Well almost a full week of abundant sunshine! The fields were finally drying out and we were able to work in them for a change. Unfortunately on Tuesday night a hail storm followed a track right through the farm and the sorrel which was growing so nicely was turned into shredded sorrel. Needless to say we have to wait for it to regrow and just add it to the crop loss list. The other field crops were damaged somewhat, but the losses were not as severe.
Thank goodness we have our network of “trading partners” which involves partnering with local farmers to supplement the deliveries. We have been doing this for years and it works out well if we have too much of an item we can trade it for another item that they have too much of. We budget for this throughout the season, and this season being especially troublesome with the weather problems it has been saving our weekly deliveries.
We have been struggling to keeps the weeds at bay so in addition to trying to get into the fields to plant we also have to keep the beds free from the weeds so the crops grow better.
Our second planting of fava beans was not as productive as the first so this week’s delivery of fava beans will be less.
From the Fields: Finally some planting in the fields was accomplished this week. The garlic beds were vacant after the garlic harvest, so they were the first to be replanted. On Wednesday, we were finally able to plant. The cucumbers & squash were the first plants in and then on Friday we planted chard & thyme. On Saturday we were able to plant New Zealand spinach and more is slated for this week. Farmer Adam’s tractor was tied up so we couldn’t use his planter, but with our great crew we accomplished this all by hand.
Weather Report: All in all we had a week with mostly sunshine and the fields are starting to dry out. We had a hail storm on Tuesday night which did some damage to some of the field crops which we outlined in the intro. We did receive about ½” of rain on Saturday night which made Sunday’s harvest a bit muddy. The outlook for the week ahead appears that another nice week is in the forecast with generally cooler than normal temperatures for July. A few scattered thunderstorms are predicted and hopefully they will scatter away from the farm.
Animal report: The animals continue to behave by staying outside the fences. 
Pick of the Week: click on the links below or to the right to bring you to the delivery specific to your pick-up location. Deliveries will be of similar variety & poundage, but may contain different items. Occasionally, some crops are ready to harvest but not enough to deliver to all our drop-off locations. What we do is start to filter them in each week to a different drop-off until there is enough to delivery to everyone.
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