Um, more weather. Still no change in the strangeness. This is typical of most of the days this summer, yet another rain rolling in, usually right on top of a beautiful, sunny break, then rolling out again in an hour or two. Up and down and round and round…my head is spinning!
Veggies
Harvesting around the rain
Have I mentioned that it’s been RAINING a lot all summer, like, a few times a day? We’ve taken to planning the Friday harvest to fit the slots between downpours, using…weather radar on the web! It works pretty well, checking the national and local maps, you can see precipitation quite accurately up to 3-4 hours out (it’s a little…high tech, but so is this crazy weather!). To avoid a late morning downpour, we started picking beans—finally, our first snap bean harvest of the year!—first thing in the morning (Maria, Lynn and that’s my bin at the top left of the pic below), so that we wouldn’t be messing with wet bean plants (they really don’t like being touched when wet, they get…diseased). That was pretty satisfying, picking about five bushels before the first shower, which arrived as foreseen. And so it went for the day. You can work between the daily rains, but mud avoidance is not an option—Michelle illustrates!
The View in early August
Here’s the long view for early August, notably GREENER than it was around the same time last year. I like the scene from up here, at the top of the gangway going into the upper level of the barn: distant, peaceful strips of green, row upon row… ;)
Buckets of rainbows
First title that came to mind for this post was: “Yet another rainbow…” That sounded a little…downbeat. After all, rainbows are one of Nature’s delightful wonders, a free, magical expression of light and simple beauty. If memory serves, we usually get one or two spectacular rainbows every year, maybe a couple more that get noticed. With this year’s rain upon rain, they’re kinda everywhere! Still…pretty! :)
Farmers’ market cruises along…
It’s 11 am and most of our harvest is sold. This is good, because the quantities of what we’ve been bringing have been fine. Still, with no early tomatoes, late green beans, not much summer squash, a wiped out first planting of cucumbers, and hail-killed first round of much of the peppers and eggplant, the pickings feel a little slim. It’s funny how variety seems to work at the market (and probably in the CSA shares as well): the greater the selection, the happier people seem to be, even though they don’t really buy more, or still buy mostly the same things. Maybe it’s because, as consumers (here in North America, at least), we’re so accustomed to being wooed by apparent choice, a regular parade of the “new” and the “improved” and cleverly repackaged, that having the same staple crops for a couple of weeks in a row makes the stand seem a bit stale. It’ll be…amusing to see outlooks change if (when) fresh food starts to get scarce. Well, all in all, a good day at the farmers’ market!
Laid back Friday harvest…
With the poor weather-driven slow growth and setbacks (like, hail), Friday harvests so far this year have been nothing like last year, much easier, less to do, relaxed. There are usually three to five people for all or part of the day, compared to six to eight last season. Comparisons don’t mean much on a practical level—the season you’re in is what you’ve got!—but it’s interesting, and human nature, I guess, to rank and rate and contemplate. Michelle has become this year’s mesclun cutting specialist, cruising in later in the afternoon and slicing up 60-70 lbs (approx. 30 kg) in no time. This year, depending on the veg, we’re doing about 20-40 units for sale, and around 30 for CSA shares for pick-up at the farmers’ market. Harvest on!
Garlic all in
Harvested in three parts over the last week, the garlic is now all in! This crop seems to’ve done well once again (I LOVE growing garlic!). For the first time, there’s a small pile of damaged goods, water-logged from all the rain. But overall, things are looking good. The combination of oat straw (from last fall’s cover crop) and grass mulch worked great (below)—weeds were kept down, and although the paths weren’t as heavily mulched as around the plants, they weren’t bad. We’ve been having trouble starting the riding mower, which means no trailer, so the tractor bucket took its place for transport duties. The garlic is stacked on pallets in the barn. Lynn seems to’ve taken to garlic harvesting and went to town: fork and pull, fork and pull…around 3,000 garlic bulbs hit the local food chain!
