For most  everybody in the Upper Valley,this is traditionally the big weekend to plant the gardens, although many of the more hardcore types have been  pushing the envelope for almost a month by getting their perennials in, seeding  their hardy vegetables and annuals while covering their more tender transplants from the frost. But if you need to follow a clock, now it the time to get the garden in. Here at Edgewater,as well as at  other farms in the Upper Valley,  the first planting of everything is in the ground. Because we are shooting for earliness, we oftentine make two  plantings  of crops you might not consider. We actually have two  chronologically staggered plantings of  cherry tomatoes,peppers,eggplant,melons and cukes to name a few. I usually  make my last  seeding of radishes the second week of  September.  Planting goes on all summer long with lettuce herbs,greens and  cole crops.

Getting 2nd Sowing of Spinach and Radishes in the ground

We closed on  the purchase on the Putnam Homestead in Cornish earlier this month and are  hard at work there, both in the house and fields. We are going through the necessary electrical upgrades in the house and  trying to improve some of the drainage about the foundation. As it is such a huge old house,windows need glazing before winter and that is being attended to on rainy days when  George isnt mowing or have  field tillage to attend to. The fields,which haven’t been plowed in anyones recent memory have been turned over and the ancient sod broken.  Wood ash is being imported to correct the PH of some of the field as well as raise potassium levels, lime will be used  on other blocks. The MacNamara family is growing  fodder corn on some of the acreage,while we retain over half of the tillable land  to cover crop  and perhaps actually plant to vegetables as early as spring of 2013. In any case,  the new property is  another task to integrate, figure out  and manage. So far, so good.

We seem to be getting more calls about  U-Pick strawberries earlier in the year with more frequency than ever before. This illustrates the huge disconnect that the average population has with its local food system despite all the recent press of the last couple of years.  The earliest call that I ever answered was from a woman who wanted to pick berries the third week in April.  It was three years ago, it was the first  day that our greenhouses were open for the season, and there were still chunks of ice  on the river bank. In the “old days’ we used to notify one another (the other Upper Valley berry growers) to see who would have that first ridiculous call among us and I am now the record holder.  But now it is very routine to field e-mails or calls from people who want to pick berries in early May.  In discussing it with other growers the consensus was that if people  never grow a garden and they see Mr. Driscoll’s California strawberries in the market all winter long, consumers naturally would question why wouldnt they be available locally in April?   Winter is over , isn’t it?

May 27 Strawberries: Not Ready Yet!

I hope I have no rude surprises today, but at this point in the season there are always many, both good and bad. Among the bad are the importation of insect pests from the purchase of other plants from other greenhouses. Surprise!, the perennials from Michigan have aphids on them.Surprise!,  the fuschia cuttings from Indiana  are covered with thrips. Surprise!, Pooh left the  key on in the  skid steer loader so Mike could find the battery dead this morning.  The list can go on. But so far things are going well for the early greenhouse season. The  mild winter has allowed us to function at this end of the growing season without having to wade around in slush, mud and snow and the fuel bills are greatly reduced in comparison to the winter of 2010-2011. It is pushing the season a bit in the field, and this is always a dangerous path to be walking in early spring, but it is what it is ,as they say, and we may as well try to take advantage of the open conditions to get things done out there  in advance.

Recently a factoid caught my eye that I thought I would share with you. I have  been down to the statehouse  a couple of times and testified before folks there regarding  different agricultural issues.  It never ceases to amaze me that how little  the layperson/legislators  understand about agriculture. Most view us as interesting,harmless bucolic sorts, who use open land  for food  production until a  better use can be found. That  being,  perhaps,  a  family housing development, public education or recreation use or  perhaps a manufacturing facility site. But they find it hard to grapple with the fact  that there is an economic contribution that we make to the surrounding community, much harder for them still to visualize us as small businesses.

