Farm Update

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.  They will likely become a new farm pest, at which point the word “gang” will seem more appropriate, but for now we’ll just enjoy the novelty of having wild turkeys around. The turkeys among the pumpkins make it feel like fall, even as the warm weather makes it hard to believe it’s the second week of September.

A pest we had been much more worried about was the Bagrada Bug. We’ve been on the lookout all season, and honestly expected to see it by now with all the warm days. You may remember that this is the pest had the region’s organic farmers extremely worried last year. The Bagrada Bug is extending its range from the south. It likes a wide range of leafy crops, is extremely voracious and destructive, and has no good natural predators or organic controls. We lost one planting of kale and chard to it last year and were concerned that it would wreak even more havoc this year. So far though we have not seen a Bagrada Bug in our fields this season. It’s unclear to us at this point whether the bug can overwinter (or hatch from eggs) in northern soils or if its range extension consists of working its way north each season. We did hear of some farmers in the area dealing with it this year, but it doesn’t seem to be as universal. Whatever the case may be we are happy to not be seeing that pest in our fields yet this year (knock on wood.)

There are still a lot of summer vegetables coming in at this time of year, but we’re also thinking about the fall and winter. We purchased our cover crop seed and will be starting to rotate various fields into cover crops as their current crops finish up.

And it’s hard not to think about Halloween and Thanksgiving with this big field of pumpkins outside my office window. We have Winter Luxury “pie” pumpkins that will be coming in your boxes in October, and Jack-O-Lantern and Cinderella varieties that will be available in our fall pumpkin patches. We’ll be inviting you out to the Pumpkin Patch on Saturday October 17^th and Saturday October 24^th from 10 AM to 2 PM so you can get that on your calendar.