Friday, July 17, 2009

I've got autumn on my mind.

This morning, we all bundled up in sweatshirts and knit caps, as though it was fall. With the cool temperatures and the sky a clear, crisp robin's egg blue, it felt to me more like mid-September than mid-July.

It has been an unusually cool summer -- though nothing like 1816, I suppose. Still, I fear this year won't be a good one for heat-loving crops like peppers, eggplant, melons, and (alas!) tomatoes. But that's all right. Since we grow over fifty different kinds of vegetables, something is bound to do well. Our lettuce, for example, is thriving this year, the broccoli is beautiful, and the potato plants look quite robust. As Michael likes to say about such things, we shall see.

Since we've taken a sabbatical from the Fulton Street Farmers Market and moved our Forest Hills Foods delivery to Thursday, Fridays are now wide open. With the week's harvesting behind us, we were able to make good progress on the last big push of seeding and transplanting -- such good progress, in fact, that we emptied the greenhouse of plants ready for the fields and then filled it again with newly seeded trays. All were fall crops: cabbages, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, and cauliflower in the fields; collards, kale, and more cabbages in the greenhouse. It's a good thing, too. We have only around seventy days until the first hard frost and the end of our growing season.