Farm News

Kim and Zane left on Sunday for a camping trip in Montana with a bunch of Zane’s homeschool friends. There’s nothing to make you appreciate how much you don’t know quite as much as having the person who does know gone for the week. Rock Spring Farm is taking this week off from the Rochester Farmers Market while they drive back.

An all-day rain on Saturday was kind of a bummer, and put a lid on sales at the Farmers Market. It’s one of the things we like about the CSA – you get food weather it’s raining or not. I say the rain was a bummer, but it really soaked in nicely, although it kept us out of the field for longer than the three-inches we got two weeks ago. But I’m not complaining; we’ve been in more or less constant field work for the better part of a month now, and we appreciated the break.

Chris spent Saturday fixing sheep fence, and appreciating the new rainsuit he bought this spring, but hadn’t had a chance to use yet this summer. We use electric fencing on the sheep, and as pastures get a little less delicious and their wool starts to grow back in in August, we often have some trouble with the sheep getting out. After a long and heated discussion with the sheep, Chris finally decided to graze them through the grass strips between the asparagus, with daily moves to keep them entertained, and this seems to be working better than chasing sheep around the farm.

Chris’ mom, Karlla, left on Monday to head back home to Seattle, and the week got off to a start that has been characterized by hustling around under the threat of rain that has consistently failed to materialize. We mudded out the carrot crop, picked tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini, but the rain never came.

On Wednesday, with flash flood watches posted, Chris scurried around to get a bunch of weeds mowed down in the morning, when things had dried out enough to mow. Keeping weeds from going to seed on the field edges and roads is just as important as keeping them under control in the field. That done, he fallow-tilled a couple of pieces to flush more weeds before cover crop planting starts next week.

One of the harvest heroes got stung by a wasp, had an allergic reaction, and stuck herself with an epinephrine pen, so that added a little excitement to the day. She’s fine now. We were grateful to have Lucas, who is trained as an emergency first responder, on the crew to make certain everything was okay, and even put in a call to one of our CSA member-doctors when we couldn’t get straight answers over the phone from our emergency-room nurse.

After everybody left for the day, Chris got in a first cultivation on our very nice stand of turnips and winter radishes, which Kim seeded last week, and made a timely run through the storage carrots, since the weeds were tiny and died quickly.

Rain failed to materialize on Wednesday night, although we spent a good deal of time watching the weather, and heard some thunder rolling around. If we can avoid any of the gully washer type storms, it seems that we might be settling into a nice moisture pattern, with time to get the field work done between rainfalls. We’ll cross our fingers anyway.