I asked Kara if I could get a photo of her picking up tomatoes from the hoop house in front field. She protested. After a full day of field work, her shirt was dirty, her hair messy, she was covered in sweat and mosquito bites. I thought she looked fantastic. Real. The tomatoes looked really good too!

There is a lot of real on a farm. David, for instance, has an injury to his forearm. He finally went to get it looked at. He’s had this injury for weeks. We’re thankful he can recover from it with a little rest and dry needle treatment. There is heat stress and dehydration to watch out for. Then there’s weeds. This year, with all the rain, and despite everyone’s best efforts, the weeds got ahead of us. The farm team is trying to get it under control, but we’re going to pay for any weeds that go to seed now, next year. We’ve got galinsoga, stinging nettle, quackgrass, wild mint, and of course the annuals: dandelion, red root pig weed, and lamb’s quarters.

On the other hand, with all the rain, the wells and ponds are full, and the crops are lush. We’ve had no out of control fires in this area. For all this we are grateful.

Another real issue was our two wheeled tractor broke down at the end of June. Bad timing! Wednesday, we got it back fully repaired! We waited a very long time for parts to arrive. Close to 7 weeks of having our main mowing and harrowing tractor out of commission could have been a disaster. But our fantastic neighbours stepped in and leant us their BCS tractor. Thanks so much Marshall and Hilary! We learned how dependent we are on this one little two-wheeled tractor. So we ordered a second one at the end of June. We have no idea when it will arrive. The pandemic has made sourcing everything, including building materials, farming materials, equipment parts, and tractors very unpredictable.

We said goodbye and thank you to Brandon at the end of this week. He has worked with us for 2 years. We wish him well and hope he enjoys carpentry school!

What a time of year it is for fruiting crops!! Red peppers, eggplants, zucchini, tomatoes, ground cherries, tomatillos, and hot peppers. I call them the ‘sexy’ crops. Have you tried BBQ vegetables? I hope you are enjoying all the variety and getting some of this goodness put away for the winter. Roasting and freezing, or dehydrating locks in the flavour to enjoy later.

Lee sent in a recipe for baba ganoush made with eggplant. She has a seed allergy, so this recipe has no tahini in it. The other Turkish recipes on this site look fantastic and I want to try them all! Please send more recipes for us to post. It is so nice to share them.