A farming buddy of mine in Randolph,VT,  came up with an interesting fact.  Sam Lincoln of Lincoln Farms is a pretty sharp fellow, and unlike many of us that deplore anything to do with economics, he enjoys looking at his books and figures. They speak to him directly and so he is able to couple good sound economic judgement along with his farming  passion in making  major decisions about his lifestyle and his farm. Recently he figured out that out of all the  expenses that he incurs at his farm, he pays back  88% of it to other vendors and folks within a 30 mile radius of his farm. Talk about keeping it local.  I don’t know if  my expenses would sugar off the same, but as I sit here and think about it,I’ll bet that we aren’t very far off.  Most of my farm equipment comes from Townline Equipment, down at the end of River Road. The fuel suppliers are local (even if they make most of the stuff in the MidEast) and my auto mechanics live in town.  Most of my filters, auto repair, and batteries come from an independent  parts jobber in Claremont, insurance agent in Charlestown, fertilizer and supplies from Bradford, etc., etc.  Except for Roy and Willy, all the other  help are local folks. Plus, because of the tax structure in NH, we pay a princely sum of money to the Town of Plainfield for the luxury of doing business in what is admittedly one of the prettiest sections of the state. So yeah, we are keeping it pretty local too. Farms are pretty significant businesses in their communities, even if they can’t be found in a store front in a mall.

So this blog is not  meant to flog you with some more incentive to “Buy Local”.  Most likely if you are wading through this you likely support your local greenhouses and farm stands anyway, and thank you for that support. But it comes as some surprise to me (thanks to Brother Lincoln’s enterprising inclinations)  that we  farms  indeed have a bigger impact  socially and economically  in our communities than I previously thought.  So thanks for buying local. What is bought local, stays local.

As many saw in the Saturday edition of the Valley News, we just signed a  purchase and sales ageement with the Putnam heirs of Cornish, NH to buy their family farm.

This didn’t come as a  surprise to those who know us. We have  been pursuing land acquisition for  several years. Of all the land that we currently till, 25% is leased on an annual basis. That made for uncertainty about our future, at least in terms of growing food crops. Additionally, after  36 years of strawberry growing,we were seeing issues related to  pathogen build up in the soils. Nothing a good long term  rotation wont cure. We looked at several land possibilities, both on our own and in concert with the Upper Valley Land Trust. Some sites were too far away, some sites had marginal soils. In two cases people told us that  although they loved  our product and coming to our stand ,they  just didn’t want to have us in their field of vision while we were working.

The total scope of the  purchase of the Putnam Farm and the challenges it presents are much larger than we were originally were looking for.  After many weeks of discussion we came to an agreement that although it might be a stretch for us initially, we could be grateful  we did so  at some time in the near future.  The soils at the Putnam Farm are the best in the northeast, and we have access to the Connecticut River for irrigation. And it  doesn’t hurt that you can look up from hoeing lettuce and have the  most panoramic view in the Upper Valley of Mt Ascutney.

We are a bit overwhelmed at this point, but none the less we are  excited about the possibilities the acquisition of the Putnam homestead will bring to the future of the greater family  at Edgewater Farm. It is  a big undertaking  both financially and from a management standpoint, and we are cautiously optimistic  and hopeful that we are up to the task of handling both.   There have been several folks  in the area who have called to congratulate us. My response now to them is to save the congratulations for  ten years or so. It will be more appropriate then  if we can pull this off  successfully.

Pretty odd winter thusfar. But thats New England, where  only the unexpected is expected. Its been  very open and very snowless, and  pretty warm.

There are some who remain unmoved by the warm winter...

I can already  hear the  incessant line of questioning:  ”What is this doing to the strawberries??   It is year that  allows me to keep the answer succinct…which is  simply “I have no idea.”  What happens to  our berries, legumes in the forage fields, the  maple syrup  crop or the flowering perennials in home gardens is yet to be determined by what the weather in the  next  two and a half months has to offer.  As a  person  who  is in his advancing years and  profits more from the lack of  ice to fall  on or shovel from around the barns and greenhouses than the  good snow cover for winter athletic activities, I cant say that I have  minded the mild conditions too much,   and now  with  March getting close, we are getting the seasonal urges to get farming again. Today my  son Ray  and his cousins boiled their first 22 gallons  of maple syrup of 2012.

Things keep getting ramped up in the greenhouse and its  feels like spring  in there when its sunny outside. We are well into  seeding and taking cuttings of ornamentals….dividing begonias and grafting tomato plants.  Many perennials were seeded last week and there are flats of  tomato seeds waiting to germinate along with  browallia,portulaca and dusty miller, to name a few.  Some cuttings are just about ready to be  potted up already, and many of the  salvias and  will be stuck this week. We are currently  also  seeing a particular aphid population  expand with the lengthening daylight.

