Employee of the Year Awards

The following is a transcript from the first-ever Half Pint Farm Employee Award ceremony held Friday September 19th. Speech given by an Acting Management Representative.
I would first like to thank everyone for being here today for our first ever ceremony in recognition of the hard work and dedication of our staff. A couple of things make this a good time to hold this important event. First, the folks over in the bookkeeping department let me know that today we succeeded in meeting our annual revenue goals, putting us about 6 weeks ahead of schedule. I would first like to thank our dedicated customers and partners for helping us to reach this goal in so short a time. I also want to recognize that this would not have been possible without the careful attention and care from our great staff. This benchmark is especially nice to surpass for the second reason for this event today, the threat of the first frost last night. While we were not yet affected, the cold temperatures are a reminder that the end of the season is nearing and our efforts will soon turn to focusing on preparations for next year. Before we look to 2009, it is appropriate to recognize the hard work of 2008. A conversation with one of the staff today reminded me that we need to make sure to give positive feedback and reinforcement to our workers. So without further ado, let me introduce the Half Pint Farm Employee of the Year for 2008.
Many of you will know immediately of whom I am speaking. This worker, in addition to her normal duties of weeding, planting, washing, harvesting and general grounds maintenance, has continually gone above and beyond the call of duty. She has been diligent in updating the blog on an almost weekly basis, has handled email correspondence and consistently produced recipe cards for the weekly food club pick up. She has been in constant contact by phone with our chef partners and accounts, as well as performing the twice weekly deliveries, often including additional errands along the way. She has been the primary caretaker of our secret flocks of chickens both at home and at the farm. Additionally, I am reminded from off stage, she almost single-handedly maintained the microgreens seeding all year, as well as many weeks of onion cleaning. Add on to all this, the fact that the farm staff has often enjoyed the fresh baked scones she prepares before work three days a week. For all these reasons and so much more, I am proud to present the 2008 Employee of the year, Mara Welton! Thanks for all your hard work!The runner up for the employee of the year award was a very close second and I am sorry that this hard worker can't be here at the ceremony. In fact, this employee is still hard at work, keeping weeds at bay, helping crops such as tomatoes, peppers, artichokes, chard and squash to grow strong and with minimal disease. This worker helped out every harvest day in aiding a smooth transport of the crops will helping to keep the produce clean. I am, of course, talking about Lumite the Landscape Fabric. He had many names and we never quite called it the same thing, often leading to confusion, but without you, Weed Barrier, this year would have been a lot harder and weedier. Thanks so much!
Finally, an honorable mention. No one we talked to quite knew exactly what you do around here all day, but when pressed it was decided that you do help in maintaining the seeding plan and schedule and are a help with the harvest. To Spencer Welton, better luck next year and thanks for whatever it is you do.
To the others on the Half Pint payroll, Mr. Smeems is a frog-catcher and crop-stomper and his little brother, Bullet is a snake-barker and a chicken-hassler and both often antagonize Lumite the Weed Fabric. They both seem unclear on what the actual purpose of the farm is and how they can best serve goals of the company. Perhaps they will have a shot at an award next year.
Thank you for coming today, keep up the good work and help yourself to some pizza.

Cool nights, cool crops

While working today at the farm, we were noticing just how amazingly fall-like it felt. The wind smelled like decaying leaves, the dying leaves on the tomatoes rattled in the breeze, the air was cool while the sun was warm and we didn't feel rushed today - a sure sign that we're slowing down! As I cruised around the farm today, I was able to just appreciate the coolness of some of our crops - the artichoke flowers that opened up today, the myriad of dry beans that I love shelling, pocketing and fondling all day; periodically taking out a handful to admire before resuming my sensory fun-time. Remember that movie Amelie? There was one scene in that movie where she shared her favorite feeling being to plunge her hand into a barrel of dry beans, or rice or lentils or something like that. The beans in my pocket are my Amelie-moment. Mmmmm. I'll post some pics of them below - they are soooooooooo beautiful and photogenic!

I was inspired by the swirls on all the speckled roman tomatoes today - I took about 10 pictures of them, they are mesmerizing! These tomatoes are pretty good eating, too, actually. I think they'd make a great sauce, though there are never enough around to make into sauce - we eat them all fresh. These guys could inspire a few paintings this winter.

