As you walk up to the farm stand this week, you’ll notice that the cut flower garden is blooming beautifully. As of this morning an array of Poppies, Zinnias, Bachelor Buttons, Cleome, and even a few Sunflowers are opening up and showing out in a big way, so members of the CSA should tack on an extra few minutes to their pickups to spend a few minutes among the flowers and/or cutting a little bouquet to take home, free of charge. Though we love growing all of the vegetables and fruit across all of our acreage, the cut flower garden is a real treasure. It is one little way that we can thank you for supporting us and showing up here week after week, and it is our hope that cutting a few blooms brings a bit of color, creativity and calm into your life! Pro-tip—a travel mug or cup makes a great transport vessel for your flowers. You can add water from our spigot, and pop your bouquet right into your cupholder for the trip home.

Weeks like these I want to laugh in the face of anyone who has ever thought of farming as the Simple Life. As I paced my way in from the blueberry field a bit ago, I was hit by the realization that we’re currently tending to four seasons of crops (the majority of which are not perennials). While some of the days were spent picking blueberries, loading up wheelbarrows of zucchini and trellising Tomatoes that are just starting to blush, the crew spent the end of the week knocking out huge fall and overwintering planting—one that we will likely be harvesting from well into next Spring. And at one point in the past 24 hours, Mark discovered that the pump we currently rely on for irrigating our fields of Sweet Corn, Celery and Winter Squash was down for the count. (Thank goodness for this overcast Monday weather!) And thankfully, after troubleshooting, ordering parts, troubleshooting some more, he got the pump up and running again. This is all to say that farming is just a bonkers line of work, but I’m thankful that we have good food to show for it. So, let’s get into it!

This week is shaping up to be a toasty one, so I’m extra thankful that there is so much fresh and refreshing food on the harvest list for this week—fresh Favas, fresh Garlic, fresh (and pointy) Cabbages and fresh Blueberries! After losing the battle with the birds last year, this year’s Blueberry harvest is off to a fantastic start. You may recall that we lost last year’s crop in its near entirety to a flock of opportunistic Cedar Waxwings. It was a major disappointment for us, and though we had to give up on picking much earlier than we’d hoped, I have to give it up for Mark who was very sad but took the opportunity to resume watering much sooner than we would have if we’d been actively harvesting. This Spring, we could see that the plants were taking very kindly to this extra bit of TLC—there was a whole lot of fresh growth appearing on the bushes, with a whole lot of blossoms that became berries that are ripening to sweet blue perfection right now. The crew has tied up slightly longer strands of “Flashy Tape” that you see twinkling when you drive by the farm in hopes of deterring the birds—between the vibrations of that tape and the occasional spirited chase from Lupa the wonder pup, we’re keeping them moderately at bay. However, each day is a race against the birds, so the heat is on in more ways than one this week.