June 26, 2007
It is perfect summer vacation weather isn’t it? Dry, sunny and not too
hot. Great for haying, too. Unfortunately, not so great for the crops –
or rather, Dan. It has been almost 3 weeks since we have gotten any
substantial rain at the farm. All the recent thunderstorms have
passed us by. The crops are doing very well, considering. How well your
plants do in dry weather is a marker of the condition of the
soil. I really think they are doing quite well – an indicator
that our soil has been steadily improving over the past few years.
Dan has been irrigating quite a bit and this is always one chore he’d
rather not do simply because it takes time away from other fieldwork
like plowing, cultivating & planting. It’s also one of those
chores that you can’t ignore on your day off. We’ve had some
problems with our water pump and that ads to the headache. It
seems to be resolved now and today, Sunday, Dan ran 40 lines of
irrigation. Most beds have 1 – 2 lines of drip tape (plastic
tubing with perforations every 8 inches), so he can irrigate about 20
beds at a time. We use only drip irrigation because of the
efficiency of getting the water directly next to the plants. This
also helps to conserve water.
These cool cool nights are also remarkable. There was actually a
frost yesterday morning in spots through out the fields. Fortunately
there wasn’t any damage to the plants. Dan was out early to move
the chicken trailer and was able to scrape frost off the grass!
The crew has been hoeing, hoeing hoeing! The beds are looking
beautiful out there and really clean of weeds. Dan is prepping
land for the fall carrots, which need to go in by the end of the
month. If any of you know the book, “The Carrot Seed” by Ruth
Krauss, you can imagine that by the time the carrot seeds actually
germinate and pop out of the ground, so have many many weeds. Dan
has been stale bedding - cultivating the beds to bring up and
kill weed seeds – before he plants the last carrots. With any
luck this should reduce the weed pressure in the carrots. Carrot
weeding is a real lesson in meditation. If any of you need to
expand you meditation practice this is a good one!
Here is this week’s anticipated harvest:
Cabbage, lettuce, chard, zucchini, beets, garlic scapes & more!
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