WILD HARE WEEKLY, SUMMER #15

Even though the end of our Summer CSA season is still three weeks away, I've got to start talking about Fall. And there's plenty to talk about this year as we encounter some big shifts that aren't just about weather. Mark and I took our usual planning walk (in the rain for the first time in quite a while today), passing through the fields of brassicas, gorgeous chicories and pie pumpkins that are starting to take on their signature orange. Since things are now stormy and rainy, we began clearing summer crops out of the greenhouses in anticipation of getting them flipped and ready for the cold months ahead.

This Fall will mark a particularly significant transition for our farm, one that we have been mulling over as a family for the majority of this growing year.

WILD HARE WEEKLY, SUMMER #14

It is a school night, which is why you didn't get a newsletter yesterday. It was our last night of the long summer school break together, and our daughter already had to put up with Labor Day also being a work day at her house. I really struggle with juggling parenthood and a farming business sometimes. Even though there are definite merits to raising a child on a farm, the two don't always dovetail beautifully for me. I lay awake some nights, quite foolishly, wishing I could sprout another arm or bargain for a few more hours in each day just to keep everything in the air and properly nurtured. I know I'm not alone in this feeling, but it weighs heavily on me as I attempt to weave harvest lists with homework, loading market vans and packing lunches. Food is my love language, so sending her off with chopped up vegetables, PB & J and a little lunchbox apple tomorrow is a simple but big deal for me.

WILD HARE WEEKLY, SUMMER #13

There's plenty to be said about the level of exhaustion a farmer might feel approaching the final days of August, but I'm learning that decision fatigue is the real kicker. There are just five more weeks left before we transition into our Fall Share, and as year-round growers, we're looking at a years worth of choices all at once in August, setting the next nine months of our farms livelihood in motion at the same time that we're experiencing and evaluating the consequences of choices and plans we set in motion as far back as February of this year. If I could only insane number of decisions Mark and I find ourselves having to make on the fly, or laboring over the consequences of each and every day. Actually I don't even want to try and count that. It hurts. But you should know that the process of working backward from forming a given week's share ingredients to crop planning is a deliberate one that almost never goes off without a hitch, hence the mind numbing array of decisions that we're making as we go along.

For example, heading into this week, I was thinking we might let up on the lettuce for a week for the CSA in favor of some bunching greens, but then just look at those heads, will you? They're perfect and gorgeous this week, and looking at a forecast of nearly ninety over the next couple of days, harvesting that butter lettuce in addition to some greens, and keeping those sweet crisp heads in our collective fridges is the better choice made all the more prudent by the upcoming Labor Day weekend. I know we've had a whole lotta lettuce this Summer, but our crop rotations will thank us for it, and we'll be looking back on our lettuce wraps and quick BLTs longingly long about November, I promise. Not to mention the buckets of tomatoes, stone fruit, sweet onions, corn, zucchini and cucumbers. Let's hear it for all of those Summer sweeties this week too, because I'm not going to choose a favorite.