July 8, 2024
Just Another Heat Blast
by Farmer Derek

I'm going to try to keep this short and sweet since I haven't found time to compile the newsletter until today, Tuesday, a harvest day. Our great crew is currently out there retrieving all the delectable goodies for today's share. Very soon I will join in the process and begin washing the vegetables in the barn with Farmer Dana. Also the various u-pick crops need their aisles mowed which I'll try to get to soon.

So why am I sitting on my butt under a fan on the porch working on the computer on a harvest morning? Mainly because I spent 12+ hours yesterday working outside under the assumption we were going to receive Beryl remnants starting midweek. In anticipation of the rain that will probably end up disappearing from the forecast we embarked on the great garlic harvest of 2024, seriously altering our 20-year-old method. Instead of hanging to cure, we trimmed off some of the tops and put the bulbs under shade cloth in the hoop house. This method is used by other farms and we're excited to see how it goes for us. So far it feels very manageable and has significantly reduced the number of labor hours for the harvest. For you garlic harvest aficionados out there, we'll still host shifts for pruning and trimming at some point.

Cover crop season also commenced yesterday. The majority of our spring fields were finished being harvested so over the past couple of weeks we removed all the crop growing infrastructure, mowed, and chiseled the ground. Yesterday, over an area that used to be the home of strawberries, peas, beets, chard, lettuces, cilantro, dill, cabbage, kale, arugula, bok choy, komatsuna, radishes, turnips, and carrots, I sowed a cover crop mix. I have been using, almost exclusively, a mix of oats and buckwheat for mid-through-late summer sowings, but this year we felt compelled to diversify a bit. So yesterday I put down a mix of sunn hemp, red clover, oats, buckwheat, teff, and sunflowers.

Now we just need some rain. Stay cool.