It was a stressful week on the farm. On Tuesday, I noticed that the cooler had flipped its breaker and was off. I flipped it back on, but it didn’t cool down. By Tuesday afternoon, I called in a professional. The long and short of it was that the compressor was shot. I ended up replacing all of the refrigeration equipment. It was a very expensive week.

But, I shouldn’t really complain. Sure I didn’t want the expense right now. (Who would?) But, when I bought this refrigeration equipment, the seller told me he would give me a great price because he didn’t know how long the equipment would last. Well, that was 17 years ago. I have paid for maintenance and repairs, but this is the first big expense in a long time.

It was a little challenging to get through the week without refrigeration. I bought lots of ice and kept things cold the old fashioned way. On Fridays, the refrigeration specialists showed up, ripped out the old equipment and installed the new. It was just in time to get everything chilled before the farmers market. Now we have a great system in place that is chilling the veggies down properly. I guess it all worked out ok in the long run.

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When the season began this year I had many goals. Some were for the farm and some were for me personally. One of the personal ones was that I wanted to try to reduce the stress caused by all the seasonal ups and downs. I jokingly referred to it as ‘Zen and the Art of Farming’. I wanted to keep my inner peace despite what the weather, bugs, diseases, wind, employees, customers and markets could throw at me.

Well, I’m not sure that I have succeeded at that goal. Or else, the weather picked up the challenge and decided to push me to my limits. This has been a year of weather extremes. It’s too dry and then too wet. First it’s hot then it’s too cold. Several farmers that I know have decided to throw in the towel after this season.

I am not quitting, but it was very challenging to get hit with the earliest frost I’ve seen in my 18 years of farming. Our average first frost is October 1st. Last Saturday I left for farmers market before dawn. I knew we had frost, but did not see the extent of the damage until returning home Saturday evening. We lost all the tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, and patty pans. Peppers, tomatillos, sweet potatoes and basil were partially killed by the frost. We had tried on Friday to cover all the vulnerable crops, but the wind was so strong that the covers blew off.

Some years I am ready for the frost, but not this year. I would have liked to have a couple more weeks of the summer crops. I’m trying to put a positive spin on all of this. I’m trying to see it as an opportunity to get all the fall clean up done earlier than normal.

So, an early frost obviously has an impact on the items in your boxes. This will be the last week for tomatoes, cucumbers, basil and probably peppers. Cherry tomatoes are in the greenhouse, so the frost did not hit them.

But there is some good news as well. The fall crops are looking good. We dug the first potatoes last week. You have a small taste this week. There will be more in the weeks to come.

Kale actually tastes sweeter after a frost. The kale recipe listed below is a great way for non-kale fans to eat and enjoy kale.

Head lettuce is back in your boxes. The deer have been enjoying the lettuce, so I harvested the heads at the baby lettuce stage. You got a couple of small heads this week.

Cinnamon basil was the one basil that survived the frost. It has a sweet spicy scent. I did make some pesto with it on Sunday. It tasted great, but was definitely different from sweet basil pesto.

Something I’ve learned from some of the local restaurants is to mix pesto with mayonnaise and use in sandwiches. Try making a cheese, pesto mayo, and apple slices in a sandwich. I think the cinnamon basil pesto would be great in this context.

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This last week I have discovered that a farmer’s sanity is directly proportional to the number of mosquitoes buzzing around her head. We all looked like colorful bank robbers out in the fields. We had to be covered everywhere except our eyes. Wind, rain, or midday sun helped as did bug spray.

About 25 folks braved the mosquitoes to come to the farm party on Saturday. We had a great potluck with dishes falling into 2 food groups - tomatoes and chocolate. All of it was delicious. Thanks for coming.

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We finally had a Monday without rain so we were able to pick basil. If we pick it when it is raining, it turns black. So make pesto or bruschetta. I also included a great basil and patty pan recipe in this newsletter. (By the way, this may be the last of the zucchini and patty pans as they are fading quickly).

Sunshine squash is the orange winter squash. This is in the same family as buttercup and red kuri squash. It is great to cut open, scoop out the seeds and bake. It is also great in many squash dishes. Try the coconut curry squash recipe listed below. One note: some of the squash have some skin damage. This is caused by little beetle bites. It is only skin deep so don’t worry about it. Also, if you are not ready to eat winter squash yet, don’t worry. It will keep for a long time.

Peppers have taken off. Remember if your big red peppers are not fully red, put them on the counter for a day or two. They will turn a deep red.

