Keeping all the plates spinning

This week small share members are getting “Python” long beans!  We grow these beans in particular to help full that late summer gap when some of the other vegetables (I’m looking at you, tomatoes!) can’t take the heat, humidity, and ever-building pest and disease pressure.  Like okra and sweet potatoes, the hotter the better for the long beans!  Although they are in the same family as purple hull peas, they are eaten like a green bean.  I like to chop them up and stew them in tomato with other summer vegetables.  They are also delicious stir fried or sauteed with garlic.  They do not have a very long shelf life, however, so I’d recommend enjoying them sooner rather than later.

Yup.  It feels like August.  I don’t just mean the heat and humidity.  It’s that chasing your tail, running just to stay in place feeling.  Keeping all the plates spinning.  There is so much to do!

It’s 1pm on Monday as I write this.  I have about an hour and a half before Cooper gets home from school.  We didn’t quite finish picking okra this morning.  Maybe I should finish that.  By tomorrow it will all be too big.  But the watermelon also needs to be harvested.  Another night in the field means the coyotes might take big bites out of the ripe melons.  And the high tunnel needs to be prepped for the chard, fennel and Brussels sprouts seedlings that are standing at the ready.  There might still be enough moisture in the soil if I rototill it today, otherwise I’ll have to irrigate again and then wait for it to dry out to the right degree of damp.

So I am doing none of those things.  I am writing this newsletter instead.   Because last week the newsletter was the thing that fell off the bottom of the to-do list.  Can’t let that happen two weeks in a row!  August is always a challenging month.  But the end is in sight.  In the distance, but in sight.  We are over halfway through CSA season.  We are a third of the way through planting the fall garden.  Just a few more weeks of flat-out, full-tilt, pedal to the metal flailing … and the accompanying exhaustion.

At least that is what I am telling myself.  But it isn’t really true, because then it is a mad dash to get the sweet potatoes out of the ground.  But around the end of September things will start to slow down for sure.  And by mid-October we are done with all the planting and we can start coasting into winter.  Still plenty of work to do, but less urgency.  Right now everything is urgent.  And if it isn’t urgent yet, it will be in a few days.

So with that in mind I am going to go prep the high tunnel.  Because of all of my to-do’s that is what I will most enjoy.  And if I am foregoing a deserved and needed nap to do more work, I am at least going to do what I want.

Small Share

• Cantaloupe
• Summer squash
• Eggplant
• Long Beans
• Juliet tomatoes
• Okra

Full Shares

• Cantaloupe
• Summer Squash
• Juliets & Slicing tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Peppers
• Basil