Well, now that's its really starting to feel like fall, it looks like we might be in for a bit of a break from it this week to enjoy one last bit of summer! We sure could use some warmer weather to help move things along - things aren't moving as quickly as they should be, but cool and cloudy has a tendency to do that. Another week near 80 will go a long ways towards speeding things along!
This year is surprisingly similar to last; from the late start, to the dry summer to the cold/wet fall. Luckily, we already dug all of our potatoes this year, so we won't be doing that in the October snow again this year - but there's always time to pick carrots in the snow!
Things have slowed down here a whole bunch with the weather shift; crops now have the advantage over weeds and the to-do list is long, but manageable. We spend more of our time looking at what worked and what didn't this year while it's still fresh in our minds and starting to make a plan for the next season. Next year will be a big one for us, as it'll be the first year that we'll be aiming for little to no growth; a big change from the 50-100% growth we've had each of the past five years. We're looking forward to being able to focus more on making improvements to all the processes around here versus trying to add more product and get it out the door. We'll also be spending more time working on the vineyard now that it's near full production; for those of you that don't know, our initial plan was to start a winery and we started the farm as a side project until the grapes were ready. Now the vineyard is the side project and the farm is way bigger than we ever expected; who could have guessed?
In the mean time though, we've still got a few big projects. We're focused on trying to get fields cleaned up and put into cover crops for fall to help suck up any remaining nutrients and hold them until next spring. We've got about an acre planted so far with around another acre planned to get cleaned up this week. Usually we don't get around to it until late fall, so it's nice to have a bit of a jump on it this year!
In the next week or so, we'll begin removing tomatoes from the hoophouses to make room for fall plantings. It's always tough to rip out tomato plants that are still loaded with unripened fruit, but if we don't they'll sit empty all fall/winter; our fall crops need to be planted and established before they days get too short and the temperatures too cold. We've got some disease popping up that looks like it'll be hard get under control at this point and the quality of the tomatoes is slowly declining, so it's almost time to say goodbye to them. As with everything else, we've got a whole list of improvements we want to make next year!
We're working through harvesting the rest of the storage onions as we free up space; we have them stashed anywhere we can find some shade and good air flow at this point! It looks like our pole barn will finally be done this week, so we'll be able to move them in there, which should give us the space we planned on having.
One last quick note before we go start getting ready for this week; for those of you with flower shares, we just wanted to let you know that this is the last week for the flowers. Hopefully everyone's enjoyed the variety this year - flowers were one of the biggest successes here this year; they grew way better than they ever have.
Hope everyone enjoys their week!
-Brendan & Greta