We are  beginning to release  beneficial  predatory and parasitic insects into our greenhouses  in an effort to establish populations of good insects to  balance the emergence of  things like  our aphid population, aka know as The Bad Guys. We purchase from 3  insectaries nationwide, but they are  primairily  brokers for European concerns that grow for a much more developed and sophisticated market in Europe.  Here  in the US  the science of  beneficial pest control is really just getting a foothold. We here  have been working with  University and Extension entomologists   for 20 years trying to get a handle on how to make it work for us and it remains a work in progress. But we have definitely  gotten better at it,  and there is a lot of  info sharing going on between growers as other growers come on board.

Geranium cuttings ready for pots

Just an addendum in regards to globalization. A real downside to globalization is the rate that it brings in new  pests to our growing areas.  It has always  historically happened-the  Colorado  Potato Beetle came from  Europe originally in the mid ninth century and I believe it took  over twenty years to  work its way westward to Colorado. Dutch elm disease took 60 years to move through the US  elm population.   However, the latest huge concern to New England  fruit and Vegetable production–the Spotted Winged Dropsophilia fruit fly that attackes all fruit and tomatoes- hit the west coast in 2009, and was found burrowing in fall raspberries in southern NH last fall.  The Brown Marmorated Stink Bug is another little gem that showed  up   within the continental US  in the last  10 years and is now part of our reality. Theses are some pretty nasty Bad Guys moving  into the hood, and  I am sure  you will become more aware of them in the future. But for now it is still winter even though it is comfortable to sit in the lawn chair on a sunny day with some warm clothes on. The bugs are not moving outdoors, anyway. Yet…

No doubt about it. Edgewater Farm  generates some refuse. And as the farm  kept  getting bigger over the years, the size of the dumpster and our waste stream kept  getting bigger. About  10 years ago it caught my attention enough to want to do something about it.

We have  several different waste streams, and some have been trickier  to solve than others. There is the organic waste that is generated by the farmstand and greenhouses,  everything from  plant and flower trimmings to  vegetable spoilage.  This particular  waste stream has always  been pretty easy to deal with,  because most of it is composted here and  broadcast  back  onto the fields as soil amendment. That waste stream has traditionally had value to us and we capture all of it.

Trash: The Necessary Evil?

The next problem we saw was the use of  season  extending  agricultural plastics. The black plastic mulch  that traditionally is used in the field for soil mulch is a petrochemically based product that had to be landfilled or incinerated. We were generating  enough volume so that we were filling  our  dumpster  multiple times during the fall with just this product  alone. So when the Canadians started  importing the corn starch based plastic mulch from  Italy eight years ago, we made a journey north to get some to trial.    It turned  out to be as good as they claimed it to be. Every year since we have used this  black cornstarch  mulch and  it holds up  for about 70 days before its starts to decompose. More farmers have come on board over the years so that I might  guess that  30-35% of the  farms in the northeast use it in their fields.  Oddly enough, the product is not certified by the feds for use by USDA  Certified organic farmers, a position that  I think is   counter intuitive and perhaps political and therefore inexcusable. But we use it   and  find that the high up- front cost of the biodegradable mulch  (about 3 times that of  non biodegradable type) is offset by the reduction of  labor at the  end of season collection from the field. We just harrow it up or wait until spring to work the remains of it into the soil.  Conventional oil based plastic has to be pulled up and land filled.  Within a year of application there is no remaining shred of  biodegradeable  mulch  in the soil.  The same can rarely be said abut the oil  based plastics, you find shreds of it for years in the fields after its use. Biodegradable mulch was  a gamble we took  in behalf of the environment that  actually worked out well all the way around.

The next hurdle confronting us was the waste stream of pots, plastics and cardboard that is generated  by greenhouse production. The  plastic  pots and  baskets all come in carboard boxes.  Seeds, hardgoods, tools as well…..much comes in cardboard boxes. We   break these boxes down to reduce volume but we still had truck loads of  random sized cardboard to deal with. Two years ago we bought an old trash compactor and baled our cardboard. That helped,  but it still left us to move 250 lb  bales of compressed cardboard. The plastic  pots are recycleable,  but not  easily reusable. This is  because they have to be washed and  sterilized and it is not cost effective to do so. We have switched some of our pots to fiber so that they are  biodegradable, but they are not all that user friendly for the customers.

In 2011 (in between the spring floods and Hurricane Irene) our town switched to Zero Sort trash collection and recycling.  I cant begin  to tell you how handy zero sort recycling is.  The town of Plainfield had a  recycling program before that recycled  glass,  some different grades of  plastic and  paper and cans, but it all had to be pre- sorted in separate bins with some types of plastic not allowed. With Zero sort all types of plastic, all types of glass and all types of paper  and cardboard can be mixed all  together in one container. Suddenly we were able to effortlessly participate in community wide recycling that reduced and diverted  an additional 30  percent of  of recycleable materials away from the landfill.  It  just became so much easier and  it felt good for the environment. All that recycled plastic meant less fossil fuels to be used in plastic production. Just think, all those dierty plastic pots and bottles could be turned into another useful  product.

