The air doesn’t always smell so great on a farm. We’ve got pigs in the backyard, after all, as well as chickens in the front, cows on the side and ducks wandering everywhere. But after yesterday’s multiple thundershowers, the gentle humid breeze is just as sweet as can be. Perhaps it’s the scent of fall on the way. If not for the sudden proliferation of autumn flies and picnic-diving bees, I’d say our Wisconsin August is about perfect. continued »
We’ve got an absolute paintbox of veggies packed for you this week. And they taste as good as they look! From the house or road, the garden looks like a sea of green arranged in waves of different shades, elevations and textures. But from the paths themselves, a wanderer can peer beneath the foliage and glimpse a bounty of colors nestled there. Shocking striped eggplants in white and purple swing below stiff scalloped leaves. Magenta beets and bronze onions push their shoulders up above the brown dirt. Tender yellow squash curl gently in the midst of scratchy giant emerald vines. Technicolor tomatoes and peppers hide beneath a protective canopy of sun-blocking runners, while the Swiss chard reaches its rainbow ribs toward the light. continued »
This week we’ll pass some milestones in the garden season. Box 5 marks the halfway point in our CSA delivery season. Meanwhile, in the fields, we are finishing up planting all the crops we hope to harvest in the fall. We inhale a deep breath now and and take stock of what seems to be thriving, what we are likely to need in the end-of-season boxes and what customer feedback has prompted us to repeat. We also give up on a lot! I’ve been emptying flats of plants I wanted to experiment with if I had space open up, and putting away little packets of seeds I’ve been shuffling around, trying to discern whether it was realistic to plant them. I’ve also been tilling in crops that got too weedy or too dried out or too burned up to harvest. If early spring is the time for idealism and hope, late summer is the time to draw a lot of hard lines. continued »
Looks like today will be the last really hot day of the summer (or at least for the length of the weather.com forecast graphic). Oh Lord, let it be so! continued »
