The rains culminated last Wednesday night creating 6″ of standing water in our lower fields and raising the creek to within an inch over-flowing the bank. More rain over the weekend as well. All of this added up to near disaster, and we’re not out of the woods yet. We’ve harvested most of the onions that were down in the super wet zone and have them in the barn loft with 4 big fans blowing on them, in the hope that they will dry fast and cure correctly. Not only was the threat to our current crops intense, but the rain has prevented us from weeding and planting. We did lose a few beds of lettuce and a bed of beets, just rotted away. We’ve had a couple of days in a row without rain. A few more together and we’ll really have something with which to work. Our fields are starting to dry out with the heat, sun, and a light breeze as well as draining down and out as the water slowly moves down hill. It looks like we’ll be able to plant a few things Wednesday & Thursday. We’ll attempt to hoe some very weedy beds as well. We’re really trying to keep forward progress, keep up our morale, and a few sunny days has helped. On a much sweeter note, we extracted some honey from our hives Monday afternoon. It looks like we got about 9 gallons! It seems like there will be more later on in the fall as well. Some day fairly soon, once we get the honey jarred, maybe you’ll find a jar in your box.
All or most of the fall sowings have been done, at least the ones in the greenhouse. The last of the beets and carrots, which are direct sown into the field, will have to wait until the ground dries out further, hopefully before time runs out for them.
Please return your CSA box next week. These boxes are waxed and are not recyclable, but we reuse them. So PLEASE remember to bring them back next week.