Extremes

May 18, 2022 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

It’s been a busy month as we work to get all of the summer crops into the ground. The eggplant and tomatoes were planted two weeks ago and are already putting on new growth. Peppers, cucumbers, and zucchini went in last week, followed by okra today! And, right on schedule, we had some truly summer weather over the weekend, with three days reaching into the 90s. High heat can be a real challenge at this time of year. We still have many cool-weather crops in the ground, some of which may need to be babied through unseasonably warm temperatures. Hot weather can also be very difficult in the days right...

Farm friends

June 8, 2021 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

Like everyone in our area, we’ve been enjoying the Brood X cicadas over the last few weeks. It’s hard to be an organic farmer without becoming interested in insects. They play a huge role on both sides on the farm and I find them all fascinating. There are the problem ones, like the onion root flies whose larvae destroyed our onions this year and the ubiquitous cabbage moths whose larvae like to munch through anything in the kale and cabbage family. And then, of course, there are the good ones. Lady bugs are probably the best known and we always see a big population of these on the farm. Like...

June already!

May 31, 2021 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

As always seems to be the case, we’ve gone from famine to feast with rainfall. After several weeks of no rain at all, in the last week we received nearly two and a half inches of rain over just a few days! The summer crops have also had a rather strange start to life in the field, with their first week in the ground marked by record high temperatures that made watering them multiple times a day necessary. This was promptly followed this past weekend by temperatures plummeting to record lows, bottoming out in the low forties at night. After completing the depressing task of pulling all of our onion...

Moving forward

May 24, 2021 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

After two weeks with nothing more than a spitting of rain, we finally had a decently wet day on Monday, which was a relief both to the plants and to my arms, which are getting awfully sore from watering! While we are able to rely on drip irrigation to water many of the plants on the farm, the real trick during dry periods is getting the crops that are seeded directly into the field to germinate when it’s not raining. Some things, like arugula and salad mix, germinate fairly quickly, only requiring a few days of watering. Others, particularly carrots, take a lot longer, so it was unfortunate that I...

A rough week

May 20, 2021 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

It’s been a pretty devastating week on the farm with the discovery that our entire onion crop is infested with root maggots. Once these pests are present, there’s nothing you can do about them, so instead of getting our first harvest of spring onions, we’ve spent the week ripping out all of our onions. There is also a big chance that this will affect our garlic and we’re just praying that at the very least we are able to save enough to have seed for next year’s crop, especially as one of our garlic varieties is one that I’ve brought with me from farm to farm for years and is...

Feels like summer!

April 28, 2021 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

We’re back to scorching weather this week, with temperatures yesterday and today reaching up into the 80s. And, fittingly, we’re moving more and more in the direction of summer crops. We just finished laying the plastic mulch that we plant our peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and okra in each year. This is one of the worst jobs of the year, requiring manual burying of hundreds of feet of sheeting, and it’s always a relief when we finish. We’ve also just transplanted the pepper seedings into our hoop house, which will stay in there until near the first frost in the fall! The first round of beans was seeded into the hoop...

Giving thanks

November 16, 2020 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

It’s hard to believe we’re already to the end of the 2020 season and nearly to Thanksgiving! This week, I wanted to use the blog post for two purposes, the first being to thank all of you sincerely for your incredible support this year. This year has been a challenging one for everyone everywhere and has certainly been a hard one for small businesses. We made the decision to stick with direct deliveries for the entire 2020 season as we believed this was the best way to keep both ourselves and all of you as safe as possible. But, of course, we could not have done this without the weekly...

Storage vegetables

November 10, 2020 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

Although we only have two weeks of deliveries left, a great thing about many fall vegetables is how long they can be stored. Cabbage is a perfect example and even comes with it’s own built-in storage container, ie, the outer leaves. Cabbage can keep for weeks in the refrigerator. I would recommend putting it in a plastic bag. However, the outer leaves also act as a “bag” of sorts. When you go to use the cabbage, simply peel off any outer leaves that are yellowing and you’ll see that these will have helped keep the inner leaves fresh and green. In fact, when harvesting cabbage from the field, we leave...

Cold at last!

November 2, 2020 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

We finally had our first real freeze of the fall, so it’s officially time to start clearing out the summer beds and getting them ready for winter, whether that be by cover cropping, mulching, or tapping. The cold-hardy crops are still happily growing, some in the open and some under a protective layer of row cover. Even better, the colder weather can actually improve the flavor of a lot of these crops, as dropping temperatures causes them to increase their sugar content. This is the reason that crops like spinach, kale, and carrots can be sweeter when harvested after several frosts. Including this week, we will be delivering veggies for...

Lettuce Galore

October 27, 2020 Market newsletters, Weekly Updates

Fall planting is always the most challenging to plan as you never know how the weather will play out. If it’s a cold fall, it is possible to end up with a harvesting gap as growth slows. In contrast, with a warm fall like we’re having this year, it’s easy to end up with multiple plantings of the same crop becoming harvestable at the same time! This week, that is the case for lettuce and, as a result, we will have a wide selection of different lettuce varieties available. We will be harvesting red and green butter heads, red romaine, red and green leaf lettuce, and romaine hearts, making it a...

Two Feet in the Dirt

Pennsylvania Certified Organic