Sun, glorious sun!! After a few short but heavy showers early in the week (what's a week without rain this season, after all), we finally had a few days of sun! Our fields are by no means up to code yet, and the tractors are slowly taking back land from all but the muckiest lowlands on the farm. There are still areas with standing water, some of which has been there for about a month now. That means the heat and sun this week also brought out some new visitors: mosquitoes! It's gonna be an itchy summer!
This was only the second week with a full harvest-load, but we're already getting faster at the whole process, which means more time for the all-important fieldwork that has been neglected for these past few soggy weeks. At long last, we were finally able to use the tractor in some fields, so we started clearing the docket of our seed and transplant backup. When the ground is too wet to till or cultivate, you don't only stand to lose crops under water and weeds, but you're pushing back the harvest of all of those crops you aren't able to put into the ground. Our CSA members have been so supportive so far, voicing for the most part how impressed they are that we're delivering them full boxes of vegetables after all this weather. We can only hope that all of this understanding carries over into late July and August, when the boxes might get a little light from all of the crops that were hit so hard this past month or had to wait way too long to get into the ground. Today was a long day of transplanting, the first in a long time. It was at once exhausting and exhilarating. At the end of the day, we were all hot, tired, toasted, and covered in mud. But looking over all the rows and rows of squash, cabbages, tomatoes, greens, celery, etc., that we planted today, we all had the same feeling of accomplishment. Things are starting to look up again!
The solstice is this weekend, and I'm heading upstate early tomorrow morning to spend the weekend celebrating the occasion with other young farmers in the northeast, courtesy of the Greenhorns! I love living and working on the farm, but it will be great to have a change of scenery and meet a bunch of other like-minded people. So look out next week for some pics and inspiration from the event!
Thinking about: movements, expectations, sun-warmed strawberries
Reading: Mohsin Hamid's How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Bill Bryson's In a Sunburned Country, David Sedaris' Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls
Eating: foraged oyster mushroom and bacon omelette, local all-beef hot dogs, last year's beet chutney with local goat cheese on crackers, fresh-picked strawberries