Tomatoes are continuing to produce, though they have a few more cracks due to the heavy rains. The cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse have finally started to produce like I expect. I think it was just too hot in the greenhouse for a while and they didn’t produce.
I hope you all enjoyed the green beans last week. Here they are again as each planting produces for about 2 weeks.

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We went from drought to flood in a couple of weeks. We received over 10 inches of rain in the last week. Even though we have sandy soil, there are limits to the amount of water the soil will absorb. Fortunately, all of our standing water is in the low spots on the farm. We had some puddles out in the field, but no real problems.

Our tomatoes, cucumbers and melons are very unhappy with all the rain, however. The tomatoes have split open and their skins are peeling back. So I think that our tomato harvest will not be very large in the next few weeks. Plus, we have had to harvest a lot of crops while the plants are wet. This makes some of them unhappy as we spread the plant diseases while we move through the plants.

But despite all the issues on our farm, I really can’t complain. There is not a river running through our farm or produce floating on a new lake. Many farms were seriously hurt by all the rain and lost thousands of dollars of income. Most farmers learn to live with the obstacles that the weather puts in our paths, but this was overwhelming for many. I wish them well as they clean up and try to recover.

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Those of you who are still doing rain dances can stop now. We have had more than enough rain - at least for this week. Monday morning the rain gauge was overflowing at 6 inches. So I’m not sure how much rain we’ve actually had. Big thanks go out to my crew who slogged through the rain on Monday harvesting veggies for your boxes. We also worked last Wednesday in a cold drizzle to get the squash harvest in.

The sandy soil on the farm does absorb lots of water. But at this point the soil is very saturated. We do have standing water in a few places around the farm, but so far, not in the fields.

Too much rain can be a problem for some of our plants. Tomatoes and peppers tend to split even more than normally. Heavy rain can also knock off blossoms, which means that future fruit does not grow.

But the biggest problem is that so much moisture brings in diseases that shorten the life span of the plants. Some of these diseases come because there is not enough airflow and the plants don’t dry out. Some problems come because the roots are too waterlogged. I hope that none of these things become problems.

I hope you all are safe (and dry) in this wet weather. Let’s hope for some balance in the wind and weather. Have a good week.

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I realized that I have not always done a good job of communicating some of the problems on the farm this season. I think I wanted to avoid whining every week about the weather. So now I am going to catch you all up on the problems of this season.

The biggest issue is no surprise to anyone. It has been hot and dry. For a while we were holding our own with the heat because we were getting enough rain. But once the rain stopped, the plants began to suffer.

Now, I do have irrigation on the farm. During July, it takes a week and a half to get through the whole farm with the water running 24/7. (And you should see the resulting electric bill!) Even with all of this there is not enough water for everything. So this year, I had to make some choices and I stopped watering some crops that did not germinate well. So most of our crops that are transplanted (tomatoes, peppers, squash, broccoli, lettuce, etc.) have done ok. But the directly seeded crops have not. We won’t have any carrots and beets this year. We lost several plantings of chard, salad mix and green beans. I did manage to save one of the bean plantings. Our final planting of green beans will have a decent harvest.

Another problem we have had to deal with is sunshine. We have had a lot of cloudless, sunny days. Believe it or not, some plants suffer from sunburn. (In the plant world, they call it sunscald). Peppers and tomatoes are very susceptible. The sunscald starts out as tan spots that quickly turn black and look horrible. This week I picked 6 5-gallon buckets of peppers. Two of the buckets were too damaged to be put into your boxes. So the intensity of the sun has cut down on our harvest.

Then there are the things I can’t explain. I have the same amount of cherry tomatoes that I planted last year. But I’m getting half the harvest. I doubled the size of the cucumber patch, but I’m still not getting enough. It’s a mystery.

There is some good news. Potatoes are coming. The last five years have seen our potato harvest shrink, as the beetles have gotten stronger. So this year I tried a new strategy. Instead of planting potatoes early in the spring, I waited until the end of June. That way the beetles’ life cycle was over. We have some nice plants growing in the field. The harvest is a few weeks away. I never know how good the harvest will be until we dig it up, but the plants are there and are not beetle chewed.

We should have a good harvest of sweet potatoes. Winter squash looks great. Tomatoes are producing well. Each year is unique. Some crops do well some years and not in other years. It is the ebb and flow of the seasons. Let us hope the rain continues and the crops do well.

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