And Yet the Harvest Grows

Reveries

Jul 14

I will double down on my optimism, and hope to catch both this afternoons and Thursdays thunder showers. My optimism was quickly dashed last week, as the anticipated early-in-the-week showers disappeared from the radar, like it bore some kind of Elven cloak, or rather, when a Ring bearer dons the magical golden ring and disappears, and instead the weather turned to a not-a-cloud-in-the-sky heat advisory. Classic. We went ahead with seeding our fall crop of carrots anyway, but were forced to top water with the water wheel. A less than ideal situation as it is slow, requires hundreds of gallons of water, and all the consumption of the grid-energy at the well and the diesel burning by the tractor to ferry the water to the garden brings about an ugly side to our only plan B. Respite did come though on Wednesday with clouds, and then finally on Thursday, the farm got close to 2/10ths of an inch of rain. It was during our market harvest on Thursday morning - where we finally got to re-experience being cold and wet and happily-miserable. A new-and-welcome-to-summer-sensation dragging wet-from-rain clothes around the garden, noticeably different than the soggy-from-perspiration knits we've been sticking to these past couple weeks.

The farm has been subsisting on less than half an inch of rain for the past couple weeks, and yet the harvest grows, yields inspire, and seeds continue to sprout. The team has been working incredibly hard to keep the pipeline of late summer and fall crop successions alive. Lots of seeding took place this week - another big round of lettuce and bok choy, more kale, collards, and chard for a fall harvest, 1,000 kohlrabi seeds, and a huge sunflower seeding along with a late summer crop of other mixed flowers,

We've been taking advantage of the hot and dry weather by getting lots of cultivation done. Our 2nd round of squash, a whopping 600 plant block tucked over in our new plot was both scuffled/wheeled (all the soil that the plants aren't covered with were stirred with strong-shouldered farmer-powered tools), and a determined Roots in Reverie team, carried by Bria's 'til sundown push, finished handweeding the 10,000 leeks. Miranda also cleared out some cranberry beans, that look like they may bear something!

We were also able to sneak in a marathon planting day, despite the lack of rain. We took advantage of Saturday morning's cloud cover and planted more basil, scallions, bok choy, lettuce, radicchio, our 3rd 1,000+ plant succession of broccoli, and lots of flowers! Let's hope we catch some more rain this week!

Bridging the Gap

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. To support the fundraiser, click the link below, thank you!!

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