The other cool crop that should be cropping up this fall is the cardoon! We love this artichoke relative - you don't eat the flowers like artichokes, but you eat the mid-ribs of the leaves. I'll do an exclusive post on those guys complete with recipes!

Yesterday I harvested 200 pounds of purple viking potatoes. These beauties are gorgeous! Purple with pink swirls on the outside and snow white on the inside. A great all-purpose potato, it mashes beautifully, it fries and boils like a pro! Definitely a fantastic potato that has become a favorite. Okay, fun with beans!

Pocket full o' beauty

Jacob's cattle

Tiger's eye

Painted pony

Calypso, aka Yin Yang, aka Orca

Cherokee Trail of Tears

Mayflower

Hidatsa Shield Figure

As I learn more about these awesome beans, we will be sharing recipes and the beans themselves!

In praise of tomatoes!!

So, here we are at the beginning of September with the summertime weather we've been longing for all season! Dry, 70+ degree weather, sunshine, and happy crops. What more could a farmer ask for? One of those super-happy crops happens to be the tomatoes this year! We can hardly believe how wonderful they are doing after all that wet dreary weather we have had. In fact, we just took note today that we are still really harvesting from the lower limbs of our tomato plants - where they ripen first. That means, there's all those limbs up higher that still are burgeoning with fruit that we have yet to tap! Could be a super-long tomato season, folks - and you know what that means! Canning and cooking with tomatoes will be the norm for at least another month, maybe two! I actually did my first canning run last night with some red slicers that we had sitting around. We are now the proud owners of 15 quarts of tomatoes and am beginning to feel secure in our tomato bank for the winter. Last year, we canned about 50 quarts of tomatoes and made it through the winter without buying a single can! We actually didn't finish all the tomatoes yet, and still have several jars, but the lion's share were definitely consumed in the cold months - baked eggplant, lasagna, pasta sauces, pizzas, we use tomatoes in so many things; this is definitely one late-summer task we always do no matter how tired we are!

This year, we have so many tomatoes - around 60 varieties - that I feel compelled to showcase a few of the most popular types here for posterity. Paul Robeson, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Persimmon, Yellow Brandywine, Garden Peach, Pineapple and Costoluto Genovese for starters.

Paul Robeson, african-american communist activist in the 1950s, singer, actor, and more. The Russians loved him, and so named a black tomato after him. I don't know about all his political leanings, but this is one FABULOUS tomato. It has the full rich flavor black tomatoes are known for - probably our favorite one year to year.

Garden Peach tomato. It belongs to a class of peach tomatoes - all of which are fuzzy and fruity. We love this heavy bearer. A great snack tomato - I actually want to try baking with it...

Aunt Ruby's German Green tomato. OK. This is our favorite tomato right now. This beauty is an endangered variety that is on the Slow Food Ark of Taste - to be saved in perpetuity because of it's amazing flavor. This is one tomato that you harvest by touch and not sight. Some, but not all get a pink blushing like the one here. Harvest by softness. Delicious full-flavored tomato!

Brandywine, Platfoot strain. HUGE tomatoes - 2 pounders are not uncommon. Fantastic flavor similar to the persimmon tomato - all meat and few seeds. These make incredible sauce!

Then there's the classic Italian heirloom - Costoluto Genovese. Not only strikingly beautiful, but satisfying ripe tomato flavor! Great for salads, and the scalloped edges make for some beautiful slicing.

Seeing those yellow tomatoes got me hungry for one of my favorite all-time summer dinners, Yellow Tomato Shrimp fra Diavolo. I'm so excited about it, I'm going to share the recipe here! People rarely think of using yellow tomatoes for sauce, but you absolutely must try it! Their textures and flavors lend them particularly nicely to seafood. In this case, shrimp.

