Happy Crops, Happy Farmer

It's been quite warm these past few weeks. And the lack of rain has forced us to irrigate more than we would like. For some crops, like lettuce, carrots, beans, and everything that prefers cooler temperatures, we use overhead irrigation. Overhead is not very a very efficient technique in that a lot of water has to be wasted to bring enough moisture in the soil, but it helps cool off the plants significantly. For some other crops, like the nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplant) and cucurbits (squash, cucumbers, melons) we use drip irrigation, which puts just a little water at the foot of every plant. Drip irrigation is a very efficient technique that, even though is time consuming to set up, saves a lot of water in the end. An additional benefit to drip irrigation is that the plant leaves don't get wet during irrigation thus preventing diseases that thrive on wet leaves. And so, despite the scalding heat and long hours of water pumping, we have some pretty happy crops these days. And when the crops are happy, so is the farmer. And we hope that as the summer bounty manifests itself in your CSA boxes, you feel as blessed as we do.