BEING A FAMILY FARM
It was a pleasantly quiet week at We Grow with pigs staying in their new enclosure on pasture, volunteers heartily tackling weeds every day and no major break downs. We’ve been taking time to reassess what is growing and planning the next few weeks of planting with fall harvests in mind. We have many things that we tried to get in early this spring that did not turn out and need to be removed to free up the space. Some Asian greens that went straight to flower, radishes that got wormy, turnips in which only a few seeds germinated, kohlrabi the slugs ate, spinach that drowned, kale we simply have to much of and the jury is still out on the beets. They may live a few more weeks to see what comes of them yet. Seems devastating when you start writing it down, but it all part of keeping a garden. In our case, a really big garden.
We are starting to get a few cucumbers, but not enough for every member. About half of our cucumber vines inside the high tunnel froze on May 14 and about a third of the zucchini row (outside – covered) didn’t survive as well, so we have been anticipating being short come early July when they start to ripen. Since half of what we planned is not enough, we are going to give shareholders cucumbers OR zucchini. We would like to make sure each member gets to try both so we will make a note and give you the second item next week to the best of our ability. This is our plan rather than waiting several weeks for the replanted cukes and zucchini to catch up to where we have enough for all 48 of you. Thank you for understanding!
We’ve been having fun with our boys working on the farm this summer for a wage of $1 per hour. We find simple tasks for them like picking peas, composting weed piles, and weighing bags of carrots. They are starting to understand that we all need to work together to be successful. Except when one makes more money than the other and maple fudge is at stake.
Working as a family,
Eric & Rebecca