Yellow Tomato Shrimp fra Diavolo
Serves 4

2 T. olive oil
3/4 pound peeled, deveined shrimp
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 T. fresh parsley, chopped
1 tsp. crushed red pepper
2 T. chopped basil leaves (pistou used here)
2-3 large yellow tomatoes, chopped (pineapple used here)
salt and pepper to taste
1 pound fun-shaped pasta

1. Prepare the water for boiling the pasta. If the pasta takes 8 minutes to cook, begin when you start the tomato sauce.


2. Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the shrimp, the garlic cloves and the crushed red pepper flakes. Cook until the shrimp begins to turn bright orange - about 1 minute. Remove the shrimp from the pan.


3. To the hot and garlicky pan, add the chopped tomatoes and cook on high until the tomatoes have cooked down a bit and are a nice chunky sauce consistency - about 8 minutes. Sauce may be a little soupy, but this is fine. Add garlicky shrimp and chopped parsley and basil to tomatoes. Stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.


4. Drain al dente pasta, divide amongst the bowls and top with the tomato sauce. A little shaving of parmesan cheese also goes nicely with this, as does a really oaky red wine. Enjoy!

Encroachment Maintenance

We have been really bad about taking photos of the field in recent weeks. I am sure this is because we have been demoralized about the weeds and the various dying veggies that are the result of some of the wettest July weather ever recorded. I regret now that we have not taken more photos so that I could have before and after shots to demonstrate the work we have been able to do this week. Today we nearly completed weeding the remaining salvagable beds and it is great to see orderly rows of plants again. I am ignoring for the moment the overgrown potato beds and the four beds of colorful carrots that are totally lost. Those shall be mowed down within the coming week. As we have been using the recent rainless days to weed, landscapers contracted by Vermont Gas have been on the fringes of our field maintaining the green invasion even more drastically by cutting down and chipping the wooded margins. This opens up so much more light and air movement for that end of the field. This year we could tell the blueberries were ripe next door at Adam's Berry Farm by noting the blue, seed-filled bird crap on our tomato trellis. Now we will be able to actually see the fruit-laden plants! So with a little dry weather our spirits have gotten a real boost. Again, most of the plants made it through the crazy weather and it was our will that was the weakest link. Today, we discussed with enthusiasm our plans for the fall planting and tossed around ideas for next year.

The weather is always hard to predict and is one of the greatest challenges facing the successful production of high quality vegetables. This realization frustrates the planning process as I think about next year. We can plan so many aspects of our farm, but in the end, so much relies on the weather. It is hard to plan for a wet year (a dry year can be compensated for by irrigation), but when I cannot get over the idea that we did plan for a wet year. Last year, we bought the Haygrove hoophouse for this exact reason. It is hard not to dwell on the idea that we have already anticipated this problem and spent considerable money to deal with it. Yet due to various bureaucratic holdups, we were prevented from using this tool this year. I am not entirely sure what the current status of the hoophouse hoopla is, but we remain committed to erecting it this late fall for next season. After the semi-favorable decision this spring, we joined the Intervale Center in appealing the decision, due to some overly restrictive language for them and some ambiguous conditions for us. Last I have heard, the state agencies have gotten our appeal thrown out of the environmental court and sent to the state supreme court where it could be delayed for a long time. This may be an attempt to win by financial attrition. As one of the Intervale staff said, it is like trying to describe a diffuse vapor, as it is always in flux. I may not fully understand all the maneuverings that seem to be going on around this minor issue. But we are planning on the Haygrove rain fence for next year. And maybe some chickens and geese to help us with weed control. Next year, as always is the best year ever. For now, we maintain the encroachment and use the pleasant downhill slide toward Fall to experiment and plan and especially harvest lots and lots of beautiful tomatoes.

Feeling the green encroachment, then the light!

