Storms serve as an excellent reminder of how much we value electricity, and electric company crews! We were thankful the winds caused no damage to our greenhouses, and we only lost power for 18 hours. Our largest concern was powering the pumps that bring water to our fields. We were about to borrow a generator when power was restored. We hope you readers have been able to meet your needs through whatever improvised means necessary. We don’t mind not having A/C (we don’t use it anyway) but we sure miss having fans blowing when there’s no electricity!

To anthropomorphize the vegetables: Okra and tomatoes are loving the heat; salad greens are pining for cooler weather.

For those of you with gardens, have bug problems damaged some of your plants? Blight taken out your tomatoes? We have available winter and summer squash starts now (butternut, kubocha, acorn, and summer squash) that there’s still time to plant and get a great harvest before cold sets in. (To give you an idea of succession planting, we have just planted another succession of cucumbers and have one more to go in the ground this week.) Our final tomato planting will go in the ground in a couple weeks, and tomato starts will be available for sale next week. These are all available for purchase here on the farm, so call or email if you would like to purchase. Tomatoes: $4 for 4 inch pot. Squash: $3 for 4-pack

 (These are the last round of our grafted tomato plants. This was a new experiment this year, and fortunately the success rate increased exponentially with each round.)

 (These cherry tomatoes will be at market starting next week. These are the first harvest – notice the kids bowl to understand who claimed ownership of these precious first ones!)

In the midst of this heat, it’s hard to think about planning for your fall garden, but believe it or not, it is time to do so. We are in the middle of starting seedlings that will flourish in the fall: kale, collards, cabbage, broccoli. They will be ready to purchase and plant in the beginning of August, on a pre-order basis. To reserve yours, please email or call by July 31st.  (Fall is a great time  to garden because a lot of the stressors of summertime [bugs, heat, lack of rain] are lessened.) 4-packs, $3 each.

This is the fire burning right now for tonight’s bread baking. If you have been lucky enough to enjoy our bread this season, you will be happy to know that we are exploring the option of soon baking one day during the week as well. This would be on a pre-order basis, and we’ll set up delivery spots once enough people have ordered. Please let us know if this is something you are interested in, and what part of town is convenient for you to access during the week. If you really want to make sure you get some, get 5 of your friends together and that will really help make a delivery spot happen! And – keep those wine bottles coming for the new oven construction! We received many last week, but still need some more before we hit the 400 needed. Thanks again for all your help in that department.

Harvest this week for market:

Carrots, Cucumbers, Eggplants, Leeks, Red Sweet Onions, Okra, Bell Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Potatoes (Red and White), TOMATOES, and Yellow Summer Squash.

And…Eggs, Bread, and Bouquets of Flowers.

Enjoy!