Happy Fall Equinox!

Caterpillar tunnel plots about ready for construction to begin when materials arrive this week. I just need to figure out how to keep the baby deer out of the field and away from those crops until they're covered.

Ahhhh autumn! Mid-fall temperatures precede your true arrival. Did we receive an extra early frost as many of our neighbors did? I don't think so, but it wouldn't matter much for our crops anyway at this point except that we could proclaim more topsy-turvy weather conundrums and extremes. As another farmer exclaimed earlier today, we endured late cold in May, record hot July, and now almost record lows in September. Every season seems to bring a new event, experience. I'm glad this cold snap came now instead of two weeks later because then it could have possibly produced lows bottoming out closer to thirty degrees. We normally don't see our first light frost until around October 10th, our first hard freeze at the tail end of October or later. Some years we've had teens in November then mild weather until January. It will be interesting to see what happens this year. Either way this cool dry weather can at least slow the growth of some of our first fall plantings that have grown exponentially during the consistent weekly rains and heat of August and early September. My only concern now since they're in perfect condition is the lack of rain which hopefully won't become an issue. We haven't had to irrigate any bare ground crops this season and I don't want to start now.

Upcoming this week we have our annual certified organic inspection. This is a thorough process to make sure organic standards are upheld. We'll need to show them official documentation of everything that goes on here, including seeds, plants, fertilizers, compost, amendments, supplies, potting soil, and records for seeding, planting, harvesting, sales, crop rotation. I'm glad there are some standards and rules in place to guarantee a clean and healthy food source. The Certified Organic label is a good as it gets currently.

This week we also look forward to harvesting all of the sweet potatoes. Unfortunately yields are way down, literally a small fraction of the great yields we've had the past 3-4 years. I attribute it mostly to weed pressure from the get-go. The laws of farming also state that a crop cannot not fail at least once every 5-7 years. In other words, this is the year when our beloved sweets have underperformed. Worry not, though, for many other fall crops will be exceptional. We'll learn from our mistakes and will make improvements next year. I'm glad fall is here and look forward to the change in produce.