Dear Friends,
You don't need to be a weatherman to look out and see the weather. This past week has brought us rain, rain and more rain. While it is true that water is an essential component to growing anything, too much water creates a plethora of problems pretty quickly. The persistently cool nighttime temperatures and cloudy skies have severely slowed the growth of our heat loving crops. It has looked as though we were right on the verge of zucchini and summer squash for days, but the lack of sunny weather has kept the squash too small to harvest, shivering on the vine. We are fortunate that for the most part, all of our fields drain well, but the onslaught of heavy rain has proven too much, even for our sandy fields. More than once this week, we have woken to find ponds forming in our fields, the water cresting over our raised beds lapping at the feet of our cucumbers and submerging our newly germinated late summer carrots and beets.
The rainy weather keeps the tractors in the barn and out of the field. Aside from the obvious risk of getting our equipment stuck, driving in saturated fields has the potential to compact the soil. This means while we slog through the mud harvesting in our swampy fields, the weeds can grow, unhindered or deterred by our cultivation equipment. This tends to take its toll on Max, as he is by far the happiest when viewing the farm from the seat of a tractor. We still have plenty to do of course, seeding fall brassicas in the greenhouse, fixing fences, and harvesting all the food for the share and killing weeds when we can find a break in the weather.
Probably the most disconcerting consequence of the abundant moisture is the heightened risk of diseases that it brings with it. Constant leaf wetness, standing water, and cloudy skies mean spores, spores, spores….We are at far greater risk of crop loss due to disease when the sun refuses to shine. As many of you who remember the tomato late blight disaster of 2012 know very well, plant diseases can be absolutely devastating. However we are far more prepared to handle disease pressure this year than we were last year. We learned many lessons last year, perhaps the greatest was that it pays to be proactive when it comes to managing diseases organically. We have taken many steps to ensure that our crops are protected and that we will have delicious, ripe, red tomatoes in the share this year.
Fortunately, this too shall pass, and one point hopefully we will see the sun again. In the meanwhile, we are continuing to bring in barrel after barrel of really amazing food. The broccoli and beets continue to impress with their size and flavor. Spring broccoli is notoriously tricky to grow and this year's crop is the best we've ever seen. I am pretty sure one day I will tell my grand children about the bodacious broccoli of 2013. We are starting to see the early cabbages begin to head up, and we should hopefully have cabbage in the share any day now. Our first ever foray in the world of radicchio is proving to be a delightful success, adding some interesting color to the CSA basket. So far our summer crops are also looking happy, healthy and vigorous if not just a bit on the chilly side. All things considered, we're really just glad the rains came after we got most of our crops in the ground, rather than before. So for now, we'll just keep on keeping on, slogging through and making good use of our rain boots.
On Behalf of your farm crew
Ben, Emma, Hannah, Larry, Lewis, Marycia and Nick
Your Farmers
Max and Kerry
Mystic Cheese Coming to Provider Farm!
If you havn't tried Mystic Cheese's Melville yet, now is your chance. Brian Civetello of The Mystic Cheese Company will be at Provider Farm at the Friday share pick up sampling his cheese. Melville was recently voted one of the top "cheeses to try now" by Epicurious and we are excited to begin selling Melville at our share pickups. For more information about Mystic Cheese, visit www.mysticcheese.com.
