Garlic scapes are the craziest crop!

I am determined to make the best use of this summer.  More swimming, more enjoyment of bird song, more appreciation of the breeze that is chasing the mosquitoes away.  Simple night time displays of fireflies in the hay field, and bioluminescence in the ocean make us remember to take a deep breath and drink it all in!  We live in such a beautiful place and it is so easy to forget to be grateful.

We are grateful the sun has returned.  All of the eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes are happy and drinking it in.  Up until the first week of July, we had so much rain that we hadn’t got the irrigation system completely set up.  We’ve never gotten away with that before!  This week all the mass of pipes and pumps and filters and fittings had to finish getting sorted out and set up.  Now we are working with two irrigation systems (one for drip and one for sprinklers) and hope this will allow the crops to express their full yield potential.

Hope.  We’ve been learning that hope is the foundation of faith and the foundation of farming.  We hope for nice moderate weather, for windless mornings to cover greenhouses with plastic, for people who can work diligently even when it is cold or hot or wet or muddy.  Then suddenly we can look out over a field of vegetables growing strong, down to the Cogmagun River, and remember when we had to just keep on keeping on.  Remember on May 11 when close to 30 people came to the farm to help us plant leeks and onions.  Remember when yesterday George and Loïc came out on a day off and did a pile of weeding.  Remember that the crew has hung in there, despite a steep learning curve and many challenges.  So.  We continue to hope.

After a winter of eating storage beets, the new field beets are so fantastic!  With bonus greens.

Getting the carrot harvest drill.  We are finding we have to cover carrots with insect netting in the spring because the carrot rust fly patterns have changed.

This ‘lil red cassanova of a cardinal can sing a love song like no other

Justin and Sydney both manage large areas of the farm

This shows crops, cover crops, and weeds.  Once the paths are mowed, it will look quite different.  In the background, the tidal Cogmagun, teaming with marine life

Kim and Dani.  Two strong women

Looks like someone is getting organized in the big greenhouse!

A new member of the crew, Aaron, and Hak Daddy on the photobomb

It is a long walk to the fox field, where many crops are grown.  On a hot day, the hedgerows between the fields are thick with branches that cover the road.  Luckily, there is always a cool breeze as we walk through.