We’ll have the following veggies this week:
lettuce, chard, kale, broccoli, broccolini, bell peppers, eggplant, tomatos, cucumber, zucchini, carrots, beets, onions, dill, cilantro, parsley, basil, hot peppers, green onions
On the farm this week:
Love is in the air and his name is Hugo. And Hugo just happens to be the newest addition to the farm crew this summer and today was his first day! The reason Kelsey has spent most of the last couple years in Mexico is because of this handsome young man, but now Hugos here and is about to learn the real meaning of ‘vacation’.
Ever since Hugo booked his ticket last week this exact smile has permanently been on Kelsey’s face and it’s starting to make me sick. No one should look this happy. This past winter I finished putting an apartment in at the farm and that’s where Kelsey and Hugo will now be living. They will be seeing way too much of me for the next couple months and I’m hoping some of my unhappiness can rub off on them.
Another thing that’s in the air are flea beetles! This time of year the flea beetles always explode and do some serious eating of the fall broccoli plants. The plants are mature enough that they can survive the damage and still produce good yields though so I”ve never bothered to cover them. This year we planned to cover them because I think it will make the flavour better (less bitter), and for the past 2 weeks we’ve been working on ‘covering them’.
I have this tendency to think that because the crisis isn’t here already I still have time. Last week we moved the sandbags out, but there weren’t many flea beetles and lots of other things to do so that’s as far as we got. Then a few days later brought out the covers, then a few days later made sure to weed them well before they get covered. On Friday we covered half of them, but ran out of time. Then today the crises came, I walked into the broccoli and started inhaling flea beetles, so we somehow found time to cover the rest. And the covers that were out in the field waiting to be unrolled had something eat right through it, so that’s Karyl (above) doing surgery and taping together rips in the covers.
And finally it’s the beginning of the end. We have finished our planting for the summer! Here’s Irina and Karyl planting the last of our head lettuce! I’d like to say it gets easier after this….. ..With all the free time we have next week we’ll be pulling onions and garlic and hopefully getting caught up on weeding(I’ve been saying that for the last 10 weeks though). We actually got a start on pulling up onions this morning with the extra help from Hugo and Shenggang. And finally it’s starting to get dark at 6 am now…
That’s it for this week!
See you soon,
Jonathan, Sarah, Irina, Shenggang, Karyl, Kelsey, Danielle, Hugo