It’s a great day to be a farmer. I hope you all are having wonderful long, summer days. Summer veggies bring me smiles, often I dream of them in the winter and now we’re here, able to sink our teeth into juicy red tomatoes and sauté squash and onions with fresh herbs. It’s been very pleasant since we have been showered with rain early last week. We accumulated almost 2 inches and the crops have been growing proportionately. Now, we’re using irrigation again, but are hoping for rain sometime this week.

I feel thus far the season has been very successful. Somehow we grew carrots in this red rocky clay and potatoes, onions, and other root veggies seem to be happy at home at Serenbe Farms as well. Our summer crops are coming on strong; we’ve got 3 successions of squash all producing. Our refreshing cucumbers have stayed healthy and their melon cousins are growing rapidly too. There are a few lettuces hanging in for the summer, we grow a special variety that stays tender in the heat without bolting or going bitter. Let us know what you think and next season, we’ll grow more summer lettuces if there is positive feedback. Our sweet potatoes are just now taking root and the greenhouse is starting to fill back up with fall broccolis and cabbages.

We have a large volume of tomato crops, some doing better than others. For crop rotation, we planted the far field in our first 2 successions of tomatoes. This field is low in Calcium and Boron and we’re seeing the results on our tomatoes as blossom end rot. We’re vigorously using foliar sprays of seaweed extract and chelated calcium, so hopefully our results will be seen. But, no fear, we have 2 more successions of tomatoes healthily growing in the upper fields. Other things growing right now are our beautiful celery plants, leeks, basil, basil, basil, beans and our new harvest, edamame!

One of the greatest challenges of farming is deciding which crops to grow. I spent quite a while throwing around numbers, row feet, varieties, crop spacing, etc. this winter as I was planning out the garden. I know that all of you want tons of food, but it’s hard to decide what to grow when we’ve only got about 2 acres. Because we’re growing on about such a small amount of farmland and rotate crops with cover crops to keep the soils healthy, we can’t plant too much of any one thing. This is where your feedback is most important. If you don’t like eggplant, turnips, or something else that we grow, tell us. Towards the end of the year, we give you a survey and this is your chance to show us what you’d like next year. The surveys are an integral part of the planning process.

Things are about to change significantly here at the farm. We’re losing a couple of our apprentices and gaining another. It’s been awesome having such amazing helpers on the farm. Between our talented apprentices and great volunteers, the farm is looking beautiful and we’re having a blast! We were able to mow the whole farm late last week, now it has a nice groomed appearance. Since the last rain, lots of weeds have sprouted, so the majority of this week will be spent on our knees with hoes in our hands.

I feel like this harvest is one our best yet, I hope you’re enjoying it all.