In 2012 another environmentally sound product became available to us. As we have started up a commercial kitchen as an adjunct to our farm stand, we were in need of  packaging  . We were able to source food grade biodegradable containers to  put our soups, salsas and  pestos in. Another product diverted from the landfill.

We still have some farm waste products that we have to figure out.  The greenhouse  plastic film coverings are not being  recycled at this time, but I have to follow up  on a lead or two  that may change that.  The plastic clamshells that we  package our  cherry and  grape tomatoes and  our blueberries for wholesale accounts  can be recycled, but I would feel much better if there was a biodegradable  solution for packaging  those  as well, and will be  keeping my eyes open for those this summer.

So if you are passionately  pro/anti- incineration  or pro/anti- landfilling of  garbage,  zero sort recycling is just a wonderful  addition to the  tools that  deal with community waste streams. All in all, 2011 was a pretty good  year for garbage at Edgewater Farm. You can be sure that we will continue working on it.

care of us.

After the frenetic last few weeks of wrapping up books for the farm, closing down the potato packing line, mounting snowblowers and  plows and dealing with Christmas shopping, I find myself this morning with an hour to kill before going to a huge family breakfast. There is some mellow Christmas muzak floating through the air and as I look out side its apppears to  be  a perfect Christmas morning: grey,cold  and a few flurries in the air. No guilt about sitting around with the relatives and doing nothing today….perfect.

As I was staring out the window I thought about Thanksgiving  and  about how that  particular holiday is  about assessing the good things in lives.  For me, thanksgiving represents a huge meal with friends and family and marks the  transition to winter “mode” here on the farm with the first uncomfortably cold weather, some small messy snowstorms and the darker,shorter days. It is  Christmas, for me, that I reflect  on the passage of time, remarkable events past and present and  condition of friends  and family,  present and absent.

Anne and I went to Belize in Novemeber, a surprise gift ,courtesy of  our children. A reward for  mutually reaching our sixth decade alive, intact and still married. While we were there we experienced many different things but nothing as rewarding as making a connection (albeit fleeting)  with some native locals. Most of them were connections through our guide, himself a Guatemalan mayan. All these people were poor as dirt by any american standards. Belize is a poor third world country. They had the equivalence of a 4th grade education. Yet they all were extremely knowledgeable about local history, botany or marine zoology, agriculture and were self taught  and spoke english clearly. (Our guide had all the american phrases in his lexicon:  ”Back in the day….” “Totally!” and “We’re good to go…”" )  Yet most grew up riding  mules and  horses as the main mode of transportation (other than walking) and most spent their childhood in mudhuts with braided palm leaf roofs. All learned and still use a machete fluently as no one owns a  lawnmower or weedwacker.  And  yet they were all wonderful company, had great senses of humour, were intelligent and highly motivated individuals with the same aspirations as most of us;  a better education for the kids, accssess to  plenty of food, security from fear and maybe one day a motorcycle or used car.  Anne  and I  both came away humbled by the fact that they are capable and hardworking and  so intelligent. A couple of the subsistance farmers I talked to were easily capable of walking onto Edgewater Farm and within 2 years time being totally uup to speed and capable of running it.

So this morning  I am reflecting on the fact that we, (myself  in particular) are-as my Dad used to say-”shot in the ass with luck”.  We, as Americans, really do have all the toys. We  who live here on the river, are lucky to have our families  working close by to us. We are lucky to have good medical care, security from fear and harm and more food than we possibly need to eat.(Although I will desperately try my best today….)  So with that in mind,  may you and your family go forth today counting your  blessings as well and have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas

Yesterday I felt pretty darn good by days end. I still had to begin and end my day with  the usual fistful of Advil, but I felt  pretty chipper because I had spent the better part of the day participating in giving something back  to the greater community.

