Farm Maintenance

Thursdays are often what I call "farm maintenance" days. At this time in the season, we have been weeding crops, pruning and stringing up (in the greenhouse)or staking (in the field) tomatoes, weeding crops, did I mention weeding crops yet?

Yes, weeding is huge at this time of year. We need to stay ahead of the weeds while we have time to pay attention to them. Brian usually drives over the bed in question with the cultivator and then the crew comes along with an assortment of hoes, nimble fingers and strong biceps and slices, pulls and/or pinches weeds as necessary.

The first time I weeded carrots I was a CSA member in my first year with the Denisons. Carrots need to be weeded before at such an early stage that the untrained eye takes time to learn to identify the weed from the carrot seedling. As I carefully plucked the weeds between the carrots, I remember thinking that carrots should be worth their weight in gold!

Weeding is often thought of as a tedious chore and, sure, sometimes it can be. More often than not, however, it is a very rewarding task and one that can attain meditative qualities as you get a rhythm going and your mind clears. Brian often join us when the crew is weeding and complains about having to do all the boring tractor work while we get all the fun jobs like weeding. He loves it! Maggie has also been known to get home after a crazy day at school and head out to do some weeding to decompress. Ruby sometimes joins us too, lying down in the wheel track and periodically getting up to follow us and lie down again as we move along the row. Today we started the day by weeding onions and squash by hand and hoe and some of us finished by weeding leeks and beets.

Today we also uncovered the eggplant beds and removed the hoops that had been holding up the row cover. (The plants look beautiful and there are already some tiny fruits coming!) After that we pruned tomatoes and set up stakes. Brian wanted to try a new method of staking the tomatoes. He is always thinking hard about something or other and coming up with ways to do things better on the farm. He runs ideas by us and listens to our feedback. He is hoping this new way of staking the tomatoes will allow more free flow of air between the plants and thus reduce disease which is always a concern on an organic farm. I can't wait to see how it turns out!

Before I log off, I want to respond to some of the comments that have been left in response to our posts. First, I want to thank everyone for interacting with us in this new way. We love all the positive feedback! Thanks for the offers for help (so far, so good). There was a question about sharing recipes. I'm still looking into this as I play with layout ideas and such and don't have a definite answer. For the time being, you could try posting the recipes in the comments. While the comments don't show on the home page of the blog, if you click on the post title it takes you to that post's page and all the comments are then visible. I would like to find a way to archive posts with recipes together at some point, though.

So that's it for this week. Hope you're all enjoying your shares!

Rebeca