Birdsfoot Farm

Dear All,
it is late and I am about to go to bed.  Just a reminder that we are picking all of our beautiful garlic this weekend.  

We had a good week, got a lot of beans planted.  Different varieties , so they don't come on all at once.  Since it is late to plant we planted two rows closer together and than a three foot row spacing to have room to pick.  That way we can put a 7'wide row cover over the double row if there is frost coming in September. 

I just mulched the zucchinis and summer squashes.  They are big bushy plants and they are producing a lot of squash.  I rolled the 4'wide bale between the beds and than kneeled down and lifted each plant up, tucking hay (seed free!) under it, slowly moving along the 150'rows.  The mulching was due anyways, but we are experiencing water shortage at the farm.  The last week, whenever I turn on the irrigation at night, the pump stopped pumping, because the automatic shut off kicked in when it ran dry to protect the pump from burning out.  I heard that other farms experience dry wells as well.  This has not happened here in over 15 years.
And I was having fun with the new irrigation systems I had bought and the veggies are looking so good.  There are large tomatoes on the plants and the greens were prolific.  Obviously we can not water the gardens anymore, so we can have drinking water and water in the house.  Peoples showers have been cut short and every night when the pump gives up we live of water that we save in buckets.  It makes me really appreciate the water we have.  I just hope that the fall carrots and beets will come up.
So, we are thinking if we have to drill another well for the gardens?  And we keep mulching to keep moisture in the ground.  We are glad to have our composting toilet which works just fine.  And we have lots of water at the school and at Rob and Patreesha's house out back.  We are hoping for rain this weekend, even though it is garlic festival.

Talking about garlic, please come and help if you can.  We start at 9am all day, with live jazz 11.30-1pm.  The guinea pigs will be there.
Dulli

Dear All,
what a beautiful weekend!  I am actually not in the gardens.   I slept in and hung out with Kira, who is going to see her grandparents in Maryland for two weeks before we meet up in Florida for our family vacation.   You hear right, I am going to get a vacation thanks to living in community and great workers keeping it all going.

But first there is the Garlic Festival next weekend, July 14 and 15th.  We are harvesting the entire crop in two days and we hope to have it all peeled and hung, so it can dry and get cut down from it's  strings in a month.  I already have customers that want all they can get after saving out the portion for the local sales. 
And this where you come in:  We need all the help we can get to have it happen in two days.  Everyone can help.  for the active, there is pulling it in the field, for the families with small kids there is peeling the garlic in the back yard of the Main House where there is a playground.    Some people come for a couple of hours, some come for two days.  We have refreshments and there will be live Jazz Saturday 11.30 till 1pm.  I hope to see you there to have fun, chat with other CSA members and old and new friends and put your CSA farm work time in and you get to take home garlic!