Farm Friday, July 22nd, 2022

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot.

Whoa. Monday and Tuesday were very hot. We had rain on Sunday so I wasn’t worried about water stress for the plants, but for us farmers, it was a cooker. The rest of the week has just been regular hot, not as bad. I was glad this week for the AC window units in the house and a couple of low-stress work days to go with the heat. The crops grew well in the heat (and so did the weeds). The tomatoes kept growing fast, even as we spent some time worrying about them.

A highlight of the week: The monarch in the chrysalis on our fertilizer bag emerged. My co-worker got a photo of the butterfly right after it came out. The miracle of life! This week the Monarch Butterfly was officially listed as endangered. We have plenty here, thanks to abundant milkweed and limited pesticide use on the property.

Fresh out of the cocoon. Photo credit to C.L. Davis

The empty chrysalis. CLD.

Monarch caterpillar (my photo and unless otherwise stated, the rest are too)

Our llama Precious had a good week. On Thursday, our shearer, Dee, came and gave her a trim. Dee gave her a “barrel cut” which allows her to cool off more easily in the summer heat. Precious seemed to like the feeling of the electric shears on her, because she leaned into Dee as she was running the shears over her. She has had several good walks this week and even went outside.

Happy llama.

Barrel cut.

Many regular readers will be wondering about the saga of the potato beetle infestation. This week I tried again with the organic sprays that I have available. I tried three different sprays: spinosad, a botanical insecticide, and a mycological insecticide. The botanical and the mushroom-based one were both two years old, but I tried them anyway.

After three consecutive days of spray, I can say for certain that there were fewer beetles, not gone completely, but also not skeletonizing the potato plants. I don’t know which one did the most damage, but I think we may have turned the corner on the potato beetles. Side note: when you leave out a jar of soapy water filled with dead potato beetles, after four days of hot weather it starts to get very smelly.

This moth came to the light by my front door.

Mowing next to the meadow by the school. Flower paradise.

On the whole the tomatoes look good, but look closer.

Some plants are dying.

Right where the stem emerges from the ground, there is a fungus that is killing the plants. Some plants have it and are not dead (yet). This fungus is called “damping off,” and I think it is just in our soil. Tomatoes can root from the stem, so we are mounding soil around the stems and hoping new roots will grow.

Blueberry season. We harvested 4 gallons of berries this week and there are more out there.

Eggplants are starting.

Yours truly — explaining to some students about how to harvest garlic. This weekend we will pull 3000 heads of garlic and start drying them for fall sales. Photo credit to CL Davis

In writing news, I published an essay about population growth and how race and class influence people’s perceptions of it. It has three reads so far, so you could be the fourth! I also am working on a piece for Vocal media’s “Runaway Train” challenge. I’ll post the link when I finish.

And finally, this week my friend Laura M. Quainoo wrote an essay about Yaa Gyasi’s novel Homegoing, which I also wrote about back in January of this year. It gave me the idea that we could intentionally do that, sort of like a book club.

For August, we are reading Marlon James’ 2010 novel The Book of Night Women. If you want to join us, just read the book and respond. We are planning on dropping the essays on or after August 25th (not before!). There will be a special tag that you can add (#RaWBC — Readers and Writers Book Club). Then the book club part will be that we can each read each others’ take on the book and comment and reply to comments. You will have to supply your own wine.

Stay hydrated, people.

© Andrew Gaertner, 2022