We hosted our fall gleaning   with Willing Hands volunteers yesterday afternoon. The organization provides an invaluable link to food kitchens ,senior centers, and  community groups in  need of food. Willing Hands volunteers own and maintain a high cube van and they pick up donations  from many sources in the upper valley, but they particularly provide a service to upper valley farms like ours in that they make the connections and distribution of  extra produce to those in need for us. Yesterday they  came  down to the farm with volunteers and gleaned and washed about a ton of  carrots, like wise  potatoes and rutabaga. There were about 20  individuals and it was well organized, the day was pleasant and they got the 4  pickup trucks filled up with  our produce  and apples from the neighboring Riverview Farm in about two hours. It made us feel good to donate the produce, but it felt good to  be associated with an volunteer orgnaization that runs on a  ”duct tape and baling twine” budget, donates so many man hours by a small number of individuals  and still manages to make a tremendous impact in the community on such a basic level.

Immediately upon finishing up with Willing Hands I honored a small committment to Sam Lincoln, a fellow farmer from Randolph,Vt who recognized how devastated some of the  Vermont agricultural community had become as a result of Hurricane Irene. Rather than breathing a sigh of relief that his family had been spared, he embarked upon a plan to try to raise some money in some small way to give to those fellow farmers less fortunate. He and his brother (Buster Olney, who turns out to be a well recognized baseball commentator) thought they might be able to charge a couple of bucks  to get some folks to to a roundtable discussion about the state of  professional baseball in the 21st  century while raffling off  a few pieces of baseball memorabilia.  I contacted him early on and asked if he wanted  any free entertainement and we agreed that a little quiet coustic music would be nice.  So I  gathered three of my musical bummy friends who thought it might be a hoot to play some bluegrass music  for free on a Saturday night.  Turned out Sam and Buster’s idea turned out to be a small stroke of  genius. The raffle turned out to be a huge silent auction on the internet, the roundtable brought high profile general managers from the Red Sox and New York Yankees among others.  The audience sang along with a ramped up bluegrass version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”. The audience also got a chance to see the World Series Trophy up close and personal. The audience, by the way, was enough to sell out the VTC basketball gymnasium.  One of my bandmates agreed with me that maybe Sam ought to give up  farming and get into promoting bands and producing concerts,as it was a seamless,well organized event.  The final tally is not in as of this morning, butthey were well on the way to raising  $200,000 for Vermont farmers.

It felt good to be associated with giving something back, even in a small way. I sometimes feel guilty about  getting myopic while I go about the day to day activities. Whether it is the harvesting a crop, obsessing about the weather and wondering what to do about the arrival of a new plant pathogen on the farm, I easily forget there is a bigger world out there, and  people with bigger miseries and concerns. It felt good to be part of a slice of humanity that actually takes the time to address those problems that are not their own.

This morning I got up to find the  thermometer registered 45 degrees. It is only  the second time since August that the temps have dropped that low at night.  It has been one of the warmest falls I can remember for this time of year. Here we are 5 weeks after Irene blew through NH and Vt and the repercussions are still being felt in different ways. Highways are patched up for the most part, and  people are  on their ways to putting their lives  back together but the  area farmers are still trying to sort out the true cost and damage the storm left in its wake. And the continued   tropically warm and wet fall season has contributed to the problems initially generated by the hurricane. These  add up to a mounting frustration for area farmers as well as additional losses in incomes.

When all was said and done we lost  about  $25K in product and additional clean up labor from Hurricane Irene. But it pales  somewhat in comparison to  what has  been going on with some of my immediate  farming friends. The continuing wet warm weather has brought on diseases to the remaining crops and made it difficult to harvest.   Alex Maclennan of  MacLennan Farm in Windsor,Vt. lost  the remainder of his sweet corn crop, due to floodwater contamination of the ears of corn on the stalk.  What he didnt count as initial damage from the hurricane came later  when his wholesale  pumpkin crop  turned up with a disease that came in on the floodwaters  that saturated his pumpkin fields. Fifteen acres of pumpkin mush. Bob and Barb  Chappelle of Chappelle Farm in Williamstown, Vt. grow 50 acres of  certified seed potatoes (we get our potato seed from him) as well  as table stock.  His fields are  so saturated form the hurricane and the  continuing inundation   since that he has lost his entire  Yukon Gold crop to water born rots. His fields remain so sodden that he is in jeopardy of not being able to harvest  the remaining  varieties  this year because his fields may well not dry out enough to get the digging  machinery on  them.  My brothers in law  at McNamara Dairy had 25% of their field corn crop flooded.  They were informed that it would be too great a risk to chop it and use it for cattle feed because there was enough of a risk that  particular pathogen it might contain that was born in  by the floodwaters will kill cows.   The same problem for David Ainsworth in Sharon Vt, and other dairy farms in the Connecticut River Valley as well.  Then there is the odd financial twist that Tim and Janet Taylor of Crossroads Farm in Fairlee,Vt face ( I am sure other farmers in New England, as well).  They came through the hurricane with some soggy fields but were  relatively unscathed.  But two of their two biggest accounts  were shut down for the year when their buildings  suffered flood damage,so Crossroads has product,but is struggling to find ways to move it.  The worst scenario of my immediate farming  friends remains the disaster that Geo Honigford faces at Hurricane  Flats in Royalton where he not only had total crop loss but will spend countless thousands in machine and hand labor to straighten out the debris and muck in his fields that the  White River left in its wake.