OK. This is a blogpost sans farm pictures. A few reasons. Our field looks like crap! I mean, really!! One of the things that Half Pint Farm tends to pride itself on is the tidiness of our farm. This year, all things are conspiring against us to make that tidiness a reality. First it was the rain. Next it was the rain. Then it was the belt on our mower going out - can't mow and keep tidy. Then it was the rain. Then it was the potato beetles thrashing our eggplants... Anyone with a garden can tell you - the rain makes weeds happen, and so....soon the weeds take over. They are like mighty genetically engineered machines - their only job is to find every space not inhabited by other green and take it over with their green. As we drive down to the Intervale everyday down that severely unmaintained road, we try to see the length of the road through the tunnel of green, and can't. The way is shut with green. 5 years ago, our good friend Art Escobado came to visit us during the waning days of July and he fairly unwillingly worked with us for one day on our farm (we had worked together on a farm in Colorado in college, and he vowed never to farm again - HA! Serves you right for maintaining long lasting meaningful relationships with farmers! Can't escape it Art, sorry!). As we bumped down the road to the farm in silence, thinking about the long day of weeding ahead, Art looked around and exclaimed, "So, who maintains the encroachment?" Well, our answer at the time was Mother Nature. Mother Nature maintains the encroachment of oppressive green foliage with frost in fall. Like a hacker with a select all and delete command, she selects all the broad leafed plants and deletes them with a below 32 degree night. BUT. During the season, technically, it is our job to maintain the encroachment. Daily we look at the green that mocks us - the crabgrass marching ever vigilantly towards the carrots, the galansoga that crops up with her multitudes and takes huge hunks of earth with her when you try to remove her from the baby salad mix, the fine grasses that so far have no scientific name in our minds, but show up they do when we least expect them in the paths (who would think that the paths - the places we trod upon most frequently - would be the weediest?) Well, they are, and that's just where it starts. If we don't get the path weeds, then that spells certain doom for the row crops, unless we simply do the deed, cast our pride from our shoulders, bend our knees and scoot along on all fours eliminating each weed, placing it in a bucket to haul it to the fringes of our farm (there they won't get us!) instead of allowing them to re-root themselves in the inviting moist soil. This, at least, feels like we're accomplishing something. Then the rain comes. Then the mosquitoes. Today, we must have killed millions as we harvested the haricot vert and the artichokes. Yes, us organic farmers even stooped to using insect repellent - not the organic kind either, mind you - we had to bring out the big guns; you see, our sanity was at stake. If you want to see semi-sane farmers at market handling your food, you, too, must praise the insect repellent. We promise that we wash our hands before handling your produce. Yes, the hands are one thing that is fair game for the mosquitoes - sacred to us - no DEET shall touch the hands.
SO. We try and beat back the green, we try and maintain sanity as mosquitoes enter ears, noses, throats and bite through three layers of insect-repellent-soaked shirts. We do this and realize: MAN! The plants sure do LOVE the rain!!! It has to be said, everything is growing like you wouldn't believe - the foliage on every crop is not to be imagined! The only thing seeemingly suffering is the turnips, radishes, arugula and lettuce crops - they simply melt in all this humidity. The broccoli, too, is fairly deficient in nutrient uptake (sandy soils can't hold too many nutrients with all this leaching rain!). However, get a load of everything else! This is a BUMPER crop year for baby artichokes, haricot vert, and carrots, carrots, carrots! The onions (though harvested early) are big and wonderful! The peppers and cukes are abundant and the tomatoes are plentiful - with a little more sun, they will ripen and then we can all revel in the bounty of summer! This, my friends, is the light through the green filter - this is why we endure the encroachment everyday.
It is times like this that we need to realize that the weakest link here is our will to persevere in the presence of potential flooding, endless demoralizing days in the rain, the fog of whining and biting mosquitoes, and the persistent weeds and pests (might be a shorter eggplant season than anticipated - potato beetles be vanquished!!!). We must remember that we are the weakest link - the truth is that the plants LOVE the rain, and they will march on in the presence of free water and do their best for us. We must be there to meet the challenge and harvest all they offer us. The season is already too short up here in the north - we will do what we have to do to - make the most of it, manage the encroachment as best we can, and bring the best possible produce to market in spite of it all. Happy August!!! May the next blogpost be riddled with pictures of beautiful produce!

Onions, anyone?

