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.
Here at the home farm, the apples are ripening nicely, the fields of winter squash are blooming and setting fruit, and the padron peppers are starting to produce and looking good! (They should be in the boxes in a couple weeks). The single baby osprey raised this summer on the nest in the slough has learned to fly and can be seen and heard frequently over the fields.
At the Redman ranch, Steve is planning for next year’s strawberry crop. He has ordered his strawberry root stock—a mix of Seascape and Albions–for planting in the fall. We should have more strawberries next year than we did this year, which should allow us to do more u-picks and take extra orders for flats of berries delivered with the CSA boxes. We have had “just enough” strawberries this year to fill the boxes, but not enough for anything extra, so we’re looking forward to having some times of “too many” strawberries as we have in past years.
Meanwhile, we’re starting to plan for the 3rd annual High Ground Harvest Festival and Pumpkin Patch, which will take place at our home farm on Saturday, October 8th from 10 am to 4 pm. Plan to come here for your Halloween, soup, and pie pumpkins, and for a day full of good farm fun – hayrides, pony and horse rides, music, and yummy gourmet harvest fair food from Chef Andrew Cohen. October will be here before we know it.
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