The weather isn’t small talk for farmers

The weather isn’t small talk for farmers.  Farmers talk about the weather because it impacts the decisions we make and what we do on a day to day basis.  We are thrilled to have a stretch of dry

weather in the forecast.  We are waiting for things to dry out to catch up on work we haven’t been able to do while it has been wet on top of more wet.   I don’t mean to complain, as we are certainly very fortunate, especially considering what our peers in eastern Tennessee and North Carolina are dealing with.  But it is not without impact.

We are overdue to cover the spring beds we shaped the second week in September.  Normally we let the weeds just germinate before covering beds with tarps for the winter.   Everything is growing so fast with all the rain that the grass in these beds is six or eight inches tall.  The tarps will still kill it of course, leaving us weed free beds for spring.  But we may have to rake off the residue by hand before we can plant seeds in the spring, and I don’t like making extra work for future me.

We are also waiting for the ground to dry a bit before we finally take the shade cloths off the high tunnels and greenhouse.   This is just to help keep them clean.  I don’t want to be folding them up in a mud puddle.

The pests have had free reign in the field for the past couple weeks and you can tell!  Not only are the army worms, yellow-margined leaf beetles, and cabbage moths having a field day, we have one big buck deer who has decided to help himself to an entire row of beets.  Very rude, given that there is plenty of delicious forage outside of our vegetable garden that he could choose to eat himself.  Now that the rain has moved out we can get pest control back on track.

Small shares

• lettuce and arugula mix
• slicing tomatoes
• hakurei turnips
• napa cabbage
• okra

Full shares

• lettuce and arugula mix
• juliet tomatoes
• kolhrabi
• hakurei turnips
• napa cabbage
• squash and/or zucchini
• peppers