I stepped out the door at 5 am Tuesday to do morning chores. It was hot, dark and humid. There is something especially uncomfortable about humidity in the darkness. To be not only wrapped in hot damp air, but in a thick black blanket as well. There was no moon and no stars. Just the dark and the heat. I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up even though I knew it was just going to get hotter. Summer has finally decided to flex her muscles. When we wrapped up the morning’s work it was 94 degrees with a heat index of 107. My brain is slightly jelly, so I am going to do my best to write something coherent.
We are exceedingly grateful to be in our new home this summer with functional air conditioning that can keep it more than 5-10 degrees cooler than it is outdoors. This has been the easiest summer yet for us farmers, because we can actually come in and cool off after getting hot out in the field. How did we do it before?
Mid-August to early September is actually the hardest time of the year for us to fill the CSA shares. While we are still experiencing abundance now, this year I expect the next few weeks to be especially challenging. All the rain in early summer (and it’s still raining!) meant that some crops stopped producing early due to disease pressure, some are performing poorly now, and others didn’t even get planted. Happily, there are still potatoes in storage and we’ve harvested a lot of butternut squash that we will be sharing with you soon. We have okra for days, the basil is showing no signs of stopping, and the eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and long beans are still producing a bit. In September we will have sweet potatoes, arugula and other fast growing greens, as well as radishes and sweet turnips. A fresh bed of eggplant and pepper will be ready to harvest. By the time we get to October, fall crops will be in full swing, and our last round of tomatoes will be ready.
Speaking of fall crops, we have gotten good germination on the first round of carrots, hooray! Most of the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower transplants are doing okay, but they like this weather even less than we do! Being tight on space has required some creative problem solving. We are “double cropping” the old squash beds. We cleared out the squash plants and have transplanted collards and kale. We are also “inter-cropping” radishes with broccoli. This fancy farmer term just means we seeded radishes down the middle of a bed of broccoli. The radishes should grow quickly and be out of the way before the broccoli fills in and needs the space.
And just in case you are running out of ideas for what to do with okra:
Refrigerator Pickled Okra – Sweet and Tangy or Spicy and Smoky
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