We're back. Three weeks post-hailstorm, we are excited to see the zucchini and summer squash bouncing back. This one, our very favorite variety, Costata Romanesco, will be at market with us Saturday, and in the farmstore all week.
July is an interesting time on the farm. The summer produce is starting to roll in at a serious pace, and yet it's also a critical time for planning and planting the crops we will harvest in October. It can be easy to get a little turned around when part of your brain is in the fall, part is estimating how many pounds of salad mix are in that bed (and how many person-hours it will take to harvest, wash, and pack it), part is trying to remember if the chef ordered cucumbers, and part is wondering if there is a plan for dinner.
It seems this is just the time of summer when it all piles on...in addition to the farmers market Saturday morning, there is Daly Days, Brewfest, and the most-talked-about event of July on our farm team: the weiner dog races on Main Street in Hamilton at high noon, on Saturday. Come get your produce before noon, in case you can't tear yourself away from that! Erin will be representing SweetRoot in the audience for that one, as we'll still be at market. There will be all the summer greens (salad mix, baby kale, spicy mix, and beautiful baby arugula), as well as kale and chard, beets, carrots, onions, summer squash, napa cabbage, boc choi, fennel, head lettuces, green garlic and so much more.
One night, after a late dinner (the plan turned out to be zucchini noodles with garlic, basil, cheese, and nutritional yeast), Noah and I asked each other "what did we do yesterday?" At first we drew a complete blank, then we started listing and remembered a rather impossible number of things that we, with help from some farm visitors and of course our intern Erin, had accomplished. it's just that the whirlwind pace can make it hard to keep track.
We've had some farm magic this week. Most leaves have grown back from the hail damage three weeks ago, we have reset or replanted almost all of the irreparable damaged crops, and things are just generally looking better again. Plants are really rather amazing. So are people, and we've had some great help this week: Noah wrangled a half day of help from a team of Natural Resource students from the Darby Job Corps, who cleaned up our rather awful winter squash patch, in exchange for a tour of the farm, demonstration of tools (the flame weeder is always the biggest hit), and learning about soil life and how we try to take good care of that critical natural resource. Some aspiring farmers stopped by for a few days to visit, see our operation, and jump in to whatever task was at hand--from dragging tarps, to weeding beets, to washing greens, they got a full-speed taste of life at SweetRoot. The wash and pack shed got a boost from the new plan of hiring our friend Rami for Thursday harvest days (300 pounds of greens to wash goes way better with a few more hands), and from the long overdue investment of a way to play some music in there.
So, what did we do this week? We didn't take photos of it all, but here are a smattering of the things, to give you a glimpse into the farm.
When the summer excitement and pile up of events starts to overwhelm you, though, we still recommend that the best solution is to eat. Something simple, home-made, grown close by. A recipe for yet another pasta salad is at the end of the email, and you can get everything you need at market, or at the farmstore this week. Hope we see you there!
After the spring struggles with this new North field, it's especially satisfying to be hitting a rhythm with our weekly salad plantings and harvests. Hundreds of pounds of greens have been pouring out of each block before it is mowed and covered in a tarp to help worms break down the crop residue before the next planting. We're getting better at all the steps, and are finally starting to feel like we're getting the hand of some of these new tool and techniques. That's our BCS flail mower taking down lettuce residue left after harvest, to mulch it back into the soil--many thanks to all those of you who helped up purchase it through a KIVA loan! The learning curve was steep, but we're starting to love some of the results of our minimal-tillage systems already.
Mary demonstrates a new technique for weaving our peppers onto their stakes. One little tip from a farmer on instagram whom we've never met, plus a scrap of PVC pipe, and suddenly a task is faster, more ergonomic, and generally more fun. The peppers are not too far in the future!
10 students from the Job Corps program learned about our farm, soil biology, and weeded winter squash with us on Friday. Many thanks, y'all!
Dirty and victorious.
Hul's Dairy is part of the hail-recovery strategy. Our plan for making up for the damage includes an extra , and extra-large planting of fall beets and carrots. Dan delivers 13 yards of compost that will help make the dry sandy end of the north field a great place for growing roots. All our sections of field are numbered as blocks, but this additional space is a little short. There's a full Block 9, and then there are a few more beds we weren't originally going to plant, when we made our spring plan. When we realized, though, that we were going to be planting North Block 9 and 3/4, we were pretty we'd found some magic.
Friday night at sunset, we finished planting the extra roots. Mary carries out the 30'x 120' roll of row cover on her head.