Tomatoes Have Become a Sanctuary
Heat advisories and drought conditions and an unrelenting cloudless forecast, must mean it's summer in New England. I hadn't noticed. Our crops need water, and the resources, equipment, and infrastructure [and indeed hours-in-a-day] at our current-disposal are less than ideal, but we are going to farm it anyway, as we do. Memories of silly attempts of navigating through summer droughts-of-yore butterfly-through-mind -- working as an apprentice, still green, naive, back when "sustainability" and "kale" were still cool, getting instructions from my boss, looking at a 25-acre dry-farm and having to prioritize what plants get what little water will dribble from the tractor's water wheel attachment, or at a horse-powered farm lugging around scalding hot aluminum pipes and trouble-shooting river pumps and de-silting sprinkler heads in a 100 degree field in the middle of nowhere, or like crazy-fools back in the covid-clouded droughts of '20 and '21, bucket-brigading crops, by hand, with 2g cannisters, walking up and down long rows, sun blaring down, and the water you did pour was likely evaporated before the time it even hit your vegetable plant's roots. Oh, good times, good times...and many more to come, how lucky we are!
The reality of this weather just means that the Fall harvest yields will be down, our late-summer pipeline will be thin, and suffering is inevitable. But the art and poetry to come and the gratitude for what is here and now will be greater. We yearn for rain, but will live into this drought. Tomatoes have become a sanctuary, the plants look good [considering], and the harvest grows. Cherries especially are now requiring an every 24-hour harvest so that we can keep up with the mad-ripening [of the Sungolds especially]. Given their location, it's made for a safe and comfortable afternoon harvest - pitched on an easterly slope with beds oriented north-south, and with many of the plants over 6' tall, provide shade to the harvester: crouching, crawling over straw, scanning, reaching, pulling, plucking, dropping, hauling, washing, packing.
tGood news too, is that our cucumbers are still hanging on in the tunnel, with new fruits sizing up daily, we also have a beautiful succession of beans to look forward to [also in the tunnel] that are starting to develop flowers, our potatoes are there somewhere in the weeds and are developing flowers, our fallow plot now features buckwheat in full bloom, and we have a bed of watermelons that we will [hopefully] begin harvesting from this week.
And so with that, I will refrain from further digressions and go do some silly drought farming. Stay cool and hydrated out there, and we'll see you in the desert!
Fundraiser with Gather
Apologies, this campaign has gotten lost in the weeds, but it's still alive! We are hoping to reach our goal so that we can bring Gather even more food this summer. Any amount helps, thank you for your consideration!
Around the Farm
In our fallow plot, we seeded buckwheat about a month ago, and now it's in full bloom. We'll let it stay in flower for about 10 days or so before it starts heading out to seed, and not before many meditations we'll mow it down. We plant buckwheat as a summer cover crop to attract pollinators and beneficial insects to promote biodiversity in the garden and as a small added bonus, the organic matter of the plants will be worked into the soil.
Field grown heirlooms available in limited quantities this week
#droughtart
