The u-picks have really been a nice opportunity to connect with a lot of you in person. Thank you for coming out! The next strawberry u-pick will be Saturday, July 23rd. The strawberries continue to come in strong and delicious, but blueberries are pretty much done after this week. If you haven’t yet made it out for a u-pick, this might be the time to plan that summer jam-making party.
We’re coming into tomato season, but please be patient. The tomatoes are still just beginning to ripen. It’ll be a few more weeks before we are harvesting enough for everybody each week.
We’re getting ready to purchase the rest of the reusable delivery crates. We’ve been using them on the Thursday CSA route for awhile now. This trial has been useful for figuring out a few improvements that can be made. One problem that came up over the winter was that the crates filled with water when it rained hard on pick-up day. We are going to drill a few holes in the bottoms and experiment a little with the best placement and optimal number of holes. This will also help with the cleaning of the crates here at the farm. Once we’ve perfected the design we can have them drill the holes at the factory where the new ones will be made. So, we should be switching all routes over to the reusable crates within a couple months. Thanks again to all of you who contributed to our crate fund to make this happen!
It’s the time of year when we can do a count on the endangered Santa Cruz Sunflower that is now flowering in our restoration area. A quick check shows a fair number of flowering plants out there. Habitat restoration expert Laura Kummerer hopes to do an exact count in the next couple weeks. The number varies widely from year to year. A few years ago we only found seven, while in 2015 the count was over one hundred. We haven’t really succeeded in steadily increasing the population over time, but at least there is still a population of the plant holding on.
It has been nice for me to get out for a little downtime walking in the grassland this week, where I am away from the radio and the upsetting news. I hope you all find your calm, peaceful spaces as well. Have a good week.
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