I just got back from market. Everything sold, and mostly all by 10:30. I am energized and glad to have a few hours left on the farm before I have to sleep. Today Joe, Meagan and Ryan visited me in Lincoln Square and it was so nice to feel the support of our farm crew on their well-deserved day off. Todd also took the day "off." Not from farm work, just from the market. He is still outside in the field right now in fact. Once the fields dry out and he feels more caught up in the planting, he will be able to relax. And won't look like he's melting into his shoes.
Jeff from Deer Creek is also glad to have some dry days for many reasons. One reason being that he and Todd think less moisture in the soil will help all the carrots reach further down into the soil, searching for water, becoming the long elegant luscious roots we all love.
The photos were taken around sunset a few days ago and include kale beds, onions, broccoli, garlic scapes and potatoes. Notice the flowering potato plant.
Happy Fourth of July. See you at market!
-Julia
Well, we are very tired of this rain. Our plants are not complaining except that they are more crowded with the thriving weeds. Joe, Meagan and Ryan have been doing a lot of finger-weeding of grass in all of the beds and things are starting to look pretty clean again. Our “paths” between the rows of vegetable beds are planted in cover crop, soaking up a lot of the soil moisture and saving the beds from becoming too saturated and susceptible to fungal problems. All in all the vegetables in the ground are doing well.
The vegetables that are still not yet IN the ground are our main concern since rains have prevented plowing and/or planting for weeks now. Luckily, just minutes before the last big storm, Todd had decided the soil was just barely able to tolerate a tilling and hopped on the tractor. He got about halfway done when those dark clouds came and drove him inside.
It is easy and hypnotizing to see storms coming when there is so much sky, but it is often hard to guess how fast they are coming and how severe. Which is part of the fascination, I suppose, and the danger.
Enjoy the full moon and stay away from lightning.
-Julia
Well, it's been business as usual down on the farm! We've spent the last week or so weeding, harvesting, and a wee bit of seeding. I myself tend to be a fan of random, one-time farm projects like building things, setting up trellising, and even laying down straw mulch with the knowledge that this bed is one that I shan't have to hoe. But there is something to be said for routine. Part of which comes to mind every time we are deeply entrenched in some said one-time project where nothing seems to be going right and we all feel like we have no idea what we are doing. It is not uncommon during these moments that I find myself longing to be mindlessly weeding and getting a job done that I know how to do. Se la vie; pulling weeds is suddenly romanticized when one is trying and failing to square, plumb, and level a greenhouse for the first time.
But I do try to always enjoy the experience. While baking in the sun hand-weeding carrots for countless hours I remind myself how lucky I am to be outside all day, every day, all summer long. My livelihood is what most people consider a retreat, look forward to on their "down time" and savor every fleeting moment of. I am very grateful to be able to live this life, and to be sharing it right now with all the wonderful folks who traipse around these fields.
meagan
Hope you're enjoying your first week's share of veggies. More is certainly on the way as the weather continues to heat up and we approach the summer solstice.
But the weeds also love the heat and light, so we've been hitting the beds hard with hands and hoes over the past couple of weeks pulling those wild little plants out by their roots so all your tasty, chemical-free veggies can grow without too much competition. Lamb's quarters, pigweed, and purslane are the main soil trespassers at the moment; although they are tasty and nutritious in the their own right, these feral little pains in the ass want the soil nutrients that we've worked hard to naturally give to all those greens you're enjoying at the moment.
Salads are no doubt on everyone's minds and plates right now, but this week we're also focusing on getting some of our heat-loving crops going. Tomatoes are getting trellised and otherwise pampered, and you'll be happy to know that some already have little fruits forming. Summer squash and cucumbers are on the list to go in the ground soon.
Elsewhere around the farm, we seeded another succession of those spicy little French Breakfast radishes. Carrots are growing like mad, the hardneck garlic is shooting out its sinuous scapes, and the potato plants are beginning to flower—which means tubers are gonna start plumping up in short order.
Besides all that, we're harvesting away, savoring the recent food bounty, and relaxing a bit at night while enjoying the recent emergence of lightning bugs.
In anticipation of this Sunday’s market, I prepared an answer for a popular question.
“If you don’t use pesticides, how do you keep the bugs off?”
TOP TEN ANSWERS
1. Organic farms use age-old methods to feed their soil and to provide environments for strong healthy plants that are less susceptible to bug and disease epidemics. The natural microbial life in soil, often compromised with conventional farming methods, plays a big role in the complex balance between bug and plant life, so organic farmers make a point out of keeping the soil as alive as possible. We feed our soil with carefully monitored compost created from local and on-farm sources.
2. Each vegetable sold at our stand really derives from two seed purchases: the plant seed itself plus the seed planted the prior season as green manure, the organic fertilizer of choice. Green manure can fixate nitrogen in the soil while building the soil structure.
3. We plant crops that attract beneficial insects. These are bugs like lacewings and parasitic wasps. They eat the eggs of the destructive bugs, so we like them.
4. We plant crops next to other crops. Certain pairings discourage certain bugs.
5. We plant trap crops, which are never meant for market, just a distraction.
6. We protect crops with row covers. For example, arugula and mustard greens are very attractive to flea beetles, so as soon as we can in the spring we plant and immediately cover the bed with a thin white fabric only to remove at harvest.
7. We pick bugs and/or eggs off by hand.
8. We minimally use organic-approved (OMRI-approved) products such as diamataceous earth for really bad outbreaks of things like cabbage loopers.
9. Organic farmers, especially on small farms, often integrate pasture livestock into their field rotation. Chickens are great to pasture on next year’s garden because they eat bugs in the ground and fertilize at the same time!
10. Finally: The truth is that we sometimes simply CANNOT keep the bugs off. Organic farmers generally know that the natural world will sometimes win. To hedge our bets, we make sure to maintain a diversity of crop families.
We do not use chemical fertilizer, chemical pesticides, chemical herbicide, chemical anything.
