It is a nice cloudy morning, perfect for transplanting and perfect for farmers who sweated out all they had this past week. The past two weeks we got a lot planted and the ground is dry enough to run the tractor for mowing the fields before the weeds go to seed. We planted 300 more broccoli and 150 more cauliflowers 63 hot peppers and over 200 sweet peppers. The sprouting winter squash is planted in pots and growing well until we get to making beds for them. The 150 tomatoes and 50 cherry tomatoes were planted when it was still very wet and we left 3' of grass strips between the rows to not have to degrass all of the field. Now we have to deal with the grass strips. We keep mowing them for now. We have more crops to put in before we can worry about aisles. All crops are doing well except for the second planting of spinach that got too wet and got rusarium, a fungus that eats away the roots and the plant dies. We will replant the gaps with carrots.
Somehow 500 of the 1000 cabbages we seeded turned out to be kale oops... so what do we do about that? Well I think I will try to fit them into the garden and start educating you about the yummies of kale in case you don't know it yet. Then we will buy in 500 cabbages from the Bennetts organic farm. We used to buy in all our brassicas (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) before we had the greenhouse. The greenhouse.... did I tell you how much I love the greenhouse? How did we farm 39 years without it? I go in there everyday and calm down. Kira goes in and randomly picks a lettuce and eats the whole thing within two minutes. She was kept out of it until they were big enough and now she feels like she is scoring something
Next Friday the CSA will start for the Potsdam group and you will get your first lettuce and spinach. I don't know if we will have peas yet. We have so many peas planted, more than ever, but they take their time, only one row is flowering and it takes a while to make the peas after that. We are checking every day. We will call you on Thursday to remind you. Please pick up Friday after 4.30pm, before late evening. The Caamanos (on 22 Waverly St.) let us use their porch and they should not have to worry about veggies wilting in a box. Please transfer veggies to a bag or box and leave the CSA box on their porch. If you can't pick up, give them a call at 265 1050 and let them know. They will donate the veggies.
If you have not signed up for this season this will be your last newsletter unless you ask to still get it. I am trying to be really good and write you at least every other week with news from the farm. If I can learn how to take photos off my camera, just one at the time, I can put that in the newsletter as well.
I hope you are enjoying those hot days. We go swimming at lunch or at the end of the day. Our neighbor Isis has a wonderful swimming hole in the river.
Dulli