Hot and dry seem to be the words of the week. Luckily our summer vegetables love the warm spell and we’re beginning to get accustomed to the heat. Our thermometer claims that it has reached 98 degrees in the last week. The spring crops are beginning to dwindle to make way for a bounty of summer vegetables. Newest on the scene are beans and cucumbers. Soon we’ll round out the harvests with some nice juicy tomatoes and lovely peppers.

The Serenbe Farms team is in full force this month of June. Ryan, a great friend of mine is here to help for the month and our volunteers have been coming in droves. We thank everyone for being so involved and contributing many hours to make our season a success! We especially thank our consistent volunteers, Diana, Judith, Andy, Bretta, and Sophia and family. Also, Katie, another daily helper has come to help to enjoy the work and company. She’s been awesome; expect a bio from her soon.

More from Ryan: “I am most recently from Bozeman, Montana where I study art, mainly ceramics. I feel that growing food for people and their families is one of the most important and rewarding things I could do with my time. I have known Paige for a long time and am excited to work for her and to meet lots of new people.”

Irrigation: While we’re working in the field it’s important for us to drink plenty of water, and without any abundance of rain in the last three weeks, irrigation is equally important. We use a combination of irrigation types to fit the needs of the land and crops. While the dryness can be detrimental to the green clovers and grasses that we have sowed for cover crop, it actually helps us by deterring the weeds from sprouting.

The two types of irrigation that we use are overhead micro sprinklers and drip irrigation. The overhead micro emitters spray in an 8-foot radius around the sprinkler head, low to the ground. These are great options for leafy crops and cover cropped beds that need to have the whole bed covered in water. They are more efficient than large sprinklers and the water is less likely to evaporate on its way to the ground.

We prefer and primarily use drip irrigation. This is a new system that we’ve designed and installed over the last month. We have main line tubing running throughout the farm and attach lines of black snake-like tubes to water the specific rows of crops. Each tube has tiny holes every 8 inches to drip water at a very low flow. This is perfect for our clay soils because it evenly spreads throughout the whole row of crops and waters the primary rooting zones of the plants. Because the water is directly applied to the crops it doesn’t germinate weeds, it doesn’t evaporate, and foliar diseases are not much of a problem.

In other news, our first Kids’ Day at the farm was very educational and fun. I enjoyed toting the hay wagon around the farm to show the kids all of our vegetables. (Many of them are great at identifying their food!) And our volunteer, Christy Young, read a great story in the cabbage patch about a butterfly going through the garden changing different colors. The kids loved it and we finished up with art projects based upon the life cycle of the butterfly and picking peas. Some of the kids found our old turnip patch and had a blast pulling them up to take home. Our next Kids Day will be held June 21st from 10-noon where we’ll discuss the importance of water for both plant and human life. We’ll play games and have a scavenger hunt around the farm. Mark your calendars! Also, coming up, we’ll have our Serenbe Farms Summer Solstice Fest; we’ll have a fun farm art project, a community wide potluck, hayride, bonfire, and much more. This event will take place on June 24th from 5-9pm, come and go as you please!

Our chickens are growing like weeds. Soon we’ll have them ranging in the fields, eating our grasses and food waste, and fertilizing our ground for the next season. We’ll let you know when they are out and you can visit them; they love kids and people!

We hope you are enjoying your shares, please keep the feedback coming, we love to hear how we’re doing and whether or not you use all your food, what you’d like more of or less of, and any recipes that you can share with us. Thanks for supporting us; it’s great to have an appreciative community to feed healthy veggies.