Production Update

It’s hard to believe it’s June already, and the windy, cool days and periodic rainstorms don’t help. Everything seems to be growing slower than expected this year. The first of the blueberries are ripening at last. Of course, the birds found them right away! We’ve had to cover the rows with bird netting to keep them from eating every berry as it turns blue. The fruit should really start to ripen up these next few weeks, so expect them to trickle into the boxes as a mystery item at first.

Strawberries are continuing to produce moderately well, though we don’t expect a glut of fruit in June as we’ve had in past years. We’ll still do two u-picks this month, to give you a chance to get out to the farm and pick berries with the kids or get your summer jamming started. The second-year berry patch here at our home farm are producing more, so u-picks will be here, rather than at the Redman House farm as we originally planned. Saturdays, June 11^th and 18^th you can come out to u-pick from 10 am to 2 pm. See details below.

We will finish planting most of our hard, or “winter” squash this week. The name often throws people off by giving them the impression that the squash grows during the winter time, but that is not the case. They were given the name because they store well and thus can be consumed during the winter months. What I would consider the “window” for planting hard squashes in this area is between the beginning of May and the first of June.  Much earlier than that and the soil temperature are too cold and the seeds will rot in the ground before they germinate. Much later and the plants will succumb to powdery mildew, a fungal disease that tends to come on strong late in the season, before the fruit has sized up completely.  This year we will be planting over a dozen different varieties of hard squashes and pumpkins including large blocks of favorites like butternut and delicata. Our plan is to plant enough of the good storage squashes so that we can provide a good selection for the fall CSA boxes, and then continue to sell them through the winter and into next spring.

Continuing on the bee theme, our orchard caretaker Aaron decided to try to remove a hive from the wall of our break room. He’s actually taking the siding off the wall and hoping to remove the whole hive intact with the queen into a bee box. Here’s a picture of the first section of siding being removed. The second picture is of the bees living under our floor. They “swarmed” over the weekend, but seem to have just returned to their underfloor home afterwards. Maybe it was just a fire drill.