Greetings from Sweetland
Remember our week 4 newsletter? I wrote it exactly 8 weeks ago, and in it I said that I was monitoring the overflowing irrigation ponds and “practicing my sun dance” to shift the weather pattern towards a few dry days after weeks on end of rain. Well, I guess my sun dance was effective! Just 2 weeks later we headed into a heat wave and haven’t had much rain since. We dodged a few showers around haying, but for the most part it has been nothing but dry. The few times that the sky has darkened we rush to pull up the weather radar, and somehow each time we watch as the mapped rain clouds march towards us and then split to go north and south, leaving our fields with no more than the taste of a few sprinkles. Just last week on an errand in West Leb my windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the downpour, and I later raced through the raindrops in Thetford to pick Fern up from school. And yet somehow, right in between, the farm didn’t see a drop!
Luckily, June’s overflowing irrigation ponds have been our saving grace to keep the veggies going full steam ahead in this hot weather. Each evening we open the valve to one of our fields, check the lines for leaks, and run the sprinklers for 2-3 hours — long enough to put down about half an inch of water to tide the crops over for the rest of the week. Over the course of a week we are able to cycle through each of our fields. With each watering the level of the ponds drops by several inches, but it’s a use it or lose it mentality this time of year. Our goal is to keep the plants strong and healthy through the drought until the weather pattern makes its typical shift towards more moisture in September. Fingers crossed that it does make that “typical” shift this year! At the risk of swinging the pendulum too far the other way right before we start our second round of haying I won’t ask you to practice your rain dance. But we’d be happy for a soaking shower or two for a farm-wide reset!
Cheers
Norah and the Sweetland Crew
Week 12 Harvest
Onions, Red Long of Tropea and Ailsa Craig Broccoli Savoy Cabbage Arugula Mesclun Rainbow Chard Corn Eggplant Summer Squash Beets Carrots Cucumbers Fennel Scallions Bell Peppers Tomatoes
What’s Cooking This Week
You can find ingredients for all of these recipes in our farm store! We source meats, dairy, grains, beans, sweets, and more from local and sustainable producers. Don’t forget to use your CSA member discount by entering your account phone number in our POS (member discounts are automatically applied to LocalLine purchases for off-farm delivery).