Amazing. Farmer Bill will pick the last of his strawberries on Monday - and that's it for this year. The crop suffered from frost damage & angular leaf spot. The frost was one that was missed - possibly when we were in Scotland for our daughter's wedding, or possibly shortly after we came back, or maybe even earlier. We really don't know... which indicates it might be time to think about a different frost alert system. Food for thought for next winter. Angular leaf spot was a problem across our area, wherever people used sprinkler irrigation to do frost protection. The bacterium lives in the soil and spreads to the strawberry leaves via splashing water. It is hard to control, but there is a spray that seems to get good results - and is labelled for organic use, which is an added bonus.
[If you haven't read my previous diatribes on whether organic producers spray, they do. None of us wants to poison the earth, the people eating our produce, or ourselves. But farmers who are in farming to make a living need to have a crop to sell, and sometimes (often) nature throws us a curve ball that we have to figure out how to hit. An organically-approved pesticide means that the chemicals in it have been proven to break down rapidly, leaving little or no residue on the produce.]
We started picking the summer raspberries this week and the response has been good - because the crop looks pretty good.
We're seeing splashes of red in the grape tomato hoop house, the melons are blossoming like crazy (get busy, you bees!), and the slicing tomatoes look good to me, but I haven't seen any red yet. There's a LOT of sweet corn planted - on our place and at a neighbor's place - but Farmer Bill says he's not planting off the farm after this year. It's too hard to keep up with the additional acreage during strawberry season. I've been encouraging him (okay, maybe I've been nagging a little bit) not to expand every year. We're not getting any younger, and the 16-hour days seem harder every summer. In the middle of strawberry season he usually agrees that he should cut back, but in the middle of the winter when he's rested again, almost anything seems possible.
It looks like the Zestar! might actually be our most plentiful apple variety for this year. After the April 10 frost, where all the existing blossoms were frozen, the Zestar! put out a few new clusters here and there. Most trees actually have a few apples on them!
It's still a long slog through the summer. I'm hoping that the tomatoes, melons, and sweet corn continue to do well. And that Farmer Bill can find a couple of good marketing staff to help him get them sold.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Strawberry Season
It's officially strawberry season again. We took our first strawberries to the markets on May 31 and June 2. Farmer Bill opened his strawberry patch to pickers on June 5. This is about the earliest we've ever opened. The strawberry crop looks good this year, mostly. There is some frost damage in the upper field, and the early variety - Wendy - really isn't working out. There just doesn't seem to be a really good early strawberry variety. Farmer Bill used to grow Annapolis as his early variety. It is good tasting and does well for size, but doesn't get sweet until it's very ripe, so if you let the field get ripe, the mid-season berries are ready to pick... and you've lost your advantage of having an early variety.
The apple crop is mostly non-existent for 2012. We had incredible, record-setting warm weather in March, which woke the trees up and got them blooming early. Then April came in with normal April weather and the blossoms froze. It looks like we'll have 5-10% of the normal crop of apples. There will be, almost literally, a few of everything, but not very many of anything.
Other crops will have to take up some of the slack - there are an awful lot of cantaloupes and watermelons planted this year. Both hoop houses are full of tomatoes - grape tomatoes in one and slicers in the other. The hope is that Farmer Bill will have some of the earliest tomatoes that bring the best prices. There is also a LOT of sweet corn planted (and more plantings being planned, I'm sure - Farmer Bill knows better than to tell me how much sweet corn he's growing).
The raspberries look really good this year. They are covered in berry buds now & I expect them to start turning red any time (actually I've eaten a few almost-ripe raspberries). We'll definitely start picking them early - maybe as much as 2 weeks early. Farmer Bill is hoping to do well with the raspberries this year - partly to help make up for the apples, partly because it's time for the raspberries to start pulling their weight & producing some income.
It was a busy day today at the strawberry patch. Our picking crew worked hard for 4 hours picking several hundred pounds of strawberries that were almost all sold by the time we closed at 2:00. The PYO operation was steadily busy, too. We're still in the beginning stage of picking, which means that the berries are a bit larger, but further between. Next week there will be more clusters of berries, and that's when the PYO customers are really happy. A huge part of Farmer Bill's job is to manage the customers' expectations & keep them happily toiling on their knees through the strawberries. He's really good at it.
The apple crop is mostly non-existent for 2012. We had incredible, record-setting warm weather in March, which woke the trees up and got them blooming early. Then April came in with normal April weather and the blossoms froze. It looks like we'll have 5-10% of the normal crop of apples. There will be, almost literally, a few of everything, but not very many of anything.
Other crops will have to take up some of the slack - there are an awful lot of cantaloupes and watermelons planted this year. Both hoop houses are full of tomatoes - grape tomatoes in one and slicers in the other. The hope is that Farmer Bill will have some of the earliest tomatoes that bring the best prices. There is also a LOT of sweet corn planted (and more plantings being planned, I'm sure - Farmer Bill knows better than to tell me how much sweet corn he's growing).
The raspberries look really good this year. They are covered in berry buds now & I expect them to start turning red any time (actually I've eaten a few almost-ripe raspberries). We'll definitely start picking them early - maybe as much as 2 weeks early. Farmer Bill is hoping to do well with the raspberries this year - partly to help make up for the apples, partly because it's time for the raspberries to start pulling their weight & producing some income.
It was a busy day today at the strawberry patch. Our picking crew worked hard for 4 hours picking several hundred pounds of strawberries that were almost all sold by the time we closed at 2:00. The PYO operation was steadily busy, too. We're still in the beginning stage of picking, which means that the berries are a bit larger, but further between. Next week there will be more clusters of berries, and that's when the PYO customers are really happy. A huge part of Farmer Bill's job is to manage the customers' expectations & keep them happily toiling on their knees through the strawberries. He's really good at it.
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