passed and things have calmed down a little around here. The winter squash and pumpkins are up and growing quickly and the heat loving crops like tomatoes, peppers, beans and basil have really taken off. After a very cool spring, it’s finally starting to feel like summer.

High Ground Organics’ home farm is protected by two easements, an agricultural easement and a conservation easement. This summer we are lucky to have Brown University student Clare Peabody working as an intern to help our restoration efforts on the half of the property under the conservation easement.

I’ve been getting some questions about tomatoes already so I guess people are getting in the mood for summer vegetables and fruits. It certainly feels like summer with these long days, kids out of school, and the solstice just around the corner. The thing about summer vegetables is that they need those long warm days to grow! Our tomatoes are shaping up to come in earlier than we’ve ever had them before, but they still need a few more weeks.

Last Tuesday I went to the Elkhorn Slough Water Quality Workshop at the Moss Landing Marine Labs. I had signed up for it months ago when things were less busy, so when I received an e-mail reminder a few days before the event, my first reaction was that I could never afford to take half a day off.

We’ve been enjoying meeting a lot of you at our u-picks!  One more to come this Saturday, and then stay tuned – we’ll probably do some more in the summer. We should have both strawberries and blueberries for you to pick this weekend.

For at least the past decade, we (and CSA members) have been donating vegetables and fruit each week to a local food pantry called Pajaro Valley Loaves and Fishes. For years, Loaves and Fishes volunteer Bob Montague was the face of the food pantry program for us. He would arrive every Thursday with an old Ford pick-up truck and load up the CSA vegetables donated by members who were on vacation that week or had even paid to provide a donation share weekly. Since the old truck gave up the ghost, we’ve been delivering the vegetables directly to the food pantry ourselves.

The activity level on the farm has been ratcheted up these last few weeks. This time of year finding time to do anything other than harvesting is difficult. We have three crops—strawberries, blueberries and squash—that have to be picked 2-3 times a week and when you throw in all of the other crops we are harvesting there is very little time left for all of the planting, weeding, pruning and other activities that have to happen to keep the farm going.

We ran into a little glitch on Wednesday when we tried to irrigate a new planting of lettuce—the sprinklers never came up to pressure. The well at our home farm is very shallow and very old and we’ve known for the past year or so that it was failing. We are on the waiting list to have a deeper well dug, but with the high demand for wells right now, we’ve got another 6-7 months before that happens.

This week we got the netting over the blueberry patch–just in time, as the fruit is ripening fast. If we left the patch uncovered the birds would get more berries than we would. We picked the first ripening berries this week, so a few of you will find blueberries as your mystery item.

The unusually warm spring has produced favorable conditions for us to get our cover crops mowed down and lots of transplanting already done here at our home farmland. This is the first year we are not farming the land we used to lease around the Redman house, but with our 18 acres at Lewis Road and the similar size here at home we have plenty of good ground available.

Among the very best improvements we have ever made on our farm is building an enclosed workshop in 2007. By most standards it is quite modest—30×30 feet, with unfinished walls and a bare concrete floor. But it does have workbenches, lots of shelf space, good lighting and enough floor space to work on two trucks or tractors at once if need be. And most importantly, it has a place for everything—(although everything isn’t always in its place).

It feels like the end of May around here. The flowers on the Ceanothus in front of our house, which is usually just starting to bloom at this time, have largely faded and been scattered onto our walkways and yard. I can’t remember a winter where I have been in shirt-sleeves more often.

The strawberries are giving us a warm welcome this spring, with the earliest crop we’ve ever had! The warm winter has prompted early blooms of plants of all sorts. Our habitat restorationist Laura Kummerer tells me that the annual wildflower count on April 15^th may be too late this year to catch many of the wildflowers—they’ve already bloomed and will be done by that date!

I love winter skies. Even though this “storm” didn’t ever pan out, the stormy-looking sky was a lovely consolation. We’re still hoping to get some rain the end of this week. On my walk around the farm I came across dozens of ladybugs in all stages. This picture shows a pupa on the left, and on the right is a ladybug freshly emerged from its empty pupa case. It’s good to see the ladybugs gearing up for the season!

The weekend rain has been very welcome on the farm. The long dry spell was starting to worry us, but the cover crops in the farm fields and the grasses in the restoration area have all hung on and should now take off again with new growth.  Another storm system coming in the next week or so will help to keep things growing.

January has been a busy month for us in regards to farm related meetings and social gatherings. As part of my duties as President of the Central Coast Chapter of California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) I helped to organize our annual meeting which was held in nearby Aromas on Monday the 12th. Three wonderful presenters agreed to speak on topics that are very relevant to growers here on the Central Coast. Lisa Bunin from The Center for Food Safety spoke about efforts to get the organic strawberry industry to transition to organically produced starter plants.

Happy New Year to everybody. With 2014 gone, it’s time to look ahead to the 2015 farm season (March 18/19 to November 18/19), even while we harvest for the winter shares. This is a good time for us to be reminded of why Community Supported Agriculture is such a helpful model for small farmers, as well as for those who crave local fresh produce.