We’ve been enjoying meeting a lot of you at our u-picks! One more to come this Saturday, and then stay tuned – we’ll probably do some more in the summer. We should have both strawberries and blueberries for you to pick this weekend.
The farm is a busy place these days. This week we’re planting potatoes and winter squashes, harvesting, harvesting, harvesting, and weeding, weeding, weeding. On the part of our farm that is not being farmed, restorationist extraordinaire Laura Kummerer is revisiting the grassland restoration project with the help of summer intern Clare Peabody. Clare’s family has been a CSA host for a decade or more, so she was brought up on our CSA vegetables! She brings a great positive energy to the work as she attacks the thistles and hemlocks that threaten to overtake the natives on the grassland. Our daughter is also passionate about this project and will help more after graduating 8th grade this week.
Meanwhile, university researchers continue to use our farm for interesting projects. UCSC students gather data weekly from part of the strawberry patch, where we planted various rotations of crops before the berries went in, to determine effects on yield. In another section of strawberries UC Berkeley researchers have netted off a couple test areas to study the level of bird and insect damage on berries. One question they have is whether having a lot of birds lessens the pest insect damage that berry growers experience. Another is whether a good raptor population lessens the amount of pest bird damage to the berries!
Studies aside, the pests are always present at some level. In spite of what seems to be a banner year for star predator ladybugs (they are absolutely everywhere), our latest beautiful crop of broccoli has mostly succumbed to aphids. We are harvesting what we can of the cleaner heads, and then will disc it under. Hopefully, the next planting of broccoli will fare better. By planting small blocks of different vegetable varieties in different places on the farm, we don’t suffer total loss from an invasion of broccoli aphids. It’s a temporary setback, and the farm continues on. The CSA gives us the flexibility to adapt to these situations, and we thank you for supporting this diverse small farm model with your subscriptions!
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