Rain dance

I’m sitting with the goats on a mild Sunday afternoon, and when I say mild, it’s still 25˚C, but after getting (sort of) used to the unrelenting heat of the mid to high 30’s over the last couple of weeks 25˚C is a welcome break.

We are in a severe drought here, everything is dry, the land is parched, the grass is yellow and I’ve seen trees wilting. Bob was telling me this morning that there are reports that we are in a one in fifty year drought.  Bob has had one cut of hay from his pasture, but the grass isn’t growing back so he has had to start feeding his cattle hay already, he wouldn’t normally start feeding them until September,  that’s how dry it is.  Normally he would get a second cut of hay and in a good year a third cut too, but it looks like he wont even get a second cut at this rate.

Thankfully on the veg farm we have irrigation which is keeping things afloat, but the irrigation pond runs dry frequently,  if we don’t get a good amount of rain soon I’m not sure how things are going to fair.  Despite the irrigation the heat is affecting some crops, the peas in particular have pretty much run out of steam and many plants are dying off now, after only two weeks of production!

So what’s been going on down on the farm since I last posted?  We’re now in a pretty regular routine of tasks; Wednesdays we harvest for CSA, Friday’s and at least Saturday mornings we harvest for market.  Then Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we harvest crops that produce a lot quickly, such as courgettes and patty pans, peas and string beans, and starting to come more regularly now are cherry tomatoes and peppers.  It amazes me just how prolific the courgettes are here, they are revelling in the heat and producing like crazy. We probably get maybe 40kgs every couple of days!  , The patty pan plants are enormous, I’ve never seen them so big, some coming up to my chest!  They have been the least affected by the voracious cucumber beetle, while the outdoor cucumbers have been really badly affected, particularly the fruit which have badly damaged skins. Fine for us to eat, but no good for market or CSA.  They have practically become sacrificial plants now.

The big cucumber, courgette and squash garden.  you can see the barn in the background

A couple of weeks ago Jackson and I did the finally planting until the autumn.  We planted red and green cabbage, winter kale, coriander and basil.  We are still doing successional sowings of some crops throughout the summer, such as lettuce, hakurei turnips and spinach.  The spinach really is a bit pointless as when there is more than 12 hours of daylight it naturally bolts (goes to seed quickly).  We picked some spinach for market and CSA this week after having none ready for the last couple of weeks and it was of a distinctly poorer quality than that we grew in the spring.  Not as tender, but tough and slightly bitter; spinach season is done in my mind, it’s not a summer crop.  Same goes for radish, people are still asking for them at market and CSA, but we’ve had very few as they are a spring crop, and like the spinach, bolt in hot weather.

We planted more potatoes in the last couple of weeks and we will very soon have our first harvest of our early plantings.  The foliage is dying back which means the tubers are nearly ready.

The potato beetles are out in force now, so we’ve spent a good amount of time going over the plants and knocking the bugs into buckets and then drowning them, creating rather disgusting potato beetle soup!  It’s interesting that the beetles prefer certain varieties.  It seems to be the same with most pests.  The cucumber beetles have left the patty pans and squash and favoured the cucumbers and courgettes, and back when we were checking for leek moth certain varieties weren’t affected, such as Korean Purple.

New crops we’ve been harvesting the past week or so are broccoli, which has boron deficiency, which causes sunken heads and a hollow stem.  They are still perfectly good to eat, just looks a little less perfect.  We pulled our first baby rainbow carrots this week and have started harvesting string beans.  There is so much variety of food to eat right now, it’s wonderful. We work hard for it, but it’s still such a privilege to be able to eat so much fresh organic produce. I’m still eager for the aubergines and melons though!

delicious yellow cherry tomatoes ripening, even sweeter than the red variety we have.

Next week we’re doing the big garlic harvest, 24,000 bulbs, I’m going to smell of garlic for days!

 That's a whole lot of garlic!

Much love

Becky x