So many things...

I feel like I owe you all an apology for not posting snippets more frequently. I will do some research this week to learn how to easily post from my Blackberry whenever I get a chance. Having to sit down in front of my computer to post with only peace and quiet to keep me going, has resulted in my falling asleep everytime. When the sun is up, I can't possibly devote time to do only computer work. I might be able to work on a post while I whip up dinner or wait for Ethan to find the right way to put his shirt on (he can do it himself!).

Some of you might have heard about the late blight that is afflicting tomatoes and could wipe out potato crops across the east coast. It has been the topic of a few articles in the Patriot and Lancaster Farming. For a few days we were panicked, I must admit. We are banking on lots of tomatoes, and we planted our potatoes late to avoid intense pressure from the potato bugs we had last year. Late blight this early could devstate our potato crop. Luckily we haven't seen any signs of late blight on our farm. We do, however, have septoria leaf spot which is not as fatal to tomato plants as late blight. We might be helped out by the recent string of dry days and warmer nights. This change in the weather pattern, while not great for lawns or gardens, does lessen the conditions at which spores will thrive. We might be out of the woods. Time will tell. I will keep you updated.
A quick beet update: We started them in our greenhouse early this spring, transplanted them out between rain storms, and they are growing pretty well in our field. We also sowed some beet seeds for fall directly in the beet bed, and they are popping up. Each beet seed is actually 6 or so seeds in a cluster, and we must pull out the weaker plants in each cluster so the strongest plant has room to make a beet root. We will be thinning them over the next month and will include them in our shares as they are ready.
Oh the beans! Two weeks ago Andy finally got an opportunity to cultivate the string beans with our little Farmall Cub. The ground had dried enough to accept a tractor without packing too hard. The grass was high, but needed to be controlled ASAP and nothing is faster than tractor cultivation. The first two rows went beautifully. The weeds came free from the plants and exposed bare earth between the rows to make picking easier. The next six rows didn't go as well as the first two, and there were a few sections of sweet potato vine that got wrapped around the cultivator tines and wiped out rather large swwaths of bean plants. Andy was furious at himself for trying to help us control weeds quickly. The next day when she saw it, Mom cried. She was really bummed. We quickly readied another plot of land, and planted some extra seeds. Since then we noticed that our first planting of beans has recovered pretty nicely. It is not all that we intended, so the second planting will be nice. We should be able to have enough beans to preserve some along the way. We have a total of 3,200 feet of bean plants. That is alot of bean picking.
Oh to have a zuchinni... Last season we struggled to get summer squash to grow. We thought there was something wrong with our nutrient management program, and we even called the county extension agent to check out our plants. He recommended a few things, and we made some significant investments in soil amendments with the assumption that we would see a return on our investment this year. When we were a smaller CSA we grew our squash in the soil that we had always used and maintained. Now that we are trying to be large enough for the CSA to cover all of the costs of running a farm with one full-time employee, we have moved our squash patch to a larger area. That field is new to us, and it seems to deter summer squash. We have decided to continue to grow what plants we have up there, but we are putting some plants in the plot that we used to use for our personal garden. Next year we will move our vegetable production to the low lying section of our soil that is the most fertile. We had hoped that we would get better production out of the 3 acres that we are currently using. We think that land may be better utilized by planting fruit trees, blueberries, or raspberries, and possibly introducing some grazing animals and laying hens. Any preferences?
Also if you haven't seen Food Inc., I recommend it. Links to more info about it can be found here.