This Day Shall be Known as Squash Day

Reveries

Jun 30

Ragged and a bit tattered, but unbroken, unshattered your farmers made it through last week's heat wave. Tuesday especially brought the peak-extreme, and not like those off-piste bootpacks, but rather the triple digit furnace and its black hole of energy, where work became survival. That day we top-watered the unplanted tender seedlings (bok choys, lettuces, flowers, another round of summer squash, more sprouting broccoli, our 2nd tomatoes, basil, scallions, etc.) at 10am, 12pm, 3pm, and then again at 5pm - to help ease their stress through the inferno. Our walk-in cooler, an insulated shipping container, was working overtime, and could barely keep temps below 60 degrees. Aside from its exhausted hum, there was a quiet eeriness to the day, the birds and insects all seemed too, to be conserving their energy, perhaps taking a lake day, or loungin' n' writin' some poems out in the shade-of-wood.

The week's arc was defined by the heatwave and chance of Saturday showers, and the big project on the to-do was the big winter squash planting. We treated the winter squash plants as their own island-entity. Nearly 5,000 plants, 30-some-odd trays we drenched in organic liquid fish-fertilizer to feed their roots, then placed them under a shaded tent. They lived there through the heatwave until Thursday, and oh Thursday, the day the heat broke, and putting a flannel back on and the resumption of feasible-reasonable-comfortable farm work. Under cloudy skies on that glorious Thursday, while Miranda held things down yonder in Exeter, emptying coolers of fresh produce to you fine folk - we staged the winter squash planting at the farm: another fish-fertilizer drench and the ferry ride to our new plot down the road. Three truck-bed-loads of plants and an acre of dirt was what Friday had on its menu.

And Friday it did come, and we launched into the planting. It started smooth, marking beds with our transplanter, dropping little pools of water in the hot-dry Earth and pressing the plants home. After a couple hours though, as we marched along steadily down the long, 400' beds, we began to notice some stressed plants. They seemed limp and began to droop and lay flat, leaves seemingly lifeless. We paused the planting, and had to do a couple hours of emergency top watering. I drove over the beds with the transplanter raised, to sprinkle water down onto the recent transplants, not the most efficient way, but our only way. While the planting was paused our farmers did some cultivation on the nearby watermelons, husk cherries, and leeks, and we let the suns arc get less intense. Finally by about 3pm, we resumed planting and planted. them. all. An acre of squash. In.

And indeed, talk of catharsis, a graceful .55" of rain came on Saturday morning, the perfect rain storm to get our crop established. We didn't stop there though with the planting, and took advantage of the mucky, rained-in beds and threw in another 600 summer squash plants, a couple thousand beets, and the next round of scallions, and bok choy on Saturday morning. We got all this planting done with huge help from our volunteer heroes Kyra and Kim! We are so grateful to have had their help and to get all this planting done! Great work team!

One last word on resolve. To the team, continuing to show up and rise to any and all tasks through heatwave and deluge, thank you. All the little details, picking up the pieces, taking initiative, working smart, working fast, thank you. And to you, our little community here, through this heatwave, it also coincided with our biggest harvest week to date. At one point last week, mid heatwave, had over 60, 1.25-bushel totes of fresh-picked-and-washed produce in our walk-in, prepared to be distributed. To all our CSA members, to our market-regulars, to our chefs, to our non profits and assisted living facilities we service, thank you. Thank you for supporting the farmers, the people, behind Roots in Reverie. We are grateful for this community's resolve and we are proud to be a small part of it.

Fundraiser with Gather

Feeling Generous? Want to help those experiencing hunger in our community? Want to support a small organic farm? Our fundraiser with Gather is still active! If you have the means to support our mission of bringing Gather more produce we ask that you please consider donating. Any amount is helpful! $5 could help someone get a meal. $500 would be a summer's worth of meals.

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