Our town manager wrote a report in a local paper that  Plainfield suffered no loss of property and it makes me wince to think about  our $25K  going down river.  It aint chump change, and it makes me want to maybe correct him,if it wasn’t just a pride thing. But when I look around at my  farming counterparts I am thinking I should be  thankful  that is all we lost, and at the year’s end this will be a waning memory  and that we can look forward to the new growing season. That will be a harder trick for some.

The phone has been coming off the hook. The media has the  river sweeping away the Bartonville,Vt  covered bridge on a tape loop. The  Disaster Vultures are cruising  up and down our road in their slow moving SUVs diligently looking for death and destruction. Our bottom line was that we took a hit from Hurricane Irened. But not as bad as so many other poor folks.

We prepared for the wind,we feared for damage to the greenhouses. So  we moved things to higher ground and buttoned up buildings  in preparation. But in fact we got no wind to speak of and relatively no rain. However,10 miles to the west they were picking up 12 inches of rain. Whatever hits the eastern slopes of the Green Mountains of Vermont  ends up in the Connecticut River, and when enough of it got there, it ended up in our lower meadow.

We suffered very little damage to infrastructure. We lost an electrical service panel and four propane furnaces,but the current was not strong enough to worry the greenhouses structurally. The water level  engulfed and ruined  the remaining greenhouse tomato crop there and ruined 2 acres of fall crops in the field by depositing anywhere from a half to  six inches of a light Cream of Wheat-like gooey mud. Our losses were significant,but not crippling.

There were homes lost. There were farmers who lost  their crops to inundation for a second time this season. It underscores the point   the fate of the farmer’s success  is out of his hands. You have to accept the forces of nature  all the while  optimistically hoping they will work in your behalf, hopefully to your advantage. It also entails accepting them when they don not.

Harry Truman said “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen”    We all know that the forces of nature will eventually turn a heavy hand to us. Its part of  the deal.  We just hope that our turn doesn’t come around again for a good,long  while.

  Floodwaters  receding 8/29 Monday morning.

Supposedly the dog days of summer come in August, but  we have been hit with a period of intense heat and dryness. The  drougthiness is  good because  it creates a hostile environment for fungal pathogens,which basically means its harder for diseases to establish on the plants and they stay healthier. The bad  part  about the drought is  that  the vegetables need water and so we are irrigating all the time to keep things alive and coming along. Vegetables love a sandy soil,they warm up easily and plants grow like mad in those types of soils,but they do not retain moisture well,which on a year like this one presents some problems. So we have to compensate by watering. Which is ok but it entails moving a lot of irrigation pipe (cost of manual labor) and using  pumps (all kinds—little ones with 5 hp motors to  big ones that require diesel tractors) to move water where needed. There is an additional cost of labor diversion, and by that I mean  in a normal year the crew would be harvesting and weeding and pruning.This summer we are not getting  much time to do that after harvest because we are moving irrigation  pipe and trying to keep pumps running. So we have it in our power to make it rain,but it costs a lot of money and we never do as good or thorough a  job as Mother Nature. On the other hand the plants are not reeling from leaf blights, molds and fungi. So if its to  wet, you got some problems; if its too dry you get some problems .

What has made this  batch of dryness doubly hard is the intense heat that has accompanied it. Not only do the plants suffer, it is tough on everybody in the field, greenhouses and farmstand. Its  enough of a chore  just trying to stay hydrated,much less  work in 100 degree heat.  I myself got a little woozy Saturday as I wasn’t paying attention to my hydration and I got a little cooked. Except from an  annoyingly chipper young lady on the field crew who is from Georgia and loves the heat, the rest of us  loathe the extreme temps of the last 10 days. I try to remind myself how cold I was back in the winter  sitting  on the skidsteer loader  pushing snow away from the greenhouses.