Abbe Hills Farm CSA

Greetings shareholders,

This week, we'll have potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, squash, maybe some cucumbers, chiles, tomatoes, sweet peppers, basil, dill, and cilantro.  This is the last week that I'll give you ugly onions.  We had two varieties that were too sweet to be stored too long, and two varieties that just had a hard time.  As soon as they are gone, maybe we'll take a week off onions to give you a chance to reduce your stash some, then switch to the nice onions that should be storable for quite a while.  There are a lot of them and they look pretty good so far.

We're still trying to rescue garlic from the field.  It should have been dug in early July, but the ground was so hard and dry that we couldn't get to it.  It's that way again, and now the garlic is doing what it does naturally - falling apart, so it's going to look awful and probably not store too well.  Use it up.  Luckily, we kept the first garlic that we dug for seed for next year.  Every year, I get smarter about garlic.  About the time I retire, I should be able to grow and harvest it successfully.

No corn for the Monday people, but perhaps for the Thursdays.  We've got one more patch of Bodacious and it's just not quite ripe enough to harvest tomorrow.  Depending on the weather, it might be ready on Thursday, but for sure next week barring some disaster.

There's nothing wrong with this farm that about an inch of rain wouldn't cure.  In June it wouldn't stop and we had trouble getting into the fields.  In July, we got more than 7 inches on the 22nd, but that's all.  We haven't had enough to be useful since then, and it's starting to matter.  If I hope to have anything to give you in October, it's important to get things moving in the right direction right away, so we pulled out the irrigation Friday of last week.  I haven't used it since 2007, and I remember why.  I HATE IRRIGATING!  It's too much trouble.  Since we don't have enough pump or equipment or peoplepower to do the whole garden, I'm just concentrating on the things we love in the fall.  In the mean time, the tomatoes, peppers, chiles, beans, edamames, squash, cukes, winter squash, and kale are all just waiting for a drink.  We've got 1000's of plants, and 1000's of little fruits on those plants, so when it finally does rain, vegetables are going to be crazy abundant.  Until then, we eat potato salad, onions, and sweet corn.

Something is eating the tomatoes.  About half of the red ones have a big bite, or bites, removed.  Of course, only the nice big pretty ones.  I can't figure out if the tomatoes are red because they have been munched, or if they we chosen for eating because they are red.  Either way, I've got it narrowed down to deer, rabbits, mice, voles, birds, big worms, grasshoppers, or crickets.  Whatever it is, it's got a big mouth with big teeth and it eats a LOT.  If you have an idea about what I should do about this problem, please let me know.  I'd be happy to kill something to make it stop. The tomatoes this week are less ugly, bigger, and more numerous than last week.  Still not a lot, but we're heading in the right direction.  Someday soon there are going to be an awful lot of them.

As far as I know, there's still a detour at Mt. Vernon Road and Highway 13.  Sorry for the inconvenience.

See you this week,

Laura