Farm Friday, August 25th, 2023
Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot!
This week marked the turning point in our garden season. The staff of the school we work for reported back to work and everyone came out to the farm for their first day back. It was just before the heat wave, so people could still enjoy being outside. We had groups caring for the animals, peeling garlic, drying herbs, removing burdock, canning tomatoes, weeding blueberries, clearing trails, repairing pop-up tents, and cleaning the woodshop. Wow! A lot got done. Mostly it was a chance for everyone to get connected and for new people to get to know the veteran staff. Good times.
The heat has been incredible. There were heat advisories for three days this week, with “feels like” temperatures up over 100 F. The garden seems to love it. Tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and sweet corn and cucumbers and beans and zucchini and pumpkins and winter squash are all ripening faster. In most cases, this is a good thing. In the case of the eggplant and tomatoes, I just don’t want them to all ripen before next week’s first market.
In other cases, the heat is a disaster. I am watching the broccoli especially because the heat could make it make heads that are small and bitter tasting. Broccoli that matures in cool weather takes longer to make heads, and makes bigger, sweeter heads.
This is the advantage of having a diverse farm. When the weather is unpredictable, you always have some crops poised to take advantage of it.
Last week I posted a photo of Sweet Pea. She is a cochin breed chicken that we got from a friend. A couple of weeks ago we noticed that she had fallen and couldn’t get up. We set her back up and she walked away. After that we regularly found her lying on her side, struggling to get up and walk. So we isolated her, either in the back room or in a caged-in area on the lawn.
Sweet Pea has two friends who she hangs out with: the silver chicken and the speckled chicken. In her isolation time, the friend chickens will come and sit with her. The chickens have complicated social lives and distinct personalities. When the children are out, sometimes they notice quirks about the chickens that we never saw. We are hoping that Sweet Pea just sprained a muscle or something and will recover with time — she has a good attitude and otherwise seems healthy.
In writing news, I passed 3000 followers on Medium. I know that means very little in terms of engagement, but it is a marker for my persistence here. Thanks for reading and following!