I feel compelled to share the flood hydrograph one last time, and give the follow up to the flood drama of the week. As you can tell from the hydrograph, the waters have receded and we are oh so happy about that! In the throes of the drama, we were slightly confused by the lack of rain on the day that we were supposed to flood (river crest was predicted to be 17 feet - our field starts to flood at about 12 feet). We were scrambling to get all of the onions and garlic out of the field and the sun was shining and it ended up being a quite nice day. Then we heard they lowered the flood prediction to around 10 feet! Well - there's no fear of us flooding at 10 feet, so we eased off on the harvesting, and tried to relax. That's about the time that other farms were reporting flooding in their fields (Healthy City farm, Diggers' Mirth and Pitchfork Farm). Turns out the equipment that takes the above measurements broke at a critical moment for us farmers. You can see that squiggly spot there at the crest. That's where the machines broke. They really have no sense of what the actual crest was, though I know that my friends at Healthy City were coming back from their fields with their clothes wet to their waists - about 4 feet in spots, I think. SO, turns out the Intervale CAN flood in the middle of summer - as if we weren't paranoid about the weather already! I wanted to share pictures of the aftermath of our process, and then we can all move on!

Our onion field Thursday morning

Our onion field Thursday afternoon. I really wish I had gotten pictures of our crew pulling all the onions and shallots out - it was so great to have all the help!

Some of the onion bunches that we made to sell at market.

Some of our helpers pulling our colored carrots out - thanks guys!

I harvested out the artichokes from or swale - the lowest spot on our farm, sure to flood first.

All of our garlic that Spencer and Chloe harvested out Thursday morning - drying nicely in the greenhouse.

Some of our cipollinis (rear) and some of the shallots (front) that were pulled by our crew and taken back to the greenhouses to dry.

The white cipollinis and more shallots.

Spencer contemplating the massive onion harvest.

We started our day around 4:30 am and ended it around 8 pm - to the craziest storm ever. Sort of a fitting end to a day rattled with the fear of massive moisture. The sky was the weirdest orange color...

I "safely" snapped this shot in the torrential downpour while driving home - such a strange sky!

Here we are Saturday after market dealing with all the heaped up onions - trying to spread them out nicely for a good even dry and cure. Here we're working on shallots.

Our friend Emily came down to help us with this stinky and sometimes goopy (decaying onion tops) project - what a trooper! Thanks, Emily!!!

So. Now that we've dealt with the mega harvest, we have started thinking about selling these onions! Did you know it takes about 4 pounds of onions to make French Onion soup?? Well, have we got the onions for you! A recipe to get you excited:

French Onion Soup
Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown

• 5 sweet onions (like Vidalias) or a combination of sweet and red onions (about 4 pounds)
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups white wine
• 10 ounces canned beef consomme
• 10 ounces chicken broth
• 10 ounces apple cider (unfiltered is best)
• Bouquet garni; thyme sprigs, bay leaf and parsley tied together with kitchen string
• 1 loaf country style bread
• Kosher salt
• Ground black pepper
• Splash of Cognac (optional)
• 1 cup Fontina or Gruyere cheese, grated

1. Trim the ends off each onion then halve lengthwise. Remove peel and finely slice into half moon shapes.
2. Set electric skillet to 300 degrees and add butter. Once butter has melted add a layer of onions and sprinkle with a little salt. Repeat layering onions and salt until all onions are in the skillet. Do not try stirring until onions have sweated down for 15 to 20 minutes. After that, stir occasionally until onions are dark mahogany and reduced to approximately 2 cups. This should take 45 minutes to 1 hour. Do not worry about burning.
3. Add enough wine to cover the onions and turn heat to high, reducing the wine to a syrup consistency. Add consomme, chicken broth, apple cider and bouquet garni. Reduce heat and simmer 15 to 20 minutes.
4. Place oven rack in top 1/3 of oven and heat broiler. Cut country bread in rounds large enough to fit mouth of oven safe soup crocks. Place the slices on a baking sheet and place under broiler for 1 minute.
5. Season soup mixture with salt, pepper and cognac. Remove bouquet garni and ladle soup into crocks leaving one inch to the lip. Place bread round, toasted side down, on top of soup and top with grated cheese. Broil until cheese is bubbly and golden, 1 to 2 minutes.

Bullet Dodgers!

So. This is a quick post to let everyone know that we're alright! Turns out the prediction was incorrect, and we're holding steady at 8 feet or so, and only looking at about 10 feet, but probably not even that. PLUS! There's dry weather suddenly in the forecast for the whole weekend!

