Summer is FINALLY here!

Things are growing like crazy here on the farm now that it has been getting warmer. The summer squash now have flowers and tiny fruit, the tomato plants are thigh high and starting to set fruit, some of the first cucumbers are almost ready to eat, and the 1st batch of melon plants are sprawling all over! Our first real heat wave is coming on, so what better time for a summer BBQ?!


The tomatoes. Compare with the photo from the blog post on 6/22!


The cucumbers on the trellis and broccoli and chard in the foreground.

We are now in our second week of selling to restaurants. Right now we are bringing them: baby mustard mix, spinach, chard, kale, anchocress, peppercress, arugula, rucola, turnips, radishes, basil, and various herbs. We will start selling Italian broccoli, lettuce, and cucumbers next week and summer squash the following week. We will not have tomatoes and melons until mid-August most likely.


Our beautiful radishes, washed and ready to be boxed.

Now that we are harvesting and eating the first of our summer crops, we are starting to plan our winter crops, which we will have to start planting around the beginning of August. We plan to grow collards, broccoli, cabbage, chicories (Italian winter green like lettuce), root crops, chard, kale, garlic, brussel sprouts, mache, and winter squash/pumpkins (10 varieties). The winter squash/pumpkins we actually started this last weekend in our greenhouse; we have over 1600 starts! These will go out around the 1st of August into the portion of the field that has been under cover crop since mid-May.


Our 1650 pumkin and winter squash starts in our greenhouse.

The clayey soil here is continuing to surprise and frustrate us. The lime treatment we did to some parts of the field will hopefully work over the long-term, but we haven't seen much improvement yet in the tilth of the soil. On the bright side, the soil in the areas we have started to turn over from our first round of crops does seem to be working up pretty nicely. We figure it can only get better from here.

We have some good news and some bad news about our chickens... yesterday two of our hens disappeared, probably result of a coyote. Barbara our Barred Rock and our little Wellsummer went out in the morning and didn't return at night. On the bright side, Buffy our Buff Orpington hen is 3 weeks in to her broodiness with 2 eggs under her - she should be a mom soon. One of the eggs is hers and one is Barbara's, so Babs may yet live on at the farm in some form. Buffy is definitely the sweetest of the hens so she should be a great mom.