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The final boxes of the CSA season were filled with high summer harvests and all of the stored vegetables that I had been hoarding for use in case of a crop failure. I gave out cucumbers (until the vines died off a couple of weeks into September), eggplant, tomatoes, peppers, okra, basil and melons, as [...]
Farming without chemicals means farming with a vigilance toward bugs, a fixation on seeking them out and squishing them yourself in an attempt to gain the upper hand in what can often seem like a losing battle. I’ve accepted this fact (and have spent a ton of time killing stink bugs and hornworms) but have [...]
A post on the season’s last three subscriber boxes is forthcoming, but first: tomatoes! I grew both cherries and heirlooms this summer, several varieties of each. The soft and sweet garden peach stood out as a favorite of mine, but the subscribers fell in love with the cherries. Several people told me that the snackable [...]
Last week was fairly similar to the two before it, but yielded even more cucumbers (six in each box) and cantaloupe (two or three in each box). When I wasn’t harvesting, I was ripping off egg-covered cucurbit leaves and pulling up old squash plants in an attempt to give those pesky bugs less of a [...]
As August comes to a close, it’s time for me to start thinking of soil tests and cover crops and leaving the farm for the winter. But it’s hard to concentrate on all of that when the house is filled with the smell of cucumbers and cantaloupe!
The cucumbers were hard to start, with seeds not [...]
I’ve known since the spring that I would save whatever seed I could, to encourage self-sufficiency in whatever areas I could. Last week I brushed up on my seed-saving skills with this video, and then got to work processing the bundles that had been drying in the greenhouse. Below, some photos of the process. Click [...]
The contents of this week’s box: zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, three pints cherry tomatoes, one pint heirloom tomatoes, one pint tomatillos (the first of the season), two onions, one bunch garlic, mint and okra.
Declining squash harvests are still a disappointment, but I noticed new growth all week, including the ripening of a couple of cucumbers [...]
This farm project is based on the idea of sustainable agriculture, which involves enhancing the environment as well as reaping resources from it. Evidence of the farm’s environmental health has been most obvious, to me, in the number of birds that have taken to hunting for insects among the vegetable beds. I see mockingbirds and [...]
Eight weeks down, nine left to go. It’s hard to believe that the farm has come this far! The tomato plants are still reeling from this month’s rain damage (some of them have just this week developed brown and withered leaves, which I’m hoping is a simple-to-solve case of not having enough nutrients), the squash [...]
I’ve skipped out on updating this site these past couple of weeks, but not because things at the farm have been slow. Instead, the subscriber boxes have been getting heavier and heavier, and produce has started to fill up our fridge and pile over the dining room table.
The contents of last week’s box: zucchini, summer [...]