The pumpkin patch
The freshly weeded chard patch with the cosmos flowers blooming in the left hand side of the photo and the trellised cucumbers on the right hand side.
There is one summer fruit we planted and will not be enjoying much of. Our tomatoes have been hit with late blight. Late blight is a plant disease that attacks mainly tomatoes and potatoes (it was the major factor in the potato famine in Ireland). Late blight is caused by an oomycete pathogen that survives from one season to the next in infected plants or in the ground. This organism is well known for its ability to produce millions of spores from infected plants under the wet weather conditions that favor the disease (it has been an incredibly foggy and wet August here). Early in the season, the disease can be introduced into a field or garden on infected plants, from volunteer plants growing from diseased plants that were not harvested last season, compost piles, or infected tomato transplants brought into the area. Spores produced on infected potatoes and tomatoes can travel through the air, land on infected plants, and if the weather is sufficiently wet, cause new infections. It causes the stem to turn brown in sections and leaves to die and turn brown.
The "blighted" tomato plant.
However the blight got to our farm, it has infected almost all of our plants. We will still have some tomatoes, but at a limited yield. It is truly heartbreaking and hard to move past. I am just glad that we are a very diversified farm and do not just grow tomatoes, or otherwise life would be much worse for us. That is one of the joys of being a small, organic, polyculture farm. One crop may die, but at least there are lots of other plants of different varieties growing too. We put A LOT of hard work into our tomato plants though, between starting them in mid-March, transplanting at the end of May, making and installing a trellis system, weeding, trellising and watering. This whole experience has helped us to realize just how hard farming is. You can do everything right and then the weather and a little bad luck blow in, and you could lose it all. It will effect our profitability, but hopefully not to much. Next year for our tomatoes we will choose a different spot for them, plant different varieties and successions ... and pray for drier spring/summer weather!
Another thing farmers have to deal with, is the weather. This August, is the coldest on record in the area. There has been a lot of fog and cool nights, as low as 45 degrees. Our plants, especially cucumbers, have been producing very slowly. Then, 23rd and 24th of August, it was over 95 degrees on the farm. Most of our plants were not used to this kind of heat. Some of our melons, which we had been waiting on to ripen for three weeks, got fried. The tomatoes that were red on the vine also fried. We did not lose anything else though and we harvested twice as much summer squash as usual on the following Thursday! I guess you win some and you lose some.
The egg that our dear hen Buffy was sitting on hatched the day after our last post (a bit over a month now) and has grown so much. It (not sure if it is a boy or girl yet) now has all of its real chicken feathers, not just the downy feathers if was born with. It has been a real blast watching it grow. All four of our chickens are laying now, which is nice. Brian got to brew his first ten gallon batch of beer in mid-August thanks to some new brewing supplies from dad; another IPA.
The chick with momma on July 16th, the day it was born.
All of our chickens grubbing on spent grain from beer brewing; you can see how big the chick has gotten (it is in the bottom left of the photo).
We always are paying close attention to how things are growing, and as long as a farmer has a field full of plants, there's always something to be thankful for.
