It’s a busy time on the farm. Last week we finished planting out a round of tomatoes and basil in the high tunnels as well as new successions of lettuces, radishes, cilantro, beets, green onions and mustard greens outside. This week we planted a large block of broccoli and are preparing the fields where we will plant our winter squash and pumpkins into—yes it is that time of year again. We may think of them as fall/winter crops but they do most of their growing through the summer months.
The strawberry crop is shaping up to be one of our best ever. The plants are super vigorous and covered with flowers and fruit. We are still having to trim off runners (a sign of vigor) and there are no signs of two spotted mites—yet. We’ve added strawberry flats to the web store so you can now order extra berries (starting next week for Wednesday deliveries, this week for Thursday deliveries).
Our bird-enthusiast daughter is excited about the flock of cedar waxwings that have taken up residence on the farm. But what it means to us is that we really need to get the netting over the blueberry patch! Blueberries are starting to ripen and we harvested a few flats last week. We’ll be rotating them into the CSA boxes over the next several weeks.
Covering the blueberry pa
tch is a big job. We put up a frame and stretch netting over the entire one-acre patch. One of our employees knows how to weave fishing nets, and has applied that skill to attaching the pieces of netting to each other and repairing the inevitable holes in our 3 year old netting material. Birds still occasionally find their way inside, but it keeps whole flocks of birds from picking off every berry as it ripens.
The bees continue to have a stellar year, and Keith Kimes has harvested more honey – we have 1/2 lb, 1 lb, and 2 lb jars on the web store if you’d like to get some.
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