Marketing!

Starting next week I will be selling at the Orange County Farmer's Market in Hillsborough.
CSA deliveries may need to move to Tuesday.

What a fruitful week! I am now hunting for a second fridge so I can store the abundance that I expect will be coming for the next couple of months.

Our first melons are only two weeks away according to Karen McAdams, one of the Cooperative Extension agents who have put together the incubator program. As long as I keep the plants somewhat weeded it looks like we’ll be eating lots of watermelons and muskmelons (the group of melons to which cantaloupe and honeydew belong). This week we had a bumper crop of cucumbers. The rains were apparently well timed. Of course the squash are still coming on. We also have our first tomatoes ripening. I just stumbled upon the eggplant. I hadn’t even notice flowers on the plants and all of a sudden there were fruits.

Also lots of weeds.

Rain

The rain this week was a very welcome respite from the drought that was as recently as last Wednesday classified as severe by official sources. It was a relief to farmers including those of as at the incubator farm who irrigate out of ponds. We had begun to see the water level of our pond lower over the past few weeks. Most plants seem to do better with a periodic rain in addition to just being irrigated.

That said, the weather and I are not in lockstep. The heavy inundation every evening several days in a row made the ground to wet to till when I had the chance. I am running out of room for the next succession of plantings and I had hoped to open up more space. This will have to wait a little while longer.

Delay until now

Shares will start to go out Wednesday.
The squash is coming quick and the beans are just about ready.
Ill have some greens too.

Weeding and Waiting for Flowers

The weeds came up quick despite the lack of rain. They are mostly under control within my domain although there are plenty between my beds and others'. I put down a bunch of straw and hopefully that'll hold them off for a while.
My beds are about 80% full now. That means I wont be planting too much more until some stuff is done. So far I haven't seen many blossoms. A few of the tomatoes and one of two varieties of string beans have started to bud. The squashes have grown lush but they are still budless.

Whats up with these peppers? They forgot to mature as plants. I'm going to call them Juno peppers.

I planted 300 sweet potato plants today. Four varieties. I am very excited. Here is the CSA flyer:

William Cramer’s Verdant Furrows

First Time CSA (Community Supported Agriculture)

8 Weeks of delicious, nutritious veggies

Including Tomatoes, Beans, Squash and Zucchini, Carrots, Okra, Kale, Chard and other Greens, Cucumbers and more

Late June to Late August

The cost of a Small share for about $10 worth of produce each week is $80

Example week:
2 palette-wetting Tomatoes
2 crunchy cool Cukes
4 perfectly sweet Squash
1 bunch of raunchy Radishes
1 huge handful of Green Beans
1 eye-popping Hot Pepper

The cost of a Large share for about $20 worth of produce each week is $150

Example week:
3 juicy red Tomatoes
A Sweet Pepper
4 flavorful Squash
1 bunch of nutrient-packed Kale
A whole pound of Green Beans
1 handful of luscious Okra
3 big yummy Cukes
1 bunch of rabbit-taunting Carrots
A little bag of Basil

These eight weeks (starting sometime in the last two weeks of June) will be an experiment both for the farmer and the customer. This will be the first time I have managed my own CSA. I have many tasty things planted at the PLANT @ Breeze small farm incubator site in Schley (a few miles north of Hillsborough) and in a garden at a friend’s in Hillsborough. I hope to provide up to eight small shares worth of produce during these summer months and I plan to provide the opportunity to renew subscriptions after this first trial ends.

I will do my darnedest to see that all shares are interesting and varied.

Lil Fenugreeks

<-Huge Truck

Hot Truck

Today we (papa farmer and baby farmer) bought a truck and traded in my car. Its going to be running on biodiesel so my business will be less petrol derived and less carbon dioxidious. But honestly I think the plants are really digging the CO2 and heat trapped by it. Things are growing fast and as long as irrigation stays online(knock on wood) it looks like there will be some very verdant furrows indeed.

I'll be posting info on the CSA soon. Also, pictures...

Hot Stuff

If we jump head on into this heatwave maybe the rest of the summer will seem like a breeze. Hopefully the tender little plants and everybody else will make it through to more temperate times.

This is the first year I am managing my own "market garden." After several years interning and working on other farms I felt it was time for me to try my hand at planning in addition to planting. Luckily I am not entirely on my own. I am working within a small farm business incubator called PLANT@Breeze. That is People Learning Agriculture Now for Tomorrow. Acronym came first?

So I am planting in a few rows there in Schley as well as on the land of friends, the Heydas, in Hillsborough proper.

I've got tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, squash, carrots, bush beans, spinach, and radishes in the ground now and I have several trays of other plants that will go out in the next couple of weeks.