Even while we are just getting started on harvesting some of our summer crops, August is a sprint for the finish line production-wise. This week the very last of our successive plantings will go into the greenhouse. And through the middle of next month, we will be making the last plantings of the crops that we seed directly into the field, like carrots, beets, scallions, parsley, cilantro and snap peas. Relative to our spring and early summer plantings, these last plantings will be larger.

When it comes to storing your produce, one thing that is really helpful to know is which parts of your refrigerator maintain what temperatures. Every refrigerator is a little different. Most units have drawers for vegetables (I know them as “crispers”. Since having kids, no drawers have been large enough to hold my weekly vegetable haul.). Outside of the drawers the internal temps will vary from place to place, with the lower parts of the refrigerator being the coldest.

Here it is August already. Steve wants to write some articles about specific things happening on the farm right now, but we can’t pull him out of the field long enough to do it. This past week he has been out at the Lewis Road farm quite a bit, planting avocado trees, meeting with designers to set up his hoophouses on the terraces, and getting a load of mustard seed meal to help fight root knot nematodes. The mustard seed meal is proving itself to be a good fertilizer as well as fighting soil diseases and pests.

The farm is in full summer swing now. There are yummy summer vegetables (beans, peppers, cucumbers, and eggplants) growing nicely. The apples (and even some pears this year) are formed on the trees and starting to size up. The blueberries have slowed down, but we’re still able to put a few in the mystery shares each week. The strawberries are plugging along nicely. In this year of learning about our new Lewis Rd. farmland, we decided to not take a chance with the tomatoes. The Thomas Farm has been growing wonderful organic tomatoes for decades, so we asked Josh if he would plant enough to supply our CSA for this summer.

“Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.”
H. Jackson Brown Jr.

For the past few years, we have been getting flowers for the CSA from Steve’s cousin, Josh, at the Thomas Farm in Corralitos.

The heat we have received this last week has really pushed things along. Over the next few weeks we have beautiful blocks of celery, broccoli and cauliflower that will be ready for harvest, as well as a new field of summer squashes that is now in bloom. Over the next few days we will go through and “blanch” the cauliflower plants by pulling the outer leaves together over the top of the plant and tying them together with rubber bands.

The other morning I awoke to someone calling cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, outside our bedroom window. My husband and I looked at each other and started laughing uncontrollably. It was our neighborhood mockingbird and I swear, it was a distinct “cheeseburger” that was being sung.

“Be careful not to disturb the nest between the blueberry rows–there are 9 duck eggs in there.” I told my berry-picking crew. “No”  Gabriel said. “Once! There are eleven.” The clutch of eggs that a mother mallard had laid in the middle of an aisle between rows of blueberry plants has finally hatched. Although we didn’t see it, the mother undoubtedly led her ducklings in single file down to the slough, a few hundred yards away.

Steve’s working in the field outside my office window. Now, my “office” at High Ground Organics is a marvelous yurt that overlooks the apple orchard that overlooks the potato field that overlooks the Harkins Slough. I can’t imagine a lovelier place to work. I look out my window and see the tractor is discing up a little wedge of land in front of the apple trees.

Some of you will be receiving the first blueberries that we have picked this year (don’t worry, there are plenty more to come, and we will rotate packing days to be sure that everybody gets some in the next few weeks). Of the four varieties that we planted, Southmoon is the clear favorite so far.

It’s hard to believe it’s June already, and the windy, cool days and periodic rainstorms don’t help. Everything seems to be growing slower than expected this year. The first of the blueberries are ripening at last. Of course, the birds found them right away! We’ve had to cover the rows with bird netting to keep them from eating every berry as it turns blue.

One night many years ago, Steve couldn’t sleep and got up to read in the living room. All was quiet in the house; except… what was that humming sound? The sound seemed to be coming from the floor. He put his ear on the floorboards and the humming grew louder. That’s how we first discovered that we had a hive of honey bees living under our floor.

We had a good productive week here on the farm. We listed the last twelve or so acres of un-planted ground up into beds. We’ve been laying down drip tape in the blocks that we will be planting our winter squash into later this week. And we have been planting out lots and lots of transplants—lettuces, broccoli, cabbages, fennel, celery, cauliflower, chard, kale, and peppers.

The lovely little oakleaf lettuces in your boxes this week are two varieties that are new to us this year. We are so pleased with them that we will probably put them in our regular lettuce rotation. Let us know what you think.

This week’s fava beans (part of the mystery) are all from our Redman House field. It has been a while since I last grew favas, and I made the mistake of planting them too close together in the rows. The plants grew beautifully (a little too beautifully) but because they were spaced so closely together, the patch became a jungle-like thicket that is a real challenge to harvest.

While the Lewis Road ranch has been in production mode since late January, Steve’s just now working up most of the ground at our home farm and the Redman ranch for our next round of planting. The cover crop had grown tall. The ground was dry enough for tractor work. But alas, the disc-harrow was in pieces in the workshop. The disc blades and bearings needed to be replaced and to get to them the entire implement needed to be dismantled. So several weeks ago he had launched into a project to revamp the disc.