I’ve said it many times before, in farming sometimes you have to work outside; sometimes you get to work outside. We’ve had both these last two days. My plan based on Sunday’s forecast was to sweat profusely on Monday getting the harvesting done then spend the day inside on Tuesday following the horrible rainstorms predicted for Monday evening. So much for horrible storms. There was more sweat poured on the field yesterday than rain last night. So today turned into a farming day – a beautiful farming day.
Speaking of farming, one of the greatest challenges in farming is minimizing damage from pests. In past years our biggest pests were insects – squash bugs, flea beetles, potato beetles, cucumber beetles, etc. It seemed no matter what we did we would be overrun with these pests. And being organic we don’t have as many options to remedy pest invasions as the chemical farms do. So we try various approaches hoping that something works.
Fortunately, something worked. Unfortunately, I don’t know what it was. Though we had an early flea beetle invasion, lately they seem to be of little consequence. We had a bit of a potato beetle invasion but the organic pesticide we used took care of them. We haven’t seen a lot of cucumber beetles – at least compared to past seasons. And the squash bugs are few and far between. Or course we still have the opportunity for things to change. The cabbage worms could hatch at any time wreaking havoc on our brassicas. There are quite a few butterflies out there so we put a little organic bacteria on our plants hoping to prevent an invasion. There is also time for the corn earworms to cause issues with our corn. So we are not out of the woods but we have weathered the insects far better than in past seasons.
Which brings us to the yang part of the yin and the yang of farming. This season the biggest pests are literally our biggest pests – deer, crows and raccoons. The deer have been especially troublesome this season. We managed to keep them off the lettuce for the most part with our new hoops and plastic mesh. So they decided to eat our edamame, which really stinks since the farm across the street is growing hundreds of acres of soybeans and we are growing four 200 foot rows – a substantially smaller amount to say the least. Why do they eat our few rows of beans and not touch the neighbors? I’d guess the taste of roundup certainly contributes to their preferences.
Last season we had a problem with crows eating our watermelons. This season we have a problem with crows eating our watermelons and our tomatoes. I’m starting to think we should have purchased the old metrodome and moved it out here to cover the farm! So today I moved the hoops from the lettuce patch, which is done by the way, to the watermelon patch. We then strung twine across the hoops. The theory, according to the all-knowing and powerful internet, is that crows do not like to find themselves in a place that could be difficult to fly away from. Apparently they don’t run well. So by having twine strung across the field we are hoping it deters them from landing among the delicious melons. It is too late to save the half dozen or so melons that could have been ready by early August but it is not too late to save the hundreds of melons that potentially can appear by late August. Let’s hope it is successful. I’m not sure what we can do for the tomatoes this year. It will be interesting to see if the tomato cages prevent the crows from pecking the tomatoes. If so the problem could be solved with more cages next season.
The other pests – the raccoons – haven’t appeared yet. This means the sweet corn is not yet ready. As I mentioned in past years the best way to know when the sweet corn is ready is to wait until the raccoons eat it, then pick it the day before. While walking through the corn last week I found a number of stalks bent over with partially eaten cobs lying on the ground. I thought for sure the raccoons were starting their nightly feast. But when I looked at the partially eaten corn I could see why it was partially eaten – it wasn’t ready. Did our raccoon suddenly become dumb? Did they lose that sense of whatever that allows them to know exactly when the corn is ripe? Nope. Looking down I noticed the tracks were shaped like deer hoof-prints. So unless the raccoons are wearing deer hoof shoes I would surmise the deer decided to sample our corn. Hopefully their dislike of the first few ears will discourage them from sampling the rest of it.
What will we have this week? Depends on what the deer leave behind. New this week will be cabbage. Not sure how many there are but there will be some. Possibly new this week will be carrots. Unless they somehow are only sufficiently large at the road end of the row we will dig a row for the week [EDIT: No carrots. They are not sufficiently large]. Also this week we will have snow peas, snap peas, cucumbers, summer squash/zucchini (can’t get enough of the summer squash!), onions (maybe the bigger bulbing onions), possibly beets, some broccoli, fennel, kohlrabi, and a few green beans. We picked about four pounds of green beans on Monday. I suspect we will find a few more pounds this week. We’ll also walk through the tomatoes to see if any of the cherries are ready. There could be a small number of those. There is a good chance we will have sweet corn by Monday. Lettuce is over until the fall salad mix. Garlic scapes are pretty much done though there are a few left. Radishes are also done until the fall (except for the daikon radishes which are not ready yet).
Speaking of garlic, we will be harvesting the garlic sometime in the next week or two but we won’t hand it out until it is cured.
I should also mention we tilled under the weeds that overran the small number of parsnips and rutabagas. You have to know when to hold them. Know when to fold them. The likelihood of us getting anything out of those beds besides millions of weed seeds was slim and not worth the repercussions of leaving the area weedy. So no rutabagas or parsnips this season :(.
For FruitShare this week you will get an eight pound box of cherries! Yum!
We have CheeseShare, CoffeeShare and EggShare this week as well.
For those who purchased FlowerShare do not forget to grab your flowers!
Seafood, Salmon and Meat shares come at the end of next week.