Departing June

Last week was another good one. June has been pretty kind to us. The only blemish on her record are the wet harvest mornings, with another one forecast for Monday. On non-harvest days we'll schedule indoor tasks when it is actively raining, but on Monday and Thursday mornings we're out there at 7am almost no matter what (lightning forces us inside). Besides aforementioned harvesting, a big portion of the week was spent staking and twining peppers to help support them when they begin bearing fruit (they flop over fairly easily). We also cultivated the 3000' of sweet potatoes, partially by hand with hoes and also with the tractor, and laid fabric for the final planting of zucchini and cucumbers. We planted the final round of watermelon in the Hoop Tunnel after a failed cucumber experiment made that space available (the watermelon were a make-up for a less than stellar early outdoor planting that succumbed to the cold, wet May).

Upcoming this week will be planting 7,000 bare root strawberry tips for a 2023 harvest. This is a big job and will hopefully coincide with a well-attended workshift. At this point we don't know when they'll arrive (they're coming from our berry plant source in Massachusetts) but we'll probably send out a 'we need help' e-mail.

Soon we'll schedule the Great Garlic Harvest, most likely for Sunday July 10, weather permitting. This is a great community event, with 40-50 CSA members working together to harvest, tie, and hang the 10,000 or so garlic plants over a 4-hour period. It goes surprisingly smoothly and we normally actually finish on time. And we all end up smelling great (it's best if both members of a couple come...jk).

Also soon to be added to the workshift schedule is the harvesting of carrots. This is a kid-friendly task. We basically just pull carrots out of loosened soil, twist off their tops, and add the roots to a harvest bin. We'll probably embark on this task over the first couple weeks of July.