We busted it out yesterday on the farm, and I am more than a little sore today. After reading our blogpost yesterday, we had a mini army that came out of the woodwork yesterday and helped us tremendously! Thanks soooooooooo much to Lorenzo, Chloe, Lindsay, Josh, Rob, and Suki (who provided us with rations for the day - thank you!). We accomplished so much between 5am and 8pm yesterday - we pulled our entire garlic, onion and shallot crop, as well as all the artichokes, some potatoes, and carrots, too. I will post some pictures of that process tonight, but for now, I need to go try and sell some onions to our accounts! See folks at market on Saturday, and thanks again for all your support on an extremely stressful and crazy day! Be well, and think dry!

Preparing for Flooding...

Who would've thought that we'd be preparing for a flood at the end of July - not us, that's for sure! Well, looks like from the hydrograph at the left (the Intervale farmers' bible during rainy times), that it is a fairly definite certainty that we'll be under some amount of water by Friday mid-morning (the graph is about 8 hours ahead of our location on the river). This prediction puts us at least where we were on May 20th, 2006. Year of the flood where our fields were at least 2 feet under water for around 24 hours - and others for much longer. Farmers lost plenty, but had most of the season to recover - planting had barely begun. This time, we're in full swing, and the potential losses are not remotely funny to think about. Yet, that's all we're thinking about, of course. Hence, the late evening blogpost. What do we stand to lose - certainly the first flush of long-awaited tomatoes at least to cracking from the amount of rain (4 more inches today...), and very probably from the mildewing and blight that's sure to come from all of the moisture. The life of the squash blossoms and the baby squashes will be cut short for sure with the inevitable mildew, the peppers could rot, the salad, arugula and lettuce heads will be unsaleable. The haricot vert, which had thousands of blossoms yesterday, will very likely set these first fruits, then be extremely susceptible to rust rot, vastly diminishing the yields. The artichokes are just beginning and could certainly get the black rot that happens with excessive rain. The garlic and the cipollini onions could have a very hard time curing with all the humidity, and therefore not store nearly as well as they should. We are fairly certain the potatoes and the carrots can handle the water - it all depends how long they are submerged....

So, what do we do now - besides sit up in a nervous panic all night - we have constructed a harvest plan for tomorrow to be reckoned with! Pictures like this one of our hoophouse with $3000 worth of lettuce heads in the flood of 2006 remind us that it would be prudent to harvest before the flood - SO. Our plan is to harvest out absolutely everything that is harvestable in preparation for being unable to harvest for the forseeable future. We're pulling the remaining garlic and cipollinis, and trying to dry them in the greenhouse. Then (if it's not underwater yet), we'll harvest out the ready lettuce heads, radicchio, escarole, treviso, radishes, turnips, beets, salad and arugula - if they are underwater, they are lost to us. Next will be the peppers, eggplants, squashes, artichokes and cukes. Lastly, we'll grab the carrots and potatoes that are ready.


This is a fairly nervewracking end to an otherwise uplifting day. We awoke to say goodbye to Spencer's mom Nancy and stepdad Garth (who helped us tremendously with harvesting for market and deliveries over the past week while visiting us on their vacation - thank you, sooo much!). We also awoke to a rainy day. Since Nancy and Garth helped us get caught up with some farm chores, we figured we had a much-needed day to have our mid-season summer conference. We always take one day in the middle of the season to have a meeting where we take stock of where we are, where we're headed and if there are changes we would like to make to the current plan, or things that we'd like to add for the fall planting. Basically, it's a chance to take some much-needed overview notes in the heat of the season so that when we're planning in February, we remember some key observations that were made when it mattered. It's always a very nice time for us take a deep breath and pat ourselves on the back a little bit as well as decide what's not going well so that we can make changes for a big finish to the season. As usual, we holed up at Dobra Tea downtown and made our big plans. We were feeling good about how the meeting went, and then we made our way back home in the rain to continue the discussion. Discreetly, Spencer had a chance to check the hydrograph (as we're all wont to do during extended rainy times), and then he broke the news to me. The upbeat meeting ground to a screeching halt, and plans for a major harvest started taking shape. We're forced to leave the agenda items "The Big Picture for Half Pint Farm" and "Plans for the Haygrove" and "Half Pint Farm's place in the Food Revolution" for another day. We simply can't think of the future when our present is at imminent risk. Well, off to bed, then early to rise for what promises to be an extremely long day! Wish us luck! And if you have a few moments, and some Muck boots, come on down to the farm and lend a hand - we'll appreciate any help we can get.

Coming out from the weeds, we think...

It must be true, since I'm feeling a little less demoralized about the farm now that we've got the weeds semi-under control. The weediness issue is one I feel gets dealt with best in retrospect. Specifically, this is exactly the reason we keep a farm journal. It turns out, that every year we have farmed, around Spencer's birthday (July 12th), we find ourselves mired in weeds. Weeds of all kinds (and while it can be interesting to catalog them, I won't because there are just so many, and I did mention that I was feeling less demoralized about them - no reason to bring them back up in startling detail, now is there?!), weeds that get HUGE with the perfect combination of rain, humidity, heat and sun. Of course, we should mention that the use of row-cover or reemay does help to keep the bugs off of certain things (arugula), but it creates a hothouse that the weeds love. As Spencer is fond of saying, "How do we want to kill our (fill in the blank) this time? Melt it with reemay? Leave it unprotected for deer to eat? Let the weeds overtake them?"

At any rate, my point is that this happens EVERY year right around this week or so. We've kept really good records of weed frustrations, and that at least helps us to remember that no matter what we do, they still come, and we still have to fight them. It's a war out here, people. Constant, unending, with various victors, and sometimes that victor is us. You know, farming on floodplain is wonderful for sooooooo many reasons (great soil chief among them), but one detail that gets overlooked (mostly due to short memories) is that if you farm on land that floods annually, you will never win against the weed seed bank. Every year you can weed your heart out, and still get that fall or spring flood, and that will bring in a whole host of new weed seeds to deal with. Every year at least once. SO. We content ourselves with beating back the crabgrass from the perimeters with mowing and hoeing, and that inevitable weeding day that happens every year - the plucking out one by one of huge galansoga weeds from the baby carrot bed (or two or three). Usually we don't succeed with every planting, and end up having to till in a round of carrots out of sheer lack of time and will (always depressing since carrots take 60-75 days until harvest). But, so far, we are winning, and haven't had to till in a bed yet! This, at least, is one measure of success in the battle. We'll take it and hope that the weeds start to taper off as the light starts to not hang around as long each day. I always start feeling ready for fall around now - but then remember we have 3 more months to go! And so....here we go! So many fun veggies are right around the corner! And rest assured - there are plenty of carrots to go around this fall! Finally.

A teaser to get excited:

The hoophouse tomatoes are looking grand - growing like weeds, and thanks to the landscape fabric, have virtually no weeds!

Just for the record, here's one ripening up just today! Feels late for tomatoes (been growing them since April!), but a quick consultation to last year's journal shows that we didn't have them this time last year either! We also harvested ~2 pounds of the first cherry tomatoes yesterday. They're coming!!!

Here's a fun new addition to our repertoire! Romanesco cauliflower. It's just so darn cool-looking, we had to try it. And for all you fellow nerds out there - the florets spiral in the Fibonacci sequence, so that makes it even cooler! This, too, takes forever to grow, and we were happy to see the first nubs emerging. Soon!

Here was our last project yesterday afternoon - pole bean trellising! You can kind of see the Hortonova net we use for the trellis in this picture. I'll get more detailed pictures as they climb. We are trying tons of different types of heirloom dry beans this year.

The haricot vert have flowers! Looks like next week!

Always amazed by the cardoon/artichoke family, I felt compelled to take this awesome depiction of how different the two plants look side-by-side, eventhough they are very close relatives. The cardoon is the tall massive plants up top, and the artichokes are the deeply serrated leaves below. More on cardoons when it's time to eat them - fall. Artichokes, however, are just around the corner!

Just for fun - wanted to share today's big project - the liberation of our Haygrove pieces from the weeds, and piling up of them in an orderly and hopeful fashion in a non-weedy place. Doesn't look very intimidating from this angle, does it?