August 9, 2020
Time to Dry Out
by Farmer Derek

Last week was punctuated by Isaias. I hope you fared well. We were relatively lucky here, only receiving 2.8" of rain, some gusty wind blasts, and a few fallen trees and branches. Not far from us 7" of rain fell and many folks lost power, so overall we made it through relatively unscathed. The worst event from last week was probably the malfunctioning of our cooler system where all of our 2,500 pounds of onions were being stored. Of course it also broke down on Monday morning when there is no time available to devote to the problem until late in the day. Fortunately replacement parts arrived by week's end and function was restored. I did move all those onions into the walk-in cooler temporarily, and now they'll have to be moved back. Soon they'll be joined by potatoes in that less humid storage room.

Last week's wet weather kept us from accomplishing some of our normal weekly tasks like transplanting and cultivating but there were plenty of other jobs to keep us busy. Tuesday we mostly stayed out of the hazardous weather while the other days were spent harvesting, weeding, pruning and trellising, mowing, weed wacking, touring, and seeding.

Carrot seeds have begun germinating and popping up to meet the sun, as well as the acres of cover crops sown last weekend.

This week we'll hopefully have enough time to dry out before the next rain event so that we can cultivate where needed as well as transplant many thousands of fall seedlings including beets, chard, lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, napa/chinese cabbage, dill, and cilantro.

Might as well give a shout out to our new waterways, Jim the 'dozer operator, and the surveying and designing NRCS of the USDA provided. Where there used to be erosion and water woe was nothing but safe soil bliss. Permanent conservation, sustainability improvements meeting expectations are a wonderful thing.