Well, the difficult spring kept me away from the blogosphere for a while… but now I’m back, and I’m pleased to report an abundance of beautiful produce. We’re now beginning week 8 of our 26-week CSA, and we have enough additional produce to go back to the Saturday farmer’s market as well.
I’m still not fully recovered from the weather-related difficulties this year (read: wet soil, perennial weeds, fungal outbreaks, wind-burned & chilly summer crops), but with all the great food coming from the field now I’m a lot less stressed about filling baskets in the weeks to come.
It’s inevitable that by this time every year I feel hopelessly behind, but somehow this year it’s been even harder. I hedge my bets with many different crops and multiple planting dates, but this year hit me with more losses than I’m used to dealing with in a single year. The garlic crop was almost completely destroyed by a rust I’d never seen before, the early peas had a drastically reduced harvest due to a downy mildew I’d never seen before, and I ended up pulling out over a third of the potato patch because of late blight (more on this later).
But enough doom and gloom… The CSA harvests have been nice every week and there are way more things going right than going wrong. With care, planning, love, and sweat, the Earth provides in amazing abundance!




