Hi Folks,

Week VII.

Full swing shall we say!  Peak light of summer.  Garlic is drying in the rafters of the machine sheds and in a few weeks we will be harvesting the onions.  The tomatoes are rolling in, eggplant is beginning to produce fruits.  Chris and the dogs are irrigating daily and while on their rounds they are also managing pests.  This entails Maca, our black and cream mix of Austrian Heeler, Collie, and Great Pyrenees along with Lupine, our tan brindle colored mix of Blue Heeler and Norwegian Elkhound.  These two dogs are very essential crew members.  They are on patrol if they aren’t sleeping.  They know when to wake up and go.  They rise to Chris’ whistle.  They may be slumbering in the heat of the day, and then Chris whistles them awake and they come running to him and the hunt begins.  They round up bunnies and groundhogs, voles, and mice, and eat them for what we call “second breakfast” as well as scare off raccoons, coyotes, foxes, and even bears.  Maca’s past time is trying to keep the invasive species of sparrow, the Eurasian tree sparrows from eating baby plants in the greenhouse or cover crop seed that’s spilled on the ground.  If she has been inside and spots these birds as she exits the door she dashes out the front gate running full speed towards the packshed.  Jumping up onto pallets of grain in an attempt to reach them out of the air.  Every once in a while she snags one.  

Carrots!!!  They sure look nice and long and they sure are sweet.  The carrots we are now eating were seeded back in April.  They get hand weeded and cultivated with a tractor about every two weeks.  These carrot beds that we are harvesting from now are clean!  Meaning not many weeds.  This was thankfully due to ideal seeding and weeding conditions. DRY!  For harvesting carrots we have graduated from the garden fork to a tool attached to the back of the tractor called an undercutter.  This is a back saving no moving parts tool that is very affordable and super helpful.  It is a square u of solid 3” steel.  This is dug into the ground below the carrots.  It digs the whole bed for as long as the tractor drags it.  Then we gently pull back and forth to loosen them from the earth by pulling at the base of the greens about 4” above the crown of the carrot.  As the carrots are pulled it’s a beautiful reveal of color and the aroma is very carrotty!  This harvest isn’t such a workout anymore, but the crew gets their workout elsewhere.  Like when we have to pull plastic and drip tape when we are clearing fields that we are no longer harvesting from.  I got a great video of this last week.  Hopefully this is watchable.  This is attached below amongst pictures.

Your Farmers, 

Chris, Aeros & The Who Crew