In case anyone missed our little announcement on Instagram we now have a blog on our website. You will be able to find all of our past newsletters posted there with photos and everything. For now, it's going to function as an archive for our newsletters but eventually I’d like to write separate blog posts to go on the website. In the meantime though, you catch up on any newsletters you may have missed. 

I have been having some mixed feelings about this cooling weather that we’ve experienced these past couple weeks. On the one hand, it feels amazing to wake up to a brisk cold. Feels even better to work outside and not sweat a ton. On the other hand, cold weather spells impending doom for most of our plants. And I don’t want the season to end just yet!

Summer is still blazing on despite what these lovely, overcasty days might be trying to tell us. We have tomatoes and eggplants coming in now! It has been a long time coming but we now expect to start having tomatoes with us at market. Hallelujah! I am so happy to finally be able to have a BLT with our own tomatoes and lettuce. Now it truly feels like summer.

Well, I spoke too soon… In the previous newsletter I talked about how few insects we were seeing on the crops. Perhaps I didn’t knock on wood vigorously enough because now we have our hands full. Tomato hornworms, potato beetles, Japanese beetles and cabbage moths galore! The hornworms proved to be our most concerning challenge as far as pests go.

And just like that we are in July, well into the summer. Hard to believe that already half of year has passed by. There is still so much to do but also we have been taking the opportunity to take stock and appreciate what we have accomplished. The farm is looking so good!

At this point over three quarters of the farm is planted and it is dramatically different from the field which we started with.

We have been getting ready for our first market this weekend (Saturday June 28th) and we are beyond excited! The warm weather and sunshine have been kicking the plants into high gear and we expect to have salad greens, radish, kale and chard available for purchase along with several plant starts for growing in your own gardens. 

To get ready we built up a small wash n’ pack area which includes a sink for field rinsing greens and a mesh table for washing roots…

It has been (once again) a busy couple of weeks. 

The biggest news being that we completed our cooler trailer. The walls and ceiling are insulated and the Coolbot unit is installed and operational! The relief I experienced when turning it on and feeling cold air come out of the AC unit was immense.

These past couple weeks have been interesting.

We are extremely grateful to have received some help from some friends shaping new beds in what will become Block 2. This area of the farm has the most clay-y soil by far and it really is a struggle to work with.

We finally have irrigation on the farm! It has been a challenge getting everything buttoned up but we are now able to water our fields. Such a relief.

We really appreciate everyone’s positive feedback about the newsletter. It’s fun to write and I look forward to sharing our progress with you all. If there is anything you’re curious about or want us to focus more on in the updates send us an email or message us on Instagram. We would love to hear from ya!

Also thank you to everyone offering to volunteer or help us out on the farm!  We will keep you all posted on any upcoming workdays. Likely we will need help in the future shaping beds, weeding and constructing our wash ‘n’ pack.

We have spent the past couple weeks working with my good friend Garrett to design it. You can find him on Instagram here. And by “work with” I mean we provided input while he did everything. We think it’s going to look so good on a bag of